CHAPTER XXX
OFF FOR WRANGELL ISLAND
From time to time there came rumors of how close the season was and how much ice there was about the coast. This was disquieting. I had told the captains of the vessels that from time to time left Nome for the northern waters, walrus-hunting or trading, about the men on Wrangell Island and had asked them, if they got anywhere near the island, to take a look around. By the first week in July I began to get more and more uneasy and anxious to get started. TheBearhad been in the north and reported on her return that the ice was heavy and still closely packed, and the walrus-hunterKitcame back from north of Bering Strait with the same story. Such news was not at all reassuring, though I knew that the ice could be broken up in a few hours’ time just as it could form in an equally short interval. The tenth of August, I reckoned, should see us at Wrangell Island; the men would not really be expecting me much before that time.
TheBearfinally got away, with me on board, on July 13. She had a number of calls to make on herway north, for in addition to being the mail-boat, she had to bring help to the needy, act as a kind of travelling law-court, carry school-teachers and missionaries around from place to place and make herself generally useful. It was a great relief to me to be really doing something at last, after so many weeks of inaction. My thoughts were constantly on the castaways and I wondered how things had been going with them since the middle of March.
We had a pleasant ship’s company. I slept in the captain’s cabin. On the port side in a hammock was the Reverend Doctor Hoar, who was accompanying us as far as his mission station at Point Hope. In another hammock was Mr. Shields, the Alaskan Superintendent of Education, an able young man who has done wonders with the means at his disposal to foster the spirit of thrift among the Eskimo in their reindeer-herding. He knows every nook and cranny from Nome to Point Barrow and has won the respect and admiration of the Eskimo everywhere. On the starboard side were Hershey and E. Swift Train, who was taking motion-pictures and gathering material for the use of schools.
Just across the way was the wardroom and a finer set of men than the officers of theBearI never met. They had the latchstring always out. I wasprivileged to visit the chart-room at any time and had the rare opportunity of learning from Lieutenant Dempwolf, the navigating officer, much about Alaskan and Siberian waters. It was fine to feel a good ship like theBearunder one and worth while seeing others navigate. A lot of merchant-marine men would be greatly benefited by a trip on a revenue-cutter.
Our first stop was Reindeer Station at St. Lawrence Island. Then we went to other stations on St. Lawrence Island, with supplies for the schools there, and then on to St. Lawrence Bay on the Siberian coast, to Lütke Island. From there we went to Emma Town and picked up Lord Percy, who had been collecting birds at Lütke Island and had come up with a native in a skin-boat. At Emma Town I again met the Mr. Caraieff who had taken me to Emma Harbor; his brother had gone to Vladivostock. Here I paid the money I owed. Some of the dogs I had left were still here but only two of them were any good; the others were still not rested enough to be of use. They were offered me again but I told my kind friends to keep them if they could get any good out of them. When I had been there before the snow had been piled high over everything. How different it all looked on this beautiful July afternoon! When Lord Percy had picked up his things at Emma Town westeamed along the coast to East Cape, and then to Ugelen, near by. From here we went across to Teller, on the Alaskan coast, and visited various settlements.
At Reindeer Station, at Port Clarence, I met again the Reverend Mr. Brevick, the missionary in charge, whom I had met the previous year when we were there in theKarluk; he again treated me royally. We waited here while Mr. Shields and Lieutenant Dempwolf, in the steam-launch, visited some of the settlements farther up the bay.
It was while we were in Kotzebue Sound on August 4 that we heard over the wireless that war had been declared between Germany and France and then between Germany and England. It may be imagined what an effect such an amazing piece of news, coming to us in such a detached way in so remote a corner of the world, had upon us; at first, of course, we had difficulty in believing it, but there seemed to be no doubt of its accuracy, so Lord Percy, who was an officer in the British army, left us to get back to England as soon as possible. I have heard from him since of his life in the trenches. He is one of the many men of the “nobility and gentry” who have uncomplainingly done their duty for their country. Mr. Shields went ashore at Kotzebue with Lord Percy, forsomewhere in the vicinity he was to establish a new Eskimo village. We went on to Point Hope, where Doctor Hoar left us.
At Point Hope I again met Kataktovick, who had been brought over from East Cape by Captain Pederson in theHerman. I paid him his wages, as a member of theKarlukexpedition, and gave him a complete outfit of clothing which the Canadian Government was providing for each man of the party. He would have liked to go with us on the trip to Wrangell Island, if it had been possible. He was feeling well, he said, and from the looks of things seemed about to be married.
From Point Hope we headed for Point Barrow. Off Icy Cape we met the first ice and from there on it was a constant fight to make our way along; evidently it was not an open season. Accompanying us were theKing and Winge, a walrus-hunter and trader, managed by Mr. Olaf Swenson, and a Canadian schooner, loaded with supplies for the mounted police at Herschel Island. The schooner had a big deckload and was very heavy in the water. She was not sheathed and had no stem-plates, and was evidently not at all adapted for ice work. In fact, it seemed doubtful to me whether she ever would reach Point Barrow. TheKing and Winge, on the other hand,was just in the right ballast for bucking the ice; besides being small, she was short for her beam and was quick to answer the helm.
