North-Pole Voyages Part 15

The "Mariane" made a short stay at G.o.dhavn. The searching company under Captain Hartstene had left there for the icy north one the twenty-first of July, since which nothing was known of them.

The "Mariane" was on the eve of leaving with our explorers when the lookout shouted from the hill-top that a steamer was in the distance. It drew near with a bark in tow, both flying the stars and stripes. The "Faith" was lowered for the last time, and, with Brooks at the helm, Dr.

Kane went out to meet them. As they came alongside Captain Hartstene hailed: "Is that Dr. Kane?" "Yes!" Instantly the men sprung into the rigging and gave cheers of welcome; and the whole country, on the arrival of the long-lost explorers, repeated the glad shout of welcome; and the Christian world echoed, "Welcome!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

OFF AGAIN.

DR. KANE'S party came home, as we have seen, in the fall of 1855. Dr.

Hayes, with whom we have become acquainted as one of that number, began immediately to present the desirableness of further exploration in the same direction to the scientific men of the country, and to the public generally. His object was to sail to the west side of Smith's Sound, instead of the east, as in the last voyage, and to gather additional facts concerning the currents, the aurora, the glaciers, the directions and intensity of "the magnetic force," and so to aid in settling many interesting scientific questions. He aimed also, of course, to further peer into the mysteries of the open Polar Sea.

These efforts resulted in the fitting out for this purpose, in the summer of 1860, the schooner "United States," and the appointment of Dr.

Hayes as commander. She left Boston July sixth, manned by fourteen persons all told. The vessel was small, but made for arctic warfare, and as she turned her prow North Poleward, she bore a defiant spirit, and, like all inexperienced warriors, reckoned the victory already hers. But if the vessel was "green" her commander was not. He was well able to help her in the coming battle with icebergs and floes.

Among her men were only two besides the doctor who had seen arctic service, one of whom was Professor August Sontag, who had been of Kane's party, and had also been of the number who accompanied Dr. Hayes in the attempt to escape. Of the rest of the crew were two young men nearly of an age, about eighteen, who are represented as joining the expedition because they would, and in love of adventure. Their names were George F.

Knorr, commander's clerk, and Collins C. Starr. Both pressed their desire to go upon Dr. Hayes, and Starr told him that he would go in _any_ capacity. The commander told him he might go in the forecastle with the common sailors, and the next day, to the surprise of the doctor, he found him on board, manfully at work with the roughest of the men, having doffed his silk hat, fine broadcloth, and s.h.i.+ning boots of the elegant young man of the day before. The commander was so pleased with his spirit that he promoted him on the spot, sending him off to be sailing-master's mate.

In a little less than four weeks of prosperous sailing, the "United States" was at the Danish port of Proven, Greenland. It was the intention of the commander to get a supply here of the indispensable dog-teams, but disease had raged among them, and none could be bought.

The vessel was delayed, in order that the chief trader, Mr. Hansen, who was daily expected from Upernavik, might be consulted in the matter.

When he arrived he gave a gloomy account of the dog-market, but kindly _gave_ the expedition his own teams. The couriers which had been sent out to scour the country for others, returned with four old dogs and a less number of good ones.

On the evening of the twelfth of August the explorers arrived at Upernavik. The Danish brig "Thialfe" lay at anchor in the harbor, about to sail for Copenhagen with a cargo of skins and oil, so the first letters to the dear ones at home were hastily written to send by her.

They bore sad news to at least one family circle. Mr. Gibson Caruther retired to his berth well on the evening of their arrival, and in the morning was found dead. He had escaped the perils of the first Grinnell Expedition under Capt. De Haven to die thus suddenly ere those of his second voyage had begun. He was beloved, able, and intelligent, and his death was a great loss to the enterprise. His companions laid him away in the mission burial-ground, the missionary, Mr. Anton, officiating.

Before leaving Upernavik, Dr. Hayes secured the services of an Esquimo interpreter, one Peter Jensen, who brought on board with him one of the best dog-teams of the country; and soon after he came, two more Esquimo hunters and dog-drivers were enlisted; and a still better addition to the expedition were two Danish sailors, one of whom is our old friend whom we left here some five years ago rejoicing in re-union with wife and children--Carl Christian Petersen. Petersen enlisted as carpenter as well as sailor.

