CHAPTER XXI
IN SIGHT OF LAND
March 30—the thirteenth day of our journey from Icy Spit—was the first fine day we had had. We broke camp at dawn. Almost at once we encountered open water and from that time until dark crossed lead after lead. One of them was half a mile wide. It was filled with heavy pieces of ice, frozen into precarious young ice, the whole mass only solid enough to enable us to get a few things at a time over on the sledge. We had to unharness our dogs and haul the lightly loaded sledge across, picking our way from one heavy piece to another as a man zigzags his way across a creek on stepping-stones. It took a good many trips to get everything over.
The sunset was clear and all around the horizon there was not a cloud in the sky. Looking to the southwest I saw what I was inclined to believe was land. Perhaps the wish might be father to the thought, and the days of travel over the white surface of the ice, with the constant effort to find a place to cross the innumerable leads had broughtmy eyes to a state of such acute pain that I could not see as well as usual. I turned my binoculars on the cloudlike mass on the horizon but still I remained in doubt.
So I called to the Eskimo and, pointing, asked him, “That land?”
He answered that it might be.
Then I gave him the glasses and sent him up on a high rafter to look more carefully. After a moment he came back and said that it might be an island like Wrangell Island but that it would be of no use to us. He seemed depressed by the hard day we had had, crossing so many leads. Finally he turned to me and said:
“We see no land, we no get to land; my mother, my father, tell me long time ago Eskimo get out on ice and drive away from Point Barrow never come back.”
I tried to hearten him by telling him that Eskimo out on the ice did not have to get back by themselves but that the white men would bring them back and that I had been a long distance out on the ice with Eskimo and we had all got back safely. He still seemed pretty much discouraged, so I took the glasses and went up on the rafter to see for myself, though his eyes were in a better condition than mine. I made every effort to see as well as I could and was convinced that I was looking atthe land. When I called Kataktovick up to look again he was still very dubious.
That night in our igloo when we were making our tea, he asked me to show him the chart. I did so and pointed out the course we had taken and where we were bound. He appeared somewhat encouraged, though still of the opinion that the land was not Siberia but merely an island, not set down on the chart. When I tried to brace him up, however, by saying, “If you ’fraid, you no reach land,” he did not respond very enthusiastically and slept less soundly than usual that night.
The next day dawned fine and clear. We got out of our igloo before sunrise, when the horizon was bright and objects along the surface of the ice were sharply defined against the sky-line; sunrise and sunset are the best times to see anything at a distance. A good night’s sleep had rested my eyes and when I looked through my binoculars from the top of the ridge I could see the land distinctly, covered with snow. I was surprised to be able to see it so clearly. I called to Kataktovick to come up.
“Me see him, me see himnoona(land),” he said; he had been up on the rafter, he added, before I had got out of the igloo.
“What you think him?” I asked. “You think him all right?”
“Might be, might be, perhaps,” he replied.
Evidently he was still dubious about its being Siberia. He had been satisfied by the chart the night before; at Shipwreck Camp and again at Wrangell Island I had explained the charts to him, had shown him where we were going, what we were going to do with the charts, how far away Siberia was and how far we should have to travel to meet Eskimo, expressing the distances by comparing them with the distance from Point Barrow to the deer camp, for instance, or down to Cape Lisburne, trips that were familiar to him. Now, however, he still appeared skeptical of the identity of the land we were looking at. He said it was not Siberia. When I asked why, he replied that he had been told by his people that Siberia was low land. I explained to him that the shore was, it was true, low in many places, running out for miles into the sea. This low fore-shore was known as the tundra; owing to the distance we could see only the hinterland behind it, which was high. Kataktovick listened to my explanation and then shook his head. It might be an island, he said; Alaskan Eskimo on the Siberian shore, so he had been told, are always set upon and killed by the Eskimo there. I told him as best I could that the Siberian Eskimo were just as kindly disposed towards wayfarers as the Alaskan Eskimo and that he had nothing to fear.I think he still rather hoped that the land we saw was not Siberia but a new island, so that he might postpone as long as possible the horrible fate he was convinced was in store for him.
From the time we started that morning we had leads of water and treacherous young ice to contend with. In some places we could get across easily; in others we had to make wide detours. At noon we stopped on the north side of a narrow lead and Kataktovick made a little snow igloo to serve as shelter while we rested for awhile. He understood perfectly how to use the Primus stove and he made some tea. While he was doing this I reconnoitered to the eastward, walking probably two miles before I came to a point where we could cross. When I returned to the sledge the Eskimo had the tea ready and we found it most refreshing. We could always eat bear meat whenever we were hungry. It got frozen on the sledge, of course, but with a knife or a hatchet we would chip off small pieces, or sometimes we would thaw it out by rolling it up in our shirts and letting our bodily heat melt the frost.
We now went on to the eastward to the point I had selected for crossing the lead. There was young ice here but it was not very strong, so we had to adopt our customary expedient of pulling the sledge over and back lightly loaded. Onceacross we went on for some time without trouble with open water but presently found ourselves among heavy raftered ice, with high pinnacles and in between them masses of snow, deep and not very hard. We had to use the pickaxe a good deal and the dogs had hard going. Three of them were getting to be very sick.
