CHAPTER IVKrocker Land Rim
On the fourth day came another change, for in these haunts of the snow gods and the ice gods the shadow of storm darkens quickly, and if these deities descend to earth they wrap themselves thickly in shades and mists and white trailing togas, or else they just blow upon the earth their coldest breath, killing all human life, lest they be seen of men. That strange Arctic hush, the misty light over everything, that grayish white light caused by the reflexion from the ice being cast high into the air against masses of vapor, that Nansen has described, encompassed us. A mist, a fog, rose later, or else descended, and Goritz said we were near land, in which I concurred. Our excitement was intense. Was the great revelation to be vouchsafed?
The fog of fogs grew, advancing upon us from the four points of the compass, rising around us from the water like spectres, descending from the skies in soft, insensible folds, buried in the thickening nebula, until, we could hardly see an arm’s length in front of the boat. Then a chill came with it, light breezes from the northwest (“From land,” said Goritz) and then as if some resistance from the east was roused into action, another tempest gathered there, rushing ravenously upon us with a blind rage, with wrack and cloud, with rain and snow,the last interference of the elements to destroy us, before the secret of the north was revealed—a senseless protest, for their madness only flung us swiftly forward to the forbidden coasts.
The “Pluto” plunged and rolled; her rounded, swollen bottom made her an easy prey to the balloting waves, and unless she could be kept in the wind her overturn seemed certain with ourselves spilled into the distracted waters. It was hard to do this, hard to stick to her deck at all, when every now and then some vicious poke sent her across, and we would cling like barnacles to rope or rail or stanchion. The tiller was jerked from Goritz’s hand and its arm dealt him a blow that almost disabled him. I was pitched headlong on the forward deck and narrowly escaped rolling overboard; some of the cargo aboveships slipped its fastenings and was lost, threatening the dislocation of everything. This danger was too serious, and Hopkins and I did our best to avert it, but do what we could or might, the load was crumbling away before our eyes, loosened from its fastenings by the fierce storm. Box after box disappeared in the gloom. The dogs were hustled into the cabin, whence their howls and terrified whines issued like the cries of lost souls. We were now pretty well alarmed, and our predicament strongly resembled the prelude to complete annihilation.
Suddenly the Professor shouted, “The ice—the ice again!” and the next instant we were pinned in a pack of formidable blocks that thundered around us, lodged on our deck, and beat into ruins, as the waves lurched or hurled them over us, the frail battlement of boxes which contained our supplies. My heart sank within me. EVERYTHING GONE! Not quite. There was something left in the cabin, but on that raging waste of waters—? The question stuck in my throat. Inthat instant I seemed separated, sundered from all the others, the concentrated agony of my terror—for terror black and paralyzing it was—robbed me almost of consciousness. Almost as in a trance I heard Hopkins cry, “Look! Look!”
Something happened. Actually it was a meteorological phenomenon brought about by the proximity of mountain masses perhaps; to my mind it seemed like the visible extension of the hand of God to pluck us from destruction. Above us appeared a bright spot that was widening rapidly; the motion within it was apparent, and the velocity of the atmospheric rotations within it must have been almost incalculable. It was becoming a monstrous orifice into which poured the abominable chaos that was overwhelming us; its enormous vortex swallowed up the storm, transferred in its outrageous coursing from earth to heaven. The deity of Krocker Land favored our approach. He had rebuked, repelled, dissipated the tempest.
The scenic shock was really tremendous. The dramatic intensity of the change, the startling evolution from storm and darkness, blistering winds, soaked with snow and rain, the earth-driven rolling clouds, black and gray, tossed over us and engulfing us in blankets of cold wetness that sent shivering thrills of dread through our bodies, as the waves mounted and pounced on us like beasts of ravin! And then this magnificent uplift! Oh, the calm, superhuman glory of it! The shattereddebrisof the broken tornado vanishing above us, and—as its myriad shaped or distorted curtains rose—the sunlit dark mountain peaks, the bare rocky crags, jeweled with snow, the ice-strewn beaches of Krocker Land, evolving superbly before our eyes, as if created then, at that very moment, by the transfiguring finger of the Almighty.Mr. Link, it was the most sublime spectacle imaginable; for me it was the climax of my life. I shall never forget its wonder, its power, its amazing enforcement of the idea of creation.
I don’t think there was much difference between any of us in our feelings at that moment; its immensity appalled us in a way, and then it thrilled us. Temperamental details were submerged in the overpowering sensation. At first perhaps we thought it an apparition, a mirage. It was unreal. And then when the realization was acknowledged, to put it bluntly, we gazed in stupid astonishment. We were about four miles away, when the vision broke, standing on our deck, from which every vestige of our supplies had been carried off by the ruthless wind and water. I believe we stood that way for a quarter of an hour, before we quite came to our senses, with the waves and wind still driving us headlong on that apocryphal beach. Then we began to take notice and to take precautions.