With these six persons added to her company, making it twenty in all, the "United States" left Upernavik to enter upon the earnest work of the expedition. The settlement had scarcely faded in the distance, when the icebergs were seen marshaling their forces to give the little voyager battle. A long line of them was formed just across her course, some more than two hundred feet high and a mile long. They were numberless, and at a distance seemed to make a solid, jagged ice-wall. When the schooner was fairly in among them, the sunlight was shut out as it is from the traveler in a dense forest. She felt the wind in a "cat's-paw" now and then, and so the helm lost its control of her, and she went banging against first one berg and then another. The bergs themselves minded not the little breeze which was blowing, but swept majestically along by the under current. The navigators were kept on the alert to keep the vessel from fatal collision with its huge, cold, defiant enemies, as the surface current drove it helplessly onward. Sometimes, as they approached one, the boats were lowered, and the vessel was towed away from danger; at another crisis, as it neared one berg, an anchor was planted in another in an opposite direction, and she was warped into a place of security. Occasionally they tied up to a berg and waited for a chance for progress.

While thus beset with dangers, there were occasions of some pleasant excitement. The birds were abundant and of many varieties, affording sport for the hunters and fresh food for the table; the seals sported in the clear water, and were shot for the larder of the dogs; and Dr. Hayes and Professor Sontag found employment with their scientific instruments.

Such had been the state of things for four days, when one morning the vessel was borne toward a large berg, of a kind the sailors called "touch-me-nots." It was an old voyager, whose jagged sides, high towers, deep valleys and swelling hills, showed that time, the sun, and the tides, had laid their hands upon it. Such bergs are about as good neighbors as an avalanche on a mountain side, just ready for a run into the valley below. Warps and tow-boats, instantly and vigorously used, failed to stop the schooner's headway. She touched the berg, and down dropped fragments of it larger than the vessel, followed by a shower of smaller pieces; but they went clear of the vessel. Now the berg began to revolve, turning toward the explorers, and as its towering sides settled slowly over them, fragments poured upon the deck--a fearful hail-storm.

There was no safety for the men except in the forecastle, and there appeared to be no escape for the schooner. But just in time an immense section of the base of the berg, which seemed to be far below the water line, broke off, and rose to the surface with a sudden rush, which threw the sea into violent commotion. The balance of the berg was changed; it paused, and then began, slowly at first but with increasing rapidity, to turn in the opposite direction. If this was intended as a retreat of the bergy foe, it defended well its rear. At its base, from which the piece had just been broken, was an icy projection toward the vessel; as the berg revolved, this tongue came up and struck the keel. It seemed intent upon tossing the vessel into the air, or rolling her over and leaving her bottom side up upon the sea. The men seized their poles and pushed vigorously to launch the vessel from the perilous position, but in vain. Just in time again the unseen Hand interfered for their deliverance. Deafening reports, like a park of artillery, saluted their ears, and a misty smoke arose above the berg. Its opposite side was breaking up, and launching its towering peaks into the sea. The berg paused again and began to roll back, and thus for the moment released the vessel. The boat had in the meantime fastened an anchor in a grounded berg, and the welcome shout came, "Haul in!" Steadily and with a will the men drew upon the rope, and the vessel moved slowly from the scene of danger, not, however, before the returning top of the berg had launched upon her deck a shower of ice-fragments, in fearful a.s.surance that its whole side would soon follow and bury them as the shepherd's hut is buried by a mountain slide. A few moments later and the side came down with a tremendous crash, sending its spray over the escaped vessel, and tossing it as the drift-wood is tossed in the eddies beneath a water-fall.

All that day the roar of the icy cannon was continued, as if a naval battle was in progress for the empire of the north, and berg after berg went down, strewing the sea with their shattered fragments, while misty clouds floated over the field of conflict.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

COLLIDING FLOES.

AFTER this ice encounter the expedition put into a little port called Tessuissak, to complete their outfit of dogs. An impatient tarry of two days enabled them to count, on the deck of the little vessel, thirty first-cla.s.s, howling dogs, whose amiable tempers found expression in biting each other, and making both day and night hideous with their noise.

This port was left on the twenty-third of August, and, much to the joy of all, the dreaded Melville Bay was clear of the ice-pack; the icebergs, however, kept their watch over its storm-tossed waters.

Through these waters driven before a fierce wind, and buried often in a fog so dense that the length of the vessel could not be seen, the "United States" sped. Its anxious commander was on deck night and day, not knowing the moment when an icy wall, as fatal to the vessel as one of granite, might arrest its course and send it instantly to the bottom of the sea. Once they pa.s.sed so near a berg just crossing their track that the fore-yard grazed its side, and the spray from its surf-beaten wall was thrown upon the deck. A berg at one time hove in sight with an arch through it large enough for a pa.s.sage-way for the schooner. The explorers declined, however, the novel adventure. The pa.s.sage of Melville Bay was made, with sails only, in fifty-five hours. The pack which had invariably troubled explorers seemed to have been enjoying a summer vacation, and the bergs were off duty. The expedition had reached the North Water and lay off Cape York.

