The North Pole Part 10

As we made fast against the land ice, a sixty-foot thick fragment of a floe was driven with frightful force up on the sh.o.r.e a little to the north of us. Had we been in the way of it--but a navigator of these channels must not dwell too much on such contingencies.

As an extra precaution, I had the Eskimos with axes bevel off the edge of the ice-foot abreast of the s.h.i.+p, to facilitate her rising if she should be squeezed by the heavy floes outside. It was snowing lightly all day long; but I went ash.o.r.e, walking along the ice-foot to the next river, and up to the summit of Black Cape. An occasional walk on land was a relief from the stench and disorder of the s.h.i.+p, for the dogs kept the _Roosevelt_ in a very unclean condition. Many persons have asked how we could endure the presence of nearly two hundred and fifty dogs on the deck of a small s.h.i.+p; but every achievement has its drawbacks, and it must not be forgotten that without the dogs we could not have reached the Pole.

At this point we landed another cache, similar to the one at Lincoln Bay, to be ready for anything that might happen.

On the 4th, the wind came strong from the south, and as there seemed to be a little open water ahead, at eight in the morning we started to get out of our berth. It took an hour to break up the "slob" ice which had cemented about the s.h.i.+p. We were happy to be under way again; but at the delta just ahead of us the ice refused to open, the drift ice from the south was coming up rapidly before the wind, and we were compelled to hurry back to our former berth below Black Cape. We did not get in again without some trouble as the strong wind made the _Roosevelt_ hard to manage. The starboard quarter boat was badly smashed against the corner of a big berg piece, and the starboard corner of the forward deck house was almost ripped from the decking.

But all hands were stimulated by the thought that we were now only a few miles from Cape Sheridan--so near our goal that we were restless to be off again. That evening, with the ebb tide, the ice slackened, and the order was given to steam ahead. After one or two narrow escapes between the rapidly running floes, we reached the delta of Black Cape River, a few miles beyond our former place. But when the tide turned we were obliged to hurry back about a quarter of a mile to the shelter of a grounded berg.

When the hawsers were made fast I went ash.o.r.e and up to the delta to look at the ice beyond. Not a crack or hole was visible to the north, and the path by which we had retreated to our present position was now a sea of solid ice. Should we _ever_ be able to make the few remaining miles?

The wind continued to blow violently from the south, the ice began to slack off a little behind us, and at three o'clock in the morning of the 5th of September there was a gradually widening lead to the north. I felt that it was now or never, and the order went down for every pound of steam and full speed. Thus we rounded Cape Rawson, and Cape Sheridan was in view. At last! That sloping headland looked more beautiful than the gates of paradise to our vigil-wearied eyes.

We rounded the cape at a quarter past seven, fifteen minutes later than the time of our arrival in 1905. Since the 23d of August, thirteen days before, neither Bartlett nor I had had our clothes off.

Should we stop here? There was still open water beyond. I gave orders to steam ahead, hoping that we might reach Porter Bay. But after two miles we came to another impa.s.sable barrier of ice, and it was decided that it was Cape Sheridan again for this year's winter quarters. Back we went, and the work of getting the _Roosevelt_ inside the tide crack was begun.

My heart was light. Those two miles beyond Cape Sheridan had given us the record of "farthest north" which any vessel had ever reached under her own steam, 82 30'. One vessel only, Nansen's _Fram_, had been farther north, but she had drifted there stern foremost, a plaything of the ice. Again the little black, strenuous _Roosevelt_ had proven herself the champion.

There are some feelings which a man cannot express in words. Such were mine as the mooring lines went out onto the ice foot at Cape Sheridan.

We had kept the scheduled time of our program and had negotiated the first part of the difficult proposition--that of driving a s.h.i.+p from New York to a point within striking distance of the Pole. All the uncertainties of ice navigation--the possible loss of the _Roosevelt_ and a large quant.i.ty of our supplies--were at an end. Another source of gratification was the realization that this last voyage had further accentuated the value of detailed experience in this arduous work.

Notwithstanding the delays which had sometimes seemed endless, we had made the voyage with only a small percentage of the anxieties and injury to the s.h.i.+p which we had experienced on the former upward journey in 1905.