The shore was partially encumbered with shore ice, and the lashing waves were throwing upon it other small and large fragments. The coast was low, sandy, shelving, cut up by a few projecting and sand buried ridges of rock, which, like spurs, passed back into the interior, and may have been the outspread roots of the looming ranges beyond and behind them. Goritz managed to direct the launch upon a flat expanse of sand on which we landed with a thud that made the timbers creak. I think the Professor was the first to leap ashore, then Hopkins and myself, and at the last Goritz, with the painter. The next wave drove the boat further up the beach. Nothing now could budge her. Somehow we looked then to Goritz for orders.
“Better get everything out, and take an account of stock. This is good enough camping ground, until we get our bearings and perhaps a littlebetter hold on our wits. I hope the Professor’s faunas are expecting us.”
This oblique hint to the loss of our provisions dampened any ardor we might have succumbed to, in our enthusiasm over the discovery. We set to work with a will, and almost without a word. There were some welcome surprises. The dogs were safe, sound asleep in the cabin, exhausted by their fright. They became a solicitude, however, because of the additional mouths to fill, though, in a state of idleness, half rations would keep them well. But would we need them? Our ammunition and guns were safe, our oil and stove, alcohol, medical outfit, and six boxes of canned vegetables, pemmican, biscuit, tea, coffee, chocolate, in all perhaps three hundred pounds; and our spare clothing, for which we offered fervent thanks. One sledge was saved from the wreck, and one bruised and broken kayak. The portable tent was uninjured, and there remained a serviceable equipment of cans and pots, though for that matter one can for the preparation of our tea and coffee or chocolate, and one pot for miscellaneous stews, soups, and what Hopkins called “hari-kari,” were all we needed. The watertight cabin had saved much.
When the review was finished, and we felt cheered over the immediate prospect, we drew up the “Pluto” on the beach, anchored her, as well as we could, and converted her into our camp. We were clamorously hungry and the dogs were raging. The Professor wasted no time, though just now the allowances were rigorously measured. It might be better when we caught sight of the Professor’s “concentrated reflexion of the palearctic and neoarctic faunas.” At the moment a sublime solitude surrounded us. Yet I had noticed high up on the shoulders of the rock and in the slight subsidencesthat like saucers lay at their bases, the growth of plants, and the quick eye of the Professor had noted it too. Surely that meant game. I guess we both understood that, for the Professor worked over his fires and vessels with a boyish profusion of activity, and was inclined to be lavish in his ingredients (Goritz, watchful and prudent, stopped him), while something like elation sprang up within me and an utterly inappropriate yearning to sing and laugh and dance.
I remembered Mikkelsen’s and Iversen’s joy when they descended from the cold monotony and whiteness and treachery of the inland ice of Greenland to the habitable earth with its flowers, and life, and warmth. With Mikkelsen too vegetation had meant animal life. They seemed inseparable correlates. In Greenland it had been pygmy willow trees, six inches high, with trunks an inch thick, and blades of grass, and thick moss, and beautiful heather, and then—musk ox!
What it was here would be disclosed as soon as the evening meal was finished. We had all been curiously dumb since we had been thrown ashore, that is, there had been no reference made to our wonderful landfall. Perhaps we were speechless from sheer amazement, or some haunting dread that our return was impossible, or that we were on the margin, as it were, of bigger marvels. I think the latter feeling made us almost mute. Our fancies before we left Point Barrow had been high-strung and the visions wrought in our minds were almost mystical—I have explained that—but these had very completely vanished during the last days of turmoil and disaster, when the wonders we expected to encounter were more likely to have been found in another world than in this one. Yet you see they really had not vanished, they had shrunk somewhat, retreating into invisibility in thecrevices and holes of the mind, and now when the stupendous reality confronted us they rushed out from hiding, huger than ever, smothering us into silence with their immensity! A new World, what might not be in it? It was Hopkins who broke the trance that imprisoned us.
“That transformation took the gilt off any lightning-change stunt I ever have seen and—Of course, Professor, there isn’t any guess coming that we’ve ARRIVED, that this is Krocker Land?” he said suddenly.
“Not the slightest,” answered the Professor, filling our cups with chocolate, and in a matter of fact way that was final.
“We have absolutely reached a New Continent. Everything confirms that: Latitude, longitude, direction from Point Barrow, and the topography. It isn’t Wrangel or Herschel or Harold or Bennett, or any part of the Franz Josef Archipelago. That splendid fringe of peaks hides inner valleys that decline into a central area of warmth, light and Life!”