The ocean current which sweeps past this cape, and opens the way to the other side of Baffin Bay, is wonderful. It is the great Polar current which comes rus.h.i.+ng down through Spitzbergen Sea, along the eastern coast of Greenland, laden with ice, and taking the waters of its rivers with their freight of drift-wood as it pa.s.ses. Leaving most of the wood along its sh.o.r.e, a welcome gift to the people, it sweeps around Cape Farewell, courses near the western sh.o.r.e in its run north until it has pa.s.sed Melville Bay. When it has crossed over to the American sh.o.r.e near Jones Strait, it joins the current from the Arctic Sea, turns south, and makes the long journey until it reaches our own coast, dropping its ice freight as it goes, and sending its cooling air through the heat-oppressed atmosphere of our summer.

As our explorers approached the sh.o.r.e of Cape York they looked carefully for the natives. Soon a company of Esquimo were seen making their wild gesticulations to attract attention. A boat was lowered, and Dr. Hayes and Professor Sontag went ash.o.r.e, and as they approached the landing-place one of the Esquimo called them by name. It was our old friend Hans, of the Kane voyage, who, the reader will recollect, left his white friends for an Esquimo wife. The group consisted, besides Hans, of his wife and baby, his wife's mother, an old woman having marked talking ability, and her son, a bright-eyed boy of twelve years.

Hans had found his self-imposed banishment among the savages of this extreme north rather tedious. He had removed his family to this lookout for the whale s.h.i.+ps, and had watched and waited. It was the dreariest of places, and his hut, pitched on a bleak spot the better to command a view of the sea, was the most miserable of abodes. It had plainly cost him dear to break his faith with his confiding commander and the friends of his early Christian home.

Dr. Hayes asked Hans if he would go with the expedition. He answered promptly, "Yes."

"Would you take your wife and baby?"

"Yes."

"Would you go without them?"

"Yes."

He was taken on board with his wife and baby. The mother and her boy cried to go, but the schooner was already overcrowded.

Leaving Cape York, the vessel spread her sails before a "ten-knot"

breeze, and dodging the icebergs with something of a reckless daring, seemed bent on reaching the Polar Sea before winter set in. At one time what appeared to be two icebergs a short distance apart lay in the course of the vessel. The helmsman was ordered to steer between them, for to go round involved quite a circuit. On dashed the brave little craft for the narrow pa.s.sage. When she was almost abreast of them the officer on the lookout shuddered to see that the seeming bergs were but one, and that the connecting ice appeared to be only a few feet below the surface. It was too late to stop the headway of the vessel, or to turn her to the right or left. She rushed onward, but the water of the opening proved to be deeper than it appeared, and her keel but touched once or twice, just to show how narrow was the escape.

Hans was delighted with his return to s.h.i.+p life. His wife seemed pleased and half bewildered by the strange surroundings. The baby crowed, laughed, and cried, and ate and slept--like other babies.

The sailors put the new comers through a soap-and-water ordeal, to which was added the use of scissors and combs. Esquimo do not bathe, nor practice the arts of the barber, and consequently they keep numerous boarders on their persons. When this necessary cleansing and cropping was done, they donned red s.h.i.+rts and other luxuries of civilization.

With the new dresses they were delighted, and they were never tired of strutting about in them. But the soap and water was not so agreeable. At first it was taken as a rough joke, but the wife soon began to cry. She inquired of her husband if it was a religious ceremony of the white men.

The vessel made good time until she came within three miles of Cape Alexander. It was now August twenty-eighth, and so it was time these Arctic regions should begin to show their peculiar temper. A storm came down upon them, pouring the vials of its wrath upon the s.h.i.+vering vessel for about three days. During a lull in the storm the schooner was hauled under the shelter of the highlands of Cape Alexander and anch.o.r.ed. She rocked and plunged fearfully. At one time when these gymnastics were going on, the old Swedish cook came to the commander in the cabin with refreshments, but he was hardly able to keep his "sea legs." He remarks as he comes in, "I falls down once, but de commander sees I keeps de coffee. It's good an' hot, and very strong, and go right down into de boots."

"Bad night on deck, cook," remarks the captain.

"O, it's awful, sar! I never see it blow so hard in all my life, an' I's followed de sea morn'n forty years. An' den it's so cold! My galley is full of ice, and de water, it freeze on my stove."

"Here, cook, is a guernsey for you. It will keep you warm."

"Tank you, sar!" says the cook, starting off with his prize. But encouraged by the kind bearing of his captain, he stops and asks, "Would the commander be so kind as to tell me where we is? De gentlemen fool me."

"Certainly, cook. The land over there is Greenland; the big cape is Cape Alexander; beyond that is Smith's Sound, and we are only about eight hundred miles from the North Pole."

"De Nort Pole! vere's dat?"

The commander explains as well as he can.

"Tank you, sar. Vat for we come--to fish?"

"No, not to fish, cook; for science."

"O, dat it! Dey tell me we come to fish. Tank you, sar."