Lying there, with the northern bounds of all known lands--except those close to us--lying far to the south, we were in a position properly to attack the second part of our problem, the projection of a sledge party from the s.h.i.+p to the Pole itself. This rounding of Cape Sheridan was not the ultimate achievement probable.

So great was our relief at having driven the _Roosevelt_ through the ice of Robeson Channel, that as soon as the mooring lines were out at Cape Sheridan we set to work unloading the s.h.i.+p with light-hearted eagerness.

The _Roosevelt_ was grounded inside the tide crack, and the first things we got ash.o.r.e were the two hundred and forty-six dogs, which had made the s.h.i.+p a noisy and ill-smelling inferno for the last eighteen days.

They were simply dropped over the rail onto the ice, and in a few minutes the sh.o.r.e in all directions was dotted with them, as they ran, leaped and barked in the snow. The decks were washed down with hose, and the work of unloading began. First the sledges came down from the bridge deck, where they had been built during the upward voyage, a fine fleet of twenty-three.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROOSEVELT DRYING OUT HER SAILS AT CAPE SHERIDAN, SEPTEMBER, 1908

(The Dark Spots on the Sh.o.r.e are the Supplies and Equipment of the Expedition)]

We wanted to get the s.h.i.+p well inside the ice barrier where she would be really safe, so we lightened her that she might float with the high tide. We made chutes from planks, and down these we slid the oil cases from the main deck and the hold. It was necessary to work carefully, as the ice was thin at that season. Later two or three sledge loads of supplies broke through, and the Eskimos with them; but as the water was only five or six feet deep, and the supplies were packed in tins, no serious damage was done.

While the oil was being unloaded, a party of men went out with ice chisels, poles, saws, and so forth, chopping away the ice so that we could warp the _Roosevelt_ in, broadside to the sh.o.r.e. Bartlett and I were determined to get the s.h.i.+p beyond the floe-berg barrier and into the shallow water of the ice-foot. We were not looking forward to another winter of such torment as we had lived through on the last previous expedition, with the s.h.i.+p just on the edge of the ice-foot and subject to every movement of the hostile pack outside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROOSEVELT ON SEPTEMBER 12, 1908

Marie Ahnighito Peary's Birthday]

After the oil cases came the tons of whale meat from the quarter-deck, some of it in chunks as large as a Saratoga trunk. It was thrown over the side onto the ice, sledged ash.o.r.e by the Eskimos, some hundred yards over the ice-foot, and heaped in great piles, protected by the bags of coal which had also been taken from the quarter-deck. Then came the whale-boats, which were lowered from the davits and run ash.o.r.e like sledges. They were later turned bottom side up for the winter and weighted down, so that the wind could not move them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "PEARY" SLEDGES ON BOARD THE ROOSEVELT]

The work of landing the supplies and equipment consumed several days.

This is the very first work of every well-managed arctic expedition on reaching winter quarters. With the supplies ash.o.r.e, the loss of the s.h.i.+p by fire or by crus.h.i.+ng in the ice, would mean simply that the party might have to walk home. It would not interfere with the sledge work, nor seriously cripple the expedition. Had we lost the _Roosevelt_ at Cape Sheridan, we should have spent the winter in the box houses which we constructed and in the spring should have made the dash for the Pole just the same. We should then have walked the three hundred and fifty miles to Cape Sabine, crossed the Smith Sound ice to Etah, and waited for a s.h.i.+p.

The adjacent sh.o.r.e for a quarter of a mile was lined with boxes, each item of provisions having a pile to itself. This packing-box village was christened Hubbardville, in honor of General Thomas H. Hubbard, president of the Peary Arctic Club. When the boxes which had served as a bed platform in the Eskimo quarters of the _Roosevelt's_ forward deck were removed, the place was swept and scrubbed; then a bed platform was built of boards, divided into sections for the various families and screened in front by curtains. Under the bed platform was an open s.p.a.ce, where the Eskimos could keep their cooking utensils and other personal belongings. The fastidious reader who is shocked at the idea of keeping frying-pans under the bed should see an Eskimo family in one of their native houses of stone and earth, eight feet across, where meat and drink, men, women, and children are crowded indiscriminately for month upon month in winter.

We next landed about eighty tons of coal, so that, in case we should have to live in the box houses, there would be plenty of fuel. At that time of the year it was not very cold. On the 8th of September the thermometer stood at 12 above zero, the next day at 4.