I really think that we believed him. The glorious extravagance of the prediction, its superb audacity, its anomalous improbability subjugated us totally, because our startled expectations would be satisfied with little else. That was the psychology of it. And Mr. Link, the Professor was right. LISTEN!
Our position was on a flat, shelving coast, slowly rising to foothills, beyond which gaunt bare precipices towered apparently to uplands, from which soared the sharp serrations of a continuous cordillera. It made a noble picture. Snow covered the higher elevations, it lay in drifts in the lower chasms, it formed a light covering on the tableland but failed to approach nearer to the shore, which was a series of sand or rubble flats, embedding low backs,pointed mounds, and dikes of diabase. Only at one point was a glacier visible. To the north, almost at the limit of vision we could see the glittering ribbon high up in the mountains. The days were shortening, and although the sun remained for most of the time above the horizon, nightfall was marked by its declination, when a peculiar tawny golden glow filled the air. The mountains were striped with light and shade, half roseate, half black as ink; the highlands were also in gloom, and between both the foothills made a beaded girdle of whiteness like a necklace of gigantic pearls on the dusky neck of an Ethiopian.
There was no question of turning back. An unappeasable hunger for discovery filled us. What lay beyond those pearly pinnacles? WHAT? Our plans were quickly laid. There was call for expedition, for the Arctic night was coming, and while sincerely, with three of us, some inexplicable provision seemed imminent for its replacement, Antoine Goritz resisted our madness at that point, and told us that if this was a dead world, nothing but thedogswould save us from death; ourretreat would have to be over the frozen polar sea.
The first step was to find game: Seal, walrus, bear, ox, hare, anything. We divided into two skirmishing parties, Hopkins and I going to the right, Goritz and the Professor to the left. The dogs were tethered, and fastened to the launch. The Professor and myself had already collected some of the plants. How radiant and beautiful they seemed in that still untrodden asylum, the little green-leaved willows, a saxifrage, the yellow mountain poppy of Siberia (Papaver nudicaule), forget-me-nots, cloud berry, and in the boggy hollows cottongrass, spreading its wavy down carpet, while here and there tiny forests of bluebells swung their campanulate corollas! The cold purewaters of the snows fed these alpine gardens, and we even detected the hum of insects amid the variegated patches of delicious bloom. Game? “Well I should smile,” shouted Hopkins.
Hopkins and I, in splendid spirits, made our way to the upland, a distance of some five miles, and then through the snow, watching the slopes of the foothills that made ideal pasturages for the musk ox, if these “artiodactyls,” as the Professor rather pompously spoke of them, were here at all. We had not gone far when up a ravine, where narrow meadows and boulder strewn intervals conducted, between two steep hills, a cascading stream, breaking from the craggy cliffs beyond, Hopkins espied a little herd of four cows, two calves, and a bull. Were they musk oxen? The horns looked different.
Hopkins skipped in glee, and, with his usual recourse to verse (preferably Lewis Carroll’s), he hoarsely whispered:
“‘What’s this? I pondered. Have I sleptOr can I have been drinking?But soon a gentler feeling creptUpon me, and I sat and weptAn hour or so like winking.’
“‘What’s this? I pondered. Have I sleptOr can I have been drinking?But soon a gentler feeling creptUpon me, and I sat and weptAn hour or so like winking.’
“‘What’s this? I pondered. Have I sleptOr can I have been drinking?But soon a gentler feeling creptUpon me, and I sat and weptAn hour or so like winking.’
“‘What’s this? I pondered. Have I slept
Or can I have been drinking?
But soon a gentler feeling crept
Upon me, and I sat and wept
An hour or so like winking.’
“Erickson, my pop first. I’ll forego the tears. Stalk them up to windward.”
The animals had not noticed our vicinity, although grazing and leisurely approaching us. We finally squatted behind a rock, and just a half hour later, as they reached the edge of the mimic field we fired. Hopkins stretched out the bull; it sank majestically to its knees, its head drooped, something like a groan escaped its throat, and it fell sideways. I was not so fortunate, nor skillful. I wounded one of the cows, but there was no attempt at escape. The herd pressed together, stamping a little but almost motionless, as if paralyzed withterror, or robbed of volition by curiosity. Hopkins let fly again and my wounded cow glided to the ground. My second shot was fatal, and another helpless brute succumbed. Then as if stricken with a sudden consciousness of their danger, the rest of the herd trotted off, spared further decimation. Our larder would be well replenished, and we both knew now, with an unshaken conviction, that we were in a land of plenty.
“We should worry!” sniffed Hopkins sententiously. When we reached our quarry I was amazed to note the peculiar narrowness and elevation of the horns of the bull, and the dirty gray maculations on the black hair of the pelage.