Towards the end of the day we could see the land distinctly, about forty miles away. When we built our igloo at dark we had made at least ten miles to the good, though our actual march had been longer than that. The Eskimo appeared very much depressed. I was naturally feeling cheerful myself because in two or three days we should be on land. Furthermore I believed most of our troubles with open leads would soon be over, as we approached nearer the shore ice, though the going would probably be rough from the pressure of the running-ice on the still ice, just as we had found it in getting away from Wrangell Island.
During the latter part of our day’s journey I fell and hurt my side. My eyes troubled me more than ever, because I broke the glass in my goggles and, though I had another pair, I did not find that they suited me as well as those to which I had become accustomed. Kataktovick, too, wore goggles.
On April 1 we made a good day’s march. The going was rather rough, but we were fortunatein finding the young ice firm enough to bear us so that we did not lose much time in getting across the leads to the big floes where it was smoother and more level. About three o’clock in the afternoon we came to a belt of raftered ice and deep, soft snow, where we had to use the pickaxe. After two hours’ work we got through and had good going the remainder of the day.
We got away from our igloo at six o’clock the next morning and found that the going continued good for a while. After a time we came to another patch of rough, heavy ice, with open leads, which we had to cross. Then we came to a long strip of firm, young ice and had good travelling, later reaching older floes and raftered ice; we managed to make our way round the ends of the rafters and did not have to use the pickaxe at all. This was a great relief for we wasted no time in making a road. The dogs, however, were pretty nearly worn out and could only be made to work by constant urging; in fact, during the day two of them gave out completely.
We made camp at half past seven. The land was not over fifteen or eighteen miles away, so we knew that we had done a good day’s work.
At about one o’clock the next morning, while we were asleep, the ice split near the igloo and opened about two feet. We had to get out of the igloo atonce because, although the crack did not come inside, it was so near that the walls split on the south end. Shortly after we got out the ice began to move about and we had to work fast to save the dogs. Some of them had been tethered and others loose; now we let them all loose to give each a better opportunity if the ice broke up any more, taking our chances on getting them together again in the morning. We removed everything from the igloo and loaded up the sledge, lashing everything tight. The night was fine and clear, with brilliant star-light and no wind whatever, all of which was in our favor, though it was still so dark that we could not see our way around.
We stayed up the rest of the night and at dawn had some meat and pemmican and drank some tea. As soon as it was light enough we got away, hoping that by night we should be on land. The ice was in motion everywhere, however, and there were open leads on every hand. We had light enough to see what we had to do but there was a great deal of condensation and we could not see very far. The ice was grinding and groaning, and splitting in all directions about us as we travelled and the noise made the dogs so uneasy that at times they were practically useless. Finally, about three o’clock in the afternoon, the light was so bad and the ice was moving so constantly that we could notget along so we stopped, built our igloo, drank some tea and turned in.
At six o’clock the next morning, the fourth of April, we left the dogs and the sledge in camp and went ahead with pickaxes to make a trail through the rough ice. It was a fine, clear day. From a high rafter I could see an open lead on the other side of the belt of rough ice, and beyond the lead the ice-foot, itself, as it is called in Arctic parlance,—the ice which is permanently attached to the land and extends out into the sea.
At ten o’clock, leaving Kataktovick to continue the road-making with the pickaxe, I went back to the camp, harnessed up the dogs and drove them along the trail that we had made. When we reached the open lead we had to look for a place to cross. Finally we found a point where the moving ice nearly touched the still ice. The dogs, however, were so frightened that they were afraid to stir. We tried to make them jump across the crack but they lay down and would not budge. While we delayed thus the crack widened; the moving floe was drifting away. I made up my mind that it was now or never, so I cut the traces, jumped across the widening gap and pulled the sledge across. Then I threw a rope to Kataktovick and pulled him across flying. The dogs we managed to grasp by traces or wherever we could get hold of them and draggedthem across. Before long the lead had opened to a considerable width. We were now on the land ice, free from open water, and had only rafters, rough ice and deep snow to contend with. I sent Kataktovick on towards the land to see how the going was and I started in to make a road with the pickaxe, while the dogs rested by the sledge. In about an hour he came back and said that after he had got through the rough ice he had found the going good. We both worked on the road with our pickaxes and in the afternoon got about through the rough ice to smoother going beyond. I went back and brought up the dogs and the sledge and by the time I reached Kataktovick he was through the rough ice. It was a fine, clear day, without any wind; the temperature, I should judge, was about fifty below zero.
The good going did not last long for we soon came to rough ice, with deep, soft snow. Here we had to wear our snowshoes again. For a good part of the way across from Wrangell Island we had not been able to use them because the ice was too rough and jagged and, furthermore, we had had so much jumping to do, getting across the leads, that we could not spare the time necessary to put the snowshoes on and off, or run the risk of breaking them. Our footgear was wet, too, and the ugsug rawhide straps across the toes sank in so far that there wasdanger that our feet would freeze by the stopping of the circulation. Yet, wherever it is practicable to wear them, snowshoes are indispensable in Arctic travel and I should as willingly do without food as without snowshoes. At this point we threw all the supplies off the sledge excepting enough for one day and, with the sledge light, made the road with pickaxes towards the land.