CHAPTER III
WE MEET THE ICE AND GET A POLAR BEAR
While we were steaming along off Point Belcher, about seventy-five miles to the southwest of Point Barrow, I was in the crow’s nest, which on theKarlukwas situated at the foretopgallant-mast, conning the ship through the broken ice, when through my binoculars I saw a polar bear about three miles away on the level floe. This was a welcome sight, for the meat would be an addition to our current food supply and the hide useful in several ways. There was no wind, so the bear did not scent us. At first we could not go towards him because the ice was too closely packed,—in fact at times we had to steam away from him to follow the open lanes of water—but finally we managed to get headed in the right direction. When we got within a few hundred yards of him he spied us and promptly went into the water. That was just what I wanted; if he had stayed on the ice he would probably have started to run and as he could run much faster than the ship could steam he would probably have got away from us.
With the bear in the water I now worked theship to keep between him and the ice and as polar bears, though they are good swimmers, do not often dive, I knew that with ordinary luck we should get him. Shouting to the mate to keep an eye on him I ran down the rope-ladder from the barrel and rushed forward to the forecastle-head with a Winchester in my hand. Some of the other members of the expedition, too, hearing the word bear, grabbed their rifles and blazed away at him. Every one was pretty much excited and for a few moments the bear seemed possessed of a charmed life. At last my second shot hit him in the back and my third in the head. This finished him; he keeled over and floated. We lowered a boat, towed the bear to the side and hoisted him on board; then the Eskimo skinned him. He was old and, as he had on his summer coat, his hair was sparse and yellow and of no great value. The Eskimo cut up the meat for dog food; we should have used it ourselves if we had not just obtained a large supply of fresh meat at Nome and Port Clarence.
The skin of this old bear had something of a history. The Eskimo stretched it on a frame and hung it up in the rigging for the wind and sun to cure it. I had a pair of trousers made from the softest part of the skin, which later I gave to Malloch. From the remainder I had a sleeping-robe made which I used on the ice from the time theship sank until I reached the coast of Siberia. There I traded it for a deerskin which I afterwards gave to a native at East Cape. The skin of the polar bear makes the best sleeping-robe for Arctic use and the skin of a young bear is also the best for trousers, because it will wear the longest and, furthermore, the hair will not fall out, in spite of the brushing and pounding you have to give it to get rid of the snow that will cling to it after the day’s march.
Some time after we got this bear, I saw another one from the crow’s nest. We were going away from him, however, and getting along pretty well, so I hardly felt it wise to stop for him. Occasionally we saw walrus asleep on the ice.
August 3 the wind again veered to the southwest, pushing the ice on shore and jamming the ship in it so that we were unable to make any progress. We were about four miles off the Seahorse Islands. Here we found a current running to the eastward parallel with the shore and we began to drift with this current in an easterly direction which was the way we wanted to go. By eleven o’clock we had reached a point about two miles from shore and twenty-five miles southwest of Point Barrow.
The early presence of ice on this coast convinced us that all was not to be plain sailing on our voyage to Herschel Island and that it behooved us to saveevery hour possible. With this in mind, Stefansson now decided to go ashore and make his way to Point Barrow on foot. He would need at least a day there to obtain furs for our use and he could have his work all done by the time we reached there. Accordingly, at eleven o’clock, he took the doctor and a couple of Eskimo, with a dog sledge, and went ashore over the ice, the Eskimo and the dog-sledge returning late in the afternoon. It was summer and there was no snow or ice on the land so by walking all night in the continuous August daylight, Stefansson and the doctor reached Point Barrow in the morning.
By the sixth, usually drifting only a few miles a day but occasionally getting clear of the ice for a while to go ahead under our own power, we had reached a point about a mile from shore off Cape Smythe, which is only a few miles from Point Barrow. At midnight Stefansson returned from Point Barrow, bringing with him some new members of the expedition: an Eskimo family of five, consisting of Kerdrillo or Kuralluk, a man about thirty-five years old, his wife Keruk, about twenty-eight, and their children, a girl of seven who went by the name of Helen and a baby called Mugpi not much over a year old; an Eskimo named Kataktovick, between eighteen and twenty years old, who was already a widower, with a baby girl whom hehad left with his mother; and John Hadley, a man between fifty-five and sixty years old, who for a long time had been in charge of the whaling station at Cape Smythe owned by Mr. Charles Brower, the proprietor of the store at Point Barrow. Mr. Hadley had resigned his position to go east to Banks Land and establish a trading-station of his own, chiefly to get foxskins by barter with the Eskimo. As we were on our way to Herschel Island, now was Mr. Hadley’s chance to get to his destination, for at Herschel Island he could be transferred to theMary Sachsor theAlaska, when they reached there, and so go east in the direction of Banks Land with the southern party in the sequel Mr. Hadley, who, as I have already mentioned was put on the ship’s articles as carpenter, proved a very valuable addition to the party, but he did not get to Banks Land.
While we were at Cape Smythe, the white dog-driver who had accompanied us from Port Clarence asked for his discharge and went on shore. We sent our mail ashore to be taken to Point Barrow. As a result of our trading with the Eskimo here we obtained altogether three skin-boats, two kayaks and a number of sealskins for boot-soles. The Eskimo Kerdrillo brought his three dogs to add to our own.
There is a wide difference between the skin-boatand the kayak. The former is shaped not unlike an ordinary rowboat and is large enough to hold from ten to twenty persons. Over the framework are stretched sealskins, sewed together with deer sinew, which makes the boat water-tight. The skin-boat will stand a lot of wear and tear. The kayak, on the other hand, is small, pointed at both ends and completely covered over except for an opening in the middle, where the single occupant sits. The kayak is used for hunting and as it is small and light can be easily placed on a sledge and drawn over the ice.
During the early morning of August 7 the ice began to move us eastward around Point Barrow, where we met a current from the southeast and began to drift towards the northwest, until by the next day we were ten miles from land. We were still unable to use our engines and the ice was closely packed, though it had been smashed and pounded by its constant impact against the grounded floe along the shore. While we were still jammed in the ice we took the opportunity of filling up our tanks from a big floe not far away on which there was a lake of fresh water where the sun and the rain had melted the ice.
Early on the ninth we got clear of the ice at last and steamed eastward along the shore, free for the first time for many days. The ice was closelypacked outside of us but near shore there was open water and we had little difficulty in making our way along. Navigation was precarious on account of shallow water, but we used the hand lead-line constantly. On the tenth while rounding a point of ice we got aground for two hours, but the use of the anchors and engines enabled us to back off into deep water again. The bottom was soft with the silt carried down the rivers in the spring freshets and the ship sustained no damage. We now made pretty steady progress to the eastward, though the ice constantly threatened our path, and by the eleventh had reached Cross Island, about half way from Point Barrow to Herschel Island.