A Book of Discovery Part 43

Steadily, with faces to the north, they pressed on over the blocks of rough ice, stretching as far as the horizon, till on 8th April further progress became impossible. Nansen strode on ahead and mounted one of the highest hummocks to look around. He saw "a veritable chaos of ice-blocks, ridge after ridge, and nothing but rubble to travel over." He therefore determined to turn and make for Franz Josef Land some four hundred and fifty miles distant. They had already reached 86 degrees of lat.i.tude, farther north than any expedition had reached before.

As they travelled south, they rejoiced in the warmth of the sun, but their food was growing scarce, and they had to kill a dog every other day to feed the others, till by May they had only thirteen dogs left.

June found them having experienced tremendous snowstorms with only seven dogs left. Although they were in the lat.i.tude of Franz Josef Land, no welcome sh.o.r.es appeared. It was now three months since they had left the _Fram_; the food for the dogs was quite finished and the poor creatures were beginning to eat their harness of sailcloth.

Mercifully before the month ended they managed to shoot a seal which provided them with food for a month. "It is a pleasing change," says Nansen, "to be able to eat as much and as often as we like. Blubber is excellent, both raw and fried. For dinner I fried a highly successful steak, for supper I made blood-pancakes fried in blubber with sugar, unsurpa.s.sed in flavour. And here we lie up in the far north, two grim, black, soot-stained barbarians, stirring a mess of soup in a kettle, surrounded on all sides by ice--ice covered with impa.s.sable snow."

A bear and two cubs were shot and the explorers stayed on at "Longing Camp" as they named this dreary spot, unable to go on, but amply fed.

On 24th July we get the first cheerful entry for many a long day: "Land!

land! after nearly two years we again see something rising above that never-ending white line on the horizon yonder--a new life is beginning for us!"

Only two dogs were now left to drag the sledges, so the two explorers were obliged to help with the dragging. For thirteen days they proceeded in the direction of land, dragging and pushing their burdens over the ridges of ice with thawing snow. At last on 7th August they stood at the edge of the ice. Behind lay their troubles; before was the waterway home. Then they launched their little kayaks, which danced over the open waters, the little waves splashing against their sides. When the mist cleared they found themselves on the west coast of Franz Josef Land, discovered by an Austro-Hungarian expedition in 1874.

They were full of hope, when a cruel disappointment damped their joy.

They had landed and were camping on the sh.o.r.e, when a great storm arose and the wind blew the drift ice down till it lay packed along the coast.

The little ships were frozen in, and there was no hope of reaching home that winter. Here they were doomed to stay. Fortunately there were bears and walrus, so they could not starve, and with magnificent pluck they set to work to prepare for the winter. For many a long day they toiled at the necessary task of skinning and cutting up walrus till they were saturated with blubber, oil, and blood, but soon they had two great heaps of blubber and meat on sh.o.r.e well covered over with walrus hides.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHIP THAT WENT FARTHEST NORTH: THE _FRAM_. From a photograph.]

September was occupied in building a hut amid the frost and snow with walrus hides and tusks, warmed inside with train-oil lamps. Here under bear skins they slept and pa.s.sed the long months of winter. In October the sun disappeared, the days grew darker. Life grew very monotonous, for it was the third Polar winter the explorers had been called on to spend. They celebrated Christmas Day, Nansen by washing himself in a "quarter of a cup of warm water," Johansen by turning his shirt.

The weather outside was stormy and almost took their breath away with its icy coldness. They longed for a book, but they wiled away the hours by trying to calculate how far the _Fram_ could have drifted and when she was likely to reach home. They were distressed at the dirt of their clothes, and longed to be able to throw away the heavy oily rags that seemed glued to their bodies. They had no soap, and water had no effect on the horrible grease. It was May before the weather allowed them to leave the hut at last. Hopefully they dragged their kayaks over the snow, the sledge runners fastened on to their feet, and so made their way southwards down Franz Josef Land.

Once Nansen was very nearly drowned. The explorers had reached the south of the Islands, and, having moored their little boats together, they ascended a hummock close by, when to their horror they saw the kayaks were adrift. Nansen rushed down, threw off some clothes, and sprang into the water after them. He was none too soon, for already the boats were drifting rapidly away. The water was icy cold, but it was a case of life or death. Without the boats they were lost men.

"All we possessed was on board," says Nansen, "so I exerted myself to the utmost. I redoubled my exertions though I felt my limbs gradually stiffening; at last I was able to stretch out my hand to the edge of the kayak. I tried to pull myself up, but the whole of my body was stiff with cold. After a time I managed to swing one leg up on to the edge and to tumble up. Nor was it easy to paddle in the double vessel; the gusts of wind seemed to go right through me as I stood there in my wet woollen shirt. I shivered, my teeth chattered, and I was numb all over. At last I managed to reach the edge of the ice. I shook and trembled all over, while Johansen pulled off the wet things and packed me into the sleeping-bag. The critical situation was saved."

And now came one of those rare historic days in the history of exploration. It was 17th June 1896. Nansen was surveying the lonely line of coast, when suddenly the barking of a dog fell on his ear, and soon in front he saw the fresh tracks of some animal. "It was with a strange mixture of feelings," he says, "that I made my way among the numerous hummocks towards land. Suddenly I thought I heard a human voice--the first for three years. How my heart beat and the blood rushed to my brain as I halloed with all the strength of my lungs. Soon I heard another shout and saw a dark form moving among the hummocks.

It was a man. We approached one another quickly. I waved my hat; he did the same. As I drew nearer I thought I recognised Mr. Jackson, whom I remembered once to have seen. I raised my hat; we extended a hand to one another with a hearty 'How do you do?' Above us a roof of mist, beneath our feet the rugged packed drift ice."

"Ar'n't you Nansen?" he said.

"Yes, I am," was the answer.

And, seizing the grimy hand of the Arctic explorer, he shook it warmly, congratulating him on his successful trip. Jackson and his companions had wintered at Cape Flora, the southern point of Franz Josef Land, and they were expecting a ship, the _Windward_, to take them home.

On 26th July the _Windward_ steamed slowly in, and by 13th August she reached Norway, and the news of Nansen's safe arrival was made known to the whole world. A week later the little _Fram_, "strong and broad and weather-beaten," also returned in safety. And on 9th September 1896, Nansen and his brave companions on board the _Fram_ sailed up Christiania Fjiord in triumph.

He had reached a point farthest North, and been nearer to the North Pole than had any explorer before.

CHAPTER LXXII

PEARY REACHES THE NORTH POLE

The 6th April 1909 is a marked day in the annals of exploration, for on that day Peary succeeded in reaching the North Pole, which for centuries had defied the efforts of man; on that day he attained the goal for which the greatest nations of the world had struggled for over four hundred years. Indeed, he had spent twenty-three years of his own life labouring toward this end.

He was mainly inspired by reading Nordenskiold's _Exploration of Greenland_, when a lieutenant in the United States Navy. In 1886 he got leave to join an expedition to Greenland, and returned with the Arctic fever in his veins and a scheme for crossing that continent as far north as possible. This after many hardships he accomplished, being the first explorer to discover that Greenland was an island.

Peary was now stamped as a successful Arctic explorer. The idea of reaching the North Pole began to take shape, and in order to raise funds the enthusiastic explorer delivered no less than one hundred and sixty-eight lectures in ninety-six days. With the proceeds he chartered the _Falcon_ and left the sh.o.r.es of Philadelphia in June 1893 for Greenland. His wife, who accompanied him before, accompanied him again, and