The heavier cases, containing the tins of bacon, pemmican (the condensed meat food used in the Arctic), flour, et cetera, were utilized ash.o.r.e like so many blocks of granite in constructing three houses, about fifteen feet by thirty. All the supplies were especially packed for this purpose, in boxes of specified dimensions--one of the innumerable details which made for the success of the expedition. In building the houses the tops of the boxes were placed inside, the covers removed, and the contents taken out as needed, as from a shelf, the whole house being one large grocery.

The roofs were made of sails thrown over boat booms or spars, and later the walls and roof were banked in solidly with snow. Stoves were set up, so that, if everything went well, the houses could be used as workshops during the winter.

So here we were, safely bestowed at Cape Sheridan, and the prize seemed already in our grasp. The contingencies which had blocked our way in 1906 were all provided for on this last expedition. We knew just what we had to do, and just how to do it. Only a few months of waiting, the fall hunting, and the long, dark winter were all that lay between me and the final start. I had the dogs, the men, the experience, a fixed determination (the same impulse which drove the s.h.i.+ps of Columbus across the trackless western sea)--and the end lay with that Destiny which favors the man who follows his faith and his dream to the last breath.

CHAPTER XIV

IN WINTER QUARTERS

When the removal of supplies had lightened the _Roosevelt_ so much that Bartlett got her considerably farther in sh.o.r.e, she lay with her nose pointing almost true north. It cheered us, for this was her constant habit. It seemed almost like the purpose of a living creature. Whenever on the upward voyage--either this time or on her first trip in 1905--the s.h.i.+p was beset in the ice so that we lost control of her, she always swung around of her own accord and pointed north. When twisting through the ice, if we got caught when the s.h.i.+p was headed east or west, it was only a little while before the pressure would swing her round till once more she looked northward. Even on the return journey, in 1906, it was the same--as if the s.h.i.+p realized she had not accomplished her purpose and wanted to go back. The sailors noticed it, and used to talk about it. They said the _Roosevelt_ was not satisfied, that she knew she had not done her work.

When we got the vessel as near the sh.o.r.e as possible, the s.h.i.+p's people began to make her ready for the winter. The engine-room force was busy blowing down the boilers, putting the machinery out of commission, removing every drop of water from the pipes and elbows so the cold of winter should not burst them; and the crew was busy taking down the sails, slacking off the rigging, so the contraction from the intense cold of winter should not cause damage, with a thousand and one details of like character.

Before the sails were taken down, they were all set, that they might be thoroughly dried out by sun and wind. The s.h.i.+p was a beautiful sight, held fast in the embrace of the ice and with her cables out, but with every sail filled with wind like a yacht in a race.

While this work was going on small hunting parties of Eskimos were sent to the Lake Hazen region, but they met with little success. A few hares were secured, but musk-oxen seemed to have vanished. This troubled me, for it raised a fear that the hunting of the former expedition had killed off the game, or driven it away. The Eskimo women set their fox traps all along the sh.o.r.e for five miles or so each way, and they were more successful than the men, obtaining some thirty or forty foxes in the course of the fall and winter. The women also went on fis.h.i.+ng trips to the ponds of the neighborhood, and brought in many mottled beauties.

The Eskimo method of fis.h.i.+ng is interesting. The fish in that region will not rise to bait but are captured by cutting a hole in the ice and dropping in a piece of ivory carved in the shape of a small fish. When the fish rises to examine this visitor, it is secured with a spear. The Eskimo fish spear has a central shaft with a sharp piece of steel, usually an old nail, set in the end. On each side is a piece of deer antler pointing downward, lashed onto the shaft with a fine line, and sharp nails, pointing inward, are set in the two fragments of antler.

When this spear is thrust down on the fish, the antlers spread as they strike the fish's back; he is impaled by the sharp point above him, and the sharp barbs on either side keep him from getting away.

The char (?) of North Grant Land is a beautiful mottled fish, weighing sometimes as much as eleven or twelve pounds. I believe that the pink fiber of these fish--taken from water never warmer than 35 or 40 above zero--is the firmest and sweetest fish fiber in the world. During my early expeditions in this region, I would spear one of these beauties and throw him on the ice to freeze, then pick him up and fling him down so as to shatter the flesh under the skin, lay him on the sledge, and as I walked away pick out morsels of the pink flesh and eat them as one would eat strawberries.