“A new species, Spruce,” I exclaimed.
“Well then,” he replied, “here’s where the Professor rings up the curtain on the textbooks, and—Say Alfred!—as I had first blood, and bagged the bull, why not hand it out asBos hopkinsi?”
“By all means,” I assented. When we got back, and we did not return empty handed we found Goritz and the Professor. They looked a little dispirited but our report put such a pleasant aspect on things that they quickly recovered. They had found nothing, but that was due to the pertinacity of the Professor in carrying Goritz off on a tour of investigation. They had crossed the tableland and had threaded their way half across the foothills, until they met the frowning crags skirting the mountain terrain. These were seamed with waterfalls pouring into some encircling canon below them, which again formed a channel for the escape of the gathered floods, but whither they went was undetermined. It was evident that the water of the streams came from the melting snowbanks lingering higher up on the mountains, and that the region was one of very heavy precipitation.
Goritz insisted on bringing in the meat, andindeed our mouths watered for a juicy steak. The dogs were fed, and these insatiable beasts ravenously devoured the pieces we threw to them, until Goritz, fearing their consequent lethargy, drove them off half frantic, harnessed them, and accompanied by me took the sledge to our depot; returned with the carcasses and skins and ushered in a memorable night, lit by the futile rivalry of sun and moon.
There was first our supper when the Captain permitted a relaxation of his restriction, and the Professor plunged into the resources of our slender commissariat with a most reprehensibleabandon. I believe we washed down our steak withEulenthaler, a few bottles of which had still survived our perils. Then there was the Professor’s ecstasy over the new species ofBos, for such it was, and his delighted acceptance of Hopkins’ patronymic for its technical name. And then—our Council of War; war on the Unknown, the Mysteries of this new land, the perils before us, and those that might await us beyond those slumbering virginal crests, from whose pinnacles even now the clustering genii of the realm watched our intrusion with scorn and hatred!
Our debate was a little disputatious. Goritz was quite immovably for returning that winter, executing as much of a littoral survey as we could, to return another season with an equipped expedition, trusting to get back to Barrow, with the dogs, sledge, kayak and launch, and with meat stores from theBos hopkinsi. The Professor vehemently and feverishly protested. Here we were on the brink of world-convulsing wonders. To decline the invitation so miraculously extended to us was flying in the face of all recorded traditions of exploration. It was an ignominious flight from insignificant dangers. He knew that beyond that portentouscircle of peaks lay an inverted cone holding within it warmth and civilization.
I think Goritz felt the appeal, but he was sagacious, a prudent man, and had no vainglorious desire to appropriate the forthcoming discoveries, which the Professor gloated over, for himself. He shook his head energetically. Then Spruce Hopkins, who with myself had only interjected questions and inquiring comments, and who with me was fascinated by the Professor’s predictions and promises, suggested a compromise.
“My friends, I’m sort o’ on the outside of this argument, though I guess my skin will get as much punishment, either way, as any one of you. Can’t you come to terms on this easy ground? Get up there,” and he waved his hand towards the serene splendid domes in their terrible beauty far above us, “and if the land goesdown, as we might sayhole-wise, we’ll stick, but if it goes straight, level, orup, why we’ll beat it home again. That’s sense Goritz, and I guess, Professor, it’s philosophy too.”
This jocularity relieved the tension superbly, and whether Goritz and the Professor were quite clear as to how the provision should be interpreted, Goritz consented to make the attempt to reach “the rim,” as the Professor called it.
The next days were days of anxious preparation. It was no child’s play scaling that natural fortress, and within its labyrinth of parapets, bastions, moats, and demi-lunes, ramparts and ditches what unforeseen dangers lurked! Our chief concern was our stores; the inroads made upon them by the storm was serious, and the inconvenience of starving on the “rim,” in sight of thepromised landwas disturbing. Our campaign would consist of makingcachesof meat on the uplands, taking our condensed food, tea and coffee on our backs, making forced marches to the summit, reconnoitering andplunging on ahead,if unanimous in that, or else tumbling back, and setting our faces homeward.Homeward—the word seemed a mockery in that strange and hidden corner of the earth.
Another thing happened, though not quite unexpected. The wind had shifted to the west, bringing loose drifting ice and some hulking floebergs, and the squally twists, the livid streaks in the sky, and the sun’s sepulchral pallor had indicated some rising uneasiness skyward. The change came good and plenty later. The wind rose almost to a tornado, though there was no snow or rain, just a bitter cold searching wind. It smote the mountains. We could see the sky-rocketing volley of snow on their sides, and noted too that towards their tops there was no disturbance, indicating a semi-icy condition of the snow there, perhaps better, perhaps worse for going. And now in the turning of a hand the crowding ice packs were back. As far as we could see their humps and fields spread everlastingly, and the chorus of groans, wheezes, and queerhushingsounds that they all sent up was astonishing.