The ice through which we were making our toilsome way was not so heavy as it was closely packed. It was great to see the good oldBearcharging and recharging, twisting and turning; being heavy in the water she was able, with her great momentum, to smash off points and corners of the ice and make her way through it. I should have been delighted to be in the crow’s-nest, for steering such a ship through the ice is not unlike driving a big automobile through a crowded thoroughfare; this time, however, I was a passenger.
Near Wainwright Inlet we found a large four-masted schooner ashore. TheBeartried in vain to get her off; she was fast aground and heavily loaded. The only thing that could be done was to take her cargo out of her. While we were standing by, the ice began to close in and we had to turn round and steam south in a hurry, leaving our big line with the schooner. When we got back again some days later she had been floated all right.
We reached Point Barrow on the evening of the twenty-first of August. Here I found McConnell, who had come in a small schooner from the eastward. He told me all about what had happened to Stefansson after theKarlukhad beenblown offshore by the storm which began her drift in the September of the previous year.
The party that left theKarlukon September 20, 1913, as I have related before, consisted of Stefansson, Jenness, Wilkins, McConnell and the two Eskimo boys who had come aboard at Point Hope, Panyurak and Asatshak. They had with them two sledges and twelve dogs and equipment sufficient for the purpose which took them ashore, a two weeks’ caribou hunt in the country back of Beechey Point to provide the ship’s company with needed fresh meat for the winter, which it seemed likely would be spent with the ship frozen in at that point. It took them, McConnell said, two days to work their way in over the ice to one of the Jones Islands, about six miles northwest of Beechey Point. When they finally reached the island they found that the ice between them and the mainland was not safe for travelling, so while they were waiting for it to freeze more solidly, Stefansson decided to send him and Asatshak back to theKarlukfor some things they wanted.
That night, however, the storm that sent us drifting off shore came up and it was clearly not safe for them to go out on the sea-ice for the present. At the end of the three days’ storm the sea was clear on the outside and the ship was nowhere to be seen. Whether she was free at last and onher way eastward towards Herschel Island or had been blown westward into the waters north of Point Barrow they did not know. It was impossible for them to get ashore until the twenty-eighth, when they reached Beechey Point. They stayed in this vicinity for several days and Stefansson did a little caribou hunting without success. The Eskimo became alarmed because there was not a larger amount of food, for they were civilized Eskimo and unused to living off the country, so finally on the third of October the party started westward towards Point Barrow. They made the march of 175 miles in nine days.
They stayed at Point Barrow for some time to procure fur clothing and provisions for the party, as well as a sledge and a dog-team. On November 8 they started east again. The latter part of the month they reached Cape Halkett, where they met an experienced Eskimo hunter named Angupkanna, otherwise called “the Stammerer,” who told them that early in October he saw a ship in the ice off shore and through his telescope could see her distinctly. Stefansson was sure that she was theKarluk, a ship with which the Eskimo was well acquainted from her whaling days. Angupkanna told them that he watched her for three or four hours and then fog settled down for three days, at the end of which time he saw her no more.
Leaving Jenness at Cape Halkett to make some ethnological studies, Stefansson, Wilkins and McConnell went on to the east once more and the middle of December reached Flaxman Island, where they found Leffingwell, who had come up on theMary Sachsto finish some work he had begun the year before. He was wintering alone, though an Eskimo family was living not far away from him.
Leaving Leffingwell on December 14, they reached the winter quarters of the southern party at Collinson Point, thirty miles to the eastward, on the evening of the same day. Here they spent the winter. Stefansson made a journey later on still farther to the east with a member of the southern party to Herschel Island and Fort Mackenzie, to make plans for the journey which he was to undertake in the spring over the ice to the north of Martin Point in search of new land. In the latter part of February McConnell made a trip to Point Barrow for the mail, returning to Martin Point not long after Stefansson, with a party of seven men, had started north over the ice on March 22. With a companion McConnell overtook them the next day and they travelled on for more than two weeks, until, on April 6 they reached the edge of the continental shelf, discovered by Mikkelson and Leffingwell in theDuchess of Bedfordexpeditionin 1907. At this point Stefansson sent the supporting party back, and went on to the northward with six dogs, a sledge and forty days’ supplies, together with two rifles and 360 rounds of ammunition. He had with him two companions, Storker Storkerson, who had been mate of theDuchess of Bedfordand had been living as a hunter and trapper at various places along the shore since the date of the Mikkelson expedition, and Ole Anderson, another experienced man. Stefansson intended to go on for fifteen days’ march before turning back and hoped to do by ice travel what theKarlukhad been prevented from doing—to discover new land along the 141st Meridian.[1]Stefansson had not since been heard from, McConnell said, but there should be plenty of bear and seal for his party to subsist on and it was likely that in any event they could make their way to Banks Land.
[1]Stefansson was successful in his quest for new land and, in 1915 and 1916, reported his discoveries.
[1]Stefansson was successful in his quest for new land and, in 1915 and 1916, reported his discoveries.