In September of 1900 with these fish a party of six men and twenty-three dogs were supported for some ten days, until we found musk-oxen. We speared the fish in the way the Eskimos taught us, using the regular native spear.

The new members of the expedition were naturally anxious to go sight-seeing. MacMillan had an attack of the grip, but Borup and Dr.

Goodsell scoured the surrounding country. Hubbardville could not boast its Westminster Abbey nor its Arc de Triomphe, but there were Petersen's grave and the _Alert_ and _Roosevelt_ cairns, both in the neighborhood, and visible from the s.h.i.+p.

About a mile and a half southwest from our winter quarters was the memorial headboard of Petersen, the Danish interpreter of the English expedition of 1875-76. He died as the result of exposure on a sledge trip, and was buried there abreast of the _Alert's_ winter quarters. The grave is covered with a large flat slab, and at the head is a board covered with a copper sheet from the boiler room of the _Alert_, with the inscription punched in it. There may be a lonelier grave somewhere on earth, but if so I have no knowledge of it. No explorer, not even the youngest and most thoughtless, could stand before that "mute reminder of heroic bones" without a feeling of reverence and awe. There is something menacing in that dark silhouette against the white snow, as if the mysterious Arctic were reminding the intruder that he might be chosen next to remain with her forever.

Not far away is the _Alert's_ cairn, from which I took the British record in 1905, a copy of it being replaced by Ross Marvin, according to the custom of explorers. In view of his tragic end, in the spring of 1909, the farthest north of all deaths known to man, this visit of Marvin's to the neighborhood of Petersen's grave has a peculiar pathos.

The _Roosevelt_ cairn, erected by Marvin in 1906, is directly abreast of the s.h.i.+p's location at Cape Sheridan in 1905-06 and about one mile inland. It is on a high point of land, about four hundred feet above the water. The record is in a prune can, at the bottom of the pile of stones, and was written by Marvin himself in lead-pencil. The cairn is surmounted by a cross, made of the oak plank from our sledge runners. It faces north, and at the intersection of the upright and the crosspiece there is a large "R" cut in the wood. When I went up to see it, soon after our arrival this last time, the cross was leaning toward the north, as if from the intentness of its three years' northward gazing.

On the 12th of September we had a holiday, it being the fifteenth birthday of my daughter, Marie Ahnighito, who was born at Anniversary Lodge, Greenland--the most northerly born of all white children. Ten years before, we had celebrated her fifth birthday on the Windward. Many icebergs had drifted down the channels since then, and I was still following the same ideal which had given my daughter so cold and strange a birthplace.

There was a driving snowstorm that day, but Bartlett dressed the s.h.i.+p in all the flags, the full international code, and the bright colors of the bunting made a striking contrast to the gray-white sky. Percy, the steward, had baked a special birthday cake, and we had it, surmounted with fifteen blazing candles, on our supper table. Just after breakfast the Eskimos came in with a polar bear, a female yearling six feet long, and I determined to have it mounted for Marie's birthday bear. It should be standing and advancing, one paw extended as if to shake, the head on one side and a bearish smile on the face. The bear provided us with juicy steaks, and we had a special tablecloth, our best cups and saucers, new spoons, et cetera.

A day or two later we began to get the dogs made fast, in preparation for the first sledge parties. There was now sufficient snow to begin the transportation of supplies toward Cape Columbia, and Black Cliffs Bay was frozen over. The Eskimos tied the dogs, in teams of five or six, to stakes driven into the sh.o.r.e or holes cut in the ice. They made a fine picture, looking sh.o.r.eward from the s.h.i.+p--nearly two hundred and fifty of them--and their barking could be heard at all hours.

It must be remembered that day and night were still determined only by the clock, as the ever-circling sun had not yet set. By reason of the industry of all hands on the upward voyage, everything was now ready for the fall work. The Eskimos had built the sledges and made the dog harnesses, and Matt Henson had finished the "kitchen boxes," which enclosed our oil stoves in the field, while the busy needles of the Eskimo women had provided every man with a fur outfit.

In the North we wear the regular Eskimo garments, with certain modifications. First of all, there is the _kooletah_, a fur jacket with no b.u.t.tons, which goes on over the head. For summer wear the Eskimos make it of sealskin, but for winter it is made of fox or deerskin.