Hopkins shot a bear, before the storm attained its top-notch of fury, which brought much cheerfulness to the camp. I never shall forget it. It was funny too; it might have been just as tragic. He and I were off to the west, reconnoitering for a possible easier entrance to the “rim,” when Hopkins caught my arm nervously, and pointed out over the groaning packs, and said he saw something moving. I could not see it. We ventured out a little way on some near shore ice and were behind a slight pressure ridge, when a shockingly coarse growl issued from the other side and a moment later a big polar bear surmounted the pile, and laying both its front paws on the blocks, over which its face rose, most whimsically recalled the emergence of a preacher inhigh pulpit. We were pretty well taken aback, but Hopkins slipped off his usual doggerel,sotto vocehowever—while the bear watched us critically—
“My only son was big and fineAnd I was proud that he was mine,He looked through eyes that were divine—Indeed he was a BEAR.”
“My only son was big and fineAnd I was proud that he was mine,He looked through eyes that were divine—Indeed he was a BEAR.”
“My only son was big and fineAnd I was proud that he was mine,He looked through eyes that were divine—Indeed he was a BEAR.”
“My only son was big and fine
And I was proud that he was mine,
He looked through eyes that were divine—
Indeed he was a BEAR.”
And then he raised his rifle and—Bruin wasn’t there. We jumped up on the ridge, clambered to the top and almost fell into his ursine majesty’s arms. He had ducked down on seeing the rifle but hadn’t budged from his position. It looked as if he had met hunters before. Hopkins blazed away, and I followed. The splendid beast gurgled and fell backward dead.
We had reached the foothills, crossed the uplands, made our caches of meat, stuffed the dogs and turned them loose—Goritz called it “burning our ships behind us”—and were creeping along the edge of the narrow deep chasm or canon which caught the waters from the cliffs, gathering them in an awful, tempestuous, writhing torrent, that became almost maniacal in its agony where hidden rocks stopped its course, or where it dropped into black abysses. We must cross that chasm, climb the cliffs, before we could begin the ascent of the mountains. The chasm was twenty or thirty feet wide, the cliffs rose above it, from our level, about one hundred feet, and below us they descended to the water trough, one hundred feet more. The problem was to reach the bottom of the chasm, bridge the raging brace, and then work up the cliffs. It looked like a fly’s job. And what disclosures the roofs of the cliffs and the mountains beyond had we could only guess. These difficulties had been anticipated, in one way; we had strong wire rope, a flexible cable made of copper wire and skin.
Crawling on hands and knees we were studying the sides of the chasm, and not infrequently Goritz would suspend himself, held by the rest of us, over the frightful gulf, to determine where we might safely enter thisinferno, with a prospect of spanning the seething, spouting, vociferous river, and of scaling the black and jagged wall on the other side. Our search was unavailing. We had explored the bank for more than a mile. The delay was maddening. Suddenly the Professor, who had been silent, and had been studying the black and red walls opposite, with occasional long examinations eastward with the glass, exclaimed:
“We are making a mistake. Our course is up and to the back of the glacier. These cliffs are sedimentary; they lie on the eruptive crystallines of the mountains; the river runs west; the glacier has dammed its course eastward, where it should flow, following the dip of the slates and sandstones. It cuts the dip, and the glacier has crossed its path and filled up this singular crevice, which is a fault rift.”
He looked triumphant; Goritz seized the suggestion.
“That’s right,” he shouted, “up the glacier and then—we can use the dogs!”
We were soon back to the abandoned sledge; some of the dogs had followed us, the rest were sleeping off their debauch of raw bear’s meat. We loaded the sledge with meat, from one of our caches, leaving the other intact, and with awakened hope started at a lively pace over the snow covered uplands for the distant ice-river. The going was not good for the snow had drifted somewhat, and was soft and mushy, but the dogs were in excellent condition, and they really seemed to understand that they had escaped desertion.
four men and dogs stand, looking at a distant mountain rangeKROCKER LAND RIM
KROCKER LAND RIM
KROCKER LAND RIM
In three hours the glacier was reached. It wasa more significant feature than we had supposed. Where it emerged from the mountain hollow it was almost obliterated from view by an immense morainal accumulation which had choked up the river, as the Professor guessed, forming a small lake, fed also, we discovered, by the underground waters flowing from the glacier itself. Over this moraine we made our way in a helter skelter manner because of its unevenness, the scattered rocks bulging up and intercepting our path with a perverse frequency that drove Hopkins to improvisation:
“If I had a little dynamiteTo put these pebbles out of sight,I think I’d skip from pure delightAnd say my prayers with all my mightAs well I know is surely right.But as it is they make me cussAnd put my temper in a fuss,So if perdition is my share,I owe it to this rocky lair.”
“If I had a little dynamiteTo put these pebbles out of sight,I think I’d skip from pure delightAnd say my prayers with all my mightAs well I know is surely right.But as it is they make me cussAnd put my temper in a fuss,So if perdition is my share,I owe it to this rocky lair.”
“If I had a little dynamiteTo put these pebbles out of sight,I think I’d skip from pure delightAnd say my prayers with all my mightAs well I know is surely right.But as it is they make me cussAnd put my temper in a fuss,So if perdition is my share,I owe it to this rocky lair.”
“If I had a little dynamite
To put these pebbles out of sight,
I think I’d skip from pure delight
And say my prayers with all my might
As well I know is surely right.
But as it is they make me cuss
And put my temper in a fuss,
So if perdition is my share,
I owe it to this rocky lair.”
There was plenty of snow in places where the sun had as yet failed to evict it, but everywhere melting and warmth were encountered. The summer was reigning, and the verdurous garb of green and colored things was drawn like a veil over the rugged grounds, soothing them into a transient loveliness. We could see the rivulets from the snowbanks coursing everywhere, and could hear from the glacier the gurgle, rush, and tinkle too of hidden rivers, while towards the coast, in the daytime, the sun revealed a shield of wide-spread waters where the floods from the melting ice poured over the shore, and cut long, wide lanes in the rapidly vanishing shore ice.
When we had struggled to the glacier wall we found it an almost imperceptible rise to its surface, and once there, our faces turned toward the ice-riverto gauge its character. It was badly crevassed, and although the snow sheeting it over had been heavy, much had disappeared. Along the sides where the lateral moraine somewhat shielded it the snow still remained, but the depressions traversing it, sometimes in herringbone fashion, showed the position of the masked depths, in whose icy jaws our whole party, sledge and dogs might readily be entombed.
Goritz went first with the dog leader, then came myself at the head of the team, with Hopkins and the Professor on either side of the forebraces of the sledge. We were roped together, and the sledge—the only survivor of its kind from the storm—was heavily loaded. We each carried about twenty pounds of condensed food, ingeniously harnessed on our backs. It was an inconsiderable load and might prove serviceable if the sledge vanished.
At first we advanced gingerly, bridging crevasse after crevasse, but our confidence increased as the snow flooring, although yielding, repeatedly proved itself adequate for our support. At one point the sledge smashed the weakened crust and threatened to drag the dogs backward with it, as it hung almost vertically into a wide slit, forty or fifty feet deep, wherein the ice, to our eyes, was an aquamarine mass of jewels. Hopkins lashed the dogs and they hauled the sledge back again on the snow.
We had reached a turn in the glacier’s track, and a patch of outrageous confusion. The whole surface seemed shattered, and serac-like monuments, poised all over, threatened us. We were constantly startled by crashes, and we moved with alarmed caution, for not only were the holes deep but they opened into sluiceways of hurrying water quite capable of sucking any unwary intruder into subterranean tunnels of ice. The dull plangor of the beating currents arose to us with an ominouswarning. The dogs here became nervous and unmanageable. Again and again we bridged the chasms with the sledge, and crept one by one over the improvised crossings, coaxing the dogs to follow. We now did not have the protection of the friendly banks. Goritz had concluded to ascend the mountainous ridge before us on the opposite side of the glacier, where the glacier itself, like a small “jokull” terminated, or began, in a neve loaded cirque.
To do this we were compelled to cross the glacier. After a good deal of dangerous work, with one or two nearly fatal mishaps, we attained the central dome of the ice and found here an ideally fashioned space for resting and feeding. The dogs were restless or sullen from hunger, and we needed the encouragement of food ourselves. The worst limb of our trip remained.
But it was a beautiful picture on every side. The day was clear and warm, and, as we gazed far below at the ice-flecked ocean over the glacier’s marge, or upward into the rugged bowl, walled with bold precipices, streaked ever and anon with spouting waterfalls, or higher still to those mute, imperishable peaks, guarding the secrets of the wonder-land towards which we were slowly, so slowly, moving, or lastly at the nearer edges of land on either side, the constricted throat of the glacier serpent, bountifully sprinkled with a vermeil of audacious blossoms and tender grass, we felt the thrill of our strange adventure keenly, and rejoiced in it. But a few minutes later our spirits were harshly dashed, and despair almost broke our hearts.
It was about two in the afternoon; everything was repacked and we had resumed our snail-like progress. The path, if it had been marked by a line, would have been revealed as a maze of loops,necessitating countermarches and criss-crossings, but its widest indirection, after hours of work, showed that we were nearing our goal. The flowers on the cliff beyond us were now almost individually visible. They seemed like a lure to invite us to hasten to their side, when a jolt and tug, that nearly knocked my legs from under me, and then a recoil that sent me sprawling among the dogs.
The rope had parted; I saw its end fly upward, even as I saw the tall form of Goritz with tossing arms sink from sight. My God! Goritz had fallen into a crevasse and—how the thought lacerated me!—they were deepest, widest, on this side! Hopkins and the Professor knew it almost as quickly as myself. We recovered ourselves, and ran forward. Lying flat, on the rim of what had been a snow bridged crevasse, and held in position by the other two, I leaned out. Never shall I forget the horror of my feelings at that moment. Below me caught on an ice arm, which held him above the seething ice water, still deeper down on the floor of the gash, was Goritz, those splendid eyes imploringly lifted to mine:
“Quick, Alfred—the rope!” I tore the rope from around me, noosed it, shouting all the time in a sort of delirium I think, “Hold on Antoine, you’re safe! Hold on! On! On!” And then, with a glance at Hopkins and the Professor, whose faces were almost whiter than the snow at our feet, was on my stomach again, the rope in my hand, and the noose lowered carefully to my friend. He lay on his side on a shelf of ice; a movement and he would slip into the tide below him. It was a critical moment, and yet only with the utmost precautionary slowness and delicacy of adjustment could the rescue be effected. Goritz knew that, though it seemed incongruous to watch a man, prostrate, literally onthe brink of destruction, approach the measures of salvation with the deliberation with which one might crack the shell of his breakfast egg. Slowly—the seconds seemed ages—he drew the loop to himself, caught one arm in it, thrust his head through it, and was endeavoring to extricate his other arm from its chancery beneath him, to engage it too in the friendly loop, when—I heard the snap—the shelf broke away! I slammed backward, called to the others to pull, jabbed my spiked shoes into the ice, and held on. Goritz’s voice came thickly from his imprisonment:
“Haul, Alfred!”
And haul it was; the weight seemed trebled. I knew—the water was hauling too, but, before Goritz went, it might, for all I cared, drag me to the same doom. I guess Hopkins and the Professor felt that way, too. It seemed nip and tuck. Were we all to be pulled into the frigid maelstrom, to be finally ejected into the Arctic sea in the rush of the sub-glacial river? Somehow thinking this way put steel into our muscles and defiance in my heart, and—we pulled Antoine Goritz back to life at least, and his reception on the top of that glacier was as fervent, if a little less boisterous and showy, as if he had been met by the king in an audience room at Copenhagen. He was drenched and cold, had a wrenched shoulder but I took his place ahead now, and he dried off with exercise, after the fashion of Arctic navigators. And a bowl of tea that the Professor bewitched with a little of our last bottle of whisky helped matters.
We had left the glacier; that icy track was far below us, and distance contracting and closing all its wicked seams revealed it as a blazing white ribbon, negligently thrown over the shoulders of the still, black rocks. It looked well. The aneroid registered 6000 feet. The snow was awfulin spots, and we rolled into holes unsuspectedly saturated with water. Our snowshoes were indispensable, but the dogs were almost useless, floundering and helpless in the drifts. Our dog meat was rapidly diminishing, and, if the cruel dilemma must come, rather than to exhaust our supplies on them we would be compelled to kill them.
We were pushing along what bore the appearance of acolor pass between two majestic peaks, wrapped in ermine to their highest points, ermine that in the day glittered magnificently, rayed and starred with innumerable irises, and that in the lesser illumination of the night was immobile and dead, a monstrous winding sheet over a dead world.
A terrifying snow storm held us up for two days. The air was so dense with the falling crystals that we felt encased. It was a singular sensation. The Professor, who had been incubating some ideas (we always looked forward with expectancy to his first utterance after a spell of prolonged silence), launched the amazing paradox, during this storm, and while we, in the most detached manner awaited its conclusion in our snug tent, that we were approaching a warmer, snowless, and rainy zone. It was Hopkins who first recovered his powers of utterance after this promulgation.
“Professor, as a sedative to the distracted mind, you’ve got everything else winded. And for novelty, well, Barnum and Bailey’s best advertiser couldn’t begin to get the collocation of superlatives necessary to give a hint of your surprising guesses.”
“It is not difficult to understand,” resumed the Professor urbanely, with that calm manner of shelving the unconventional Yankee which always enraptured Hopkins; “the wind has been westerly, the excessive precipitation shows it was a moist wind, a wind heavily laden with suspended water, that moisture was dropped out as snowhere, butwest of us it must have escaped expulsion. Why? Because it was not cold enough to condense it as snow. I think, though, it fellas rain. We shall see.”
“And,” he added a moment later, “on my theory of a polar depression that would be so.”
We went to sleep on that, and the depth of our slumbers had some complimentary significance for the Professor’s prediction.
After the storm, the sky failed to clear, and a wind sprang up from the north that rapidly increased in violence, hurling the snow in torrents, blinding, cutting us and foundering the wretched dogs, who lay down in their tracks repeatedly, or snarled up together in vicious fights. But Goritz was inexorable. He insisted on pushing ahead. His reason was just. We were now near the turning point; we had surmounted KROCKER LAND RIM. Should we go on or turn back? If it was to be back we had many things to think of, and not much time to waste, with our larder growing smaller each day and the prospect of half-rations ahead. Goritz had a tender heart and I know he wanted to get the dogs back, too.
Luckily the snow furnished better going, the wind ceased, our hearts leaped again, and the stern solemnity of that alpine land strangely elated us. At night now, the sun almost sank below the horizon, but its decline was the signal for the noiseless evocation of half lights and shadows, spectral tints, pale ghosts of mist curling over the endless desert of snow, a retinue of chiaroscuros that glided hither, thither, never quiet, yet never restless. And far south we thought we saw the crystal light of half eclipsed auroras. It all entranced me. I often stole outside our tent to watch the voiceless drama of the night, and often Goritz stood beside me. And now—poor fellow—”
(The speaker paused in his story, a sob choked his voice; then it was over and he continued.)
The Professor was right; the snowdrifts thinned away to bare ground. It was warmer, at first some ten degrees, then more, and the land descended. Had not Goritz lost? Should we not, according to the protocol of our agreement, search the new land? Goritz was unconvinced and inclined to temporize. Yes, the land was lower, perhaps; it was warmer, but how did we know it would keep so; a small decline here might change into an ascent further away; we were on a tableland, but another axis of elevation might arise from it, and remember in these solitudes there was not much life, no game, and our stores would in ten days be exhausted, not counting the dogs, some of whom must now be sacrificed for the others.
This had the appearance of tergiversation. The Professor was vehement, I and Hopkins leaned in his favor, but I think all of us would have succumbed to Goritz’s wish and certainly to his command—the sweetest, bravest, most generous soul I have ever known! At length, at Hopkins’ suggestion, we compromised again on a reconnaissance.
It was a pivotal point. We were in a sandy plain, with much bare rock, and soily places now greenish with moss or lichen. The surprising feature was the sudden onsets of rain with the east winds. It was rather misty all the time, and the fogs made it abysmally cheerless. It was easy to see that this excessive moisture formed the fathomless snows among the mountains we had ploughed over.
On the day of the reconnaissance we all separated. Goritz went north, the Professor, pertinacious in his convictions, went due west, with the aneroid, Hopkins and myself southward. Our reports were to be made at the conference at night. We reassembled,all except Goritz turning up at the tent at almost the same time. Hopkins said that for stone breaking, the country he had walked over was the most promising he had ever encountered. He couldn’t imagine a better place for a penal establishment. A reservation like it alongside of New York City would raise the moral standard of that city almost as high as anyone would like to go. He thought perhaps we’d better turn back.
The Professor disheartedly admitted that the land after sinking rose abruptly, and that there might be anotheraxis of elevation—the Professor pronounced the technical observation with evident disgust. The fogs grew so dense it was impossible to determine. He concluded dolefully that, as much had been accomplished, it might be well for self preservation to return.
I corroborated Hopkins, and also suggested a return. We had been talking informally, sharing our observations, but their detailed presentation awaited Goritz’s presence. And where was he? We had been back an hour, and our hunger remonstrated bitterly against his tardiness. Still another hour passed, and nature refused to tolerate a further deference to custom or respect. We ate our evening rations—already they were being shortened—concluding to go out on a search for Goritz, if he did not soon come in. Another hour hurried by, and yet no Goritz. We began to be alarmed, and yet that seemed absurd. What harm could come to a man in that flat land? And to a man of Goritz’s strength and resources? Hardly had we thus reassured ourselves when the tent flap was pushed aside, and there stood Antoine Goritz, with one hand behind his back.
His melodious voice was raised, his eyes shone, his frame seemed expanded with excitement, hisface was flushed, and the disengaged hand opened and shut convulsively.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we shall go on.Krocker Land is inhabited, and—it is a LAND OF GOLD!”
He paused, stepped forward, and laid on our soap-box table a broad belt of gold plates, engraved, and united by a gold buckle, beautifully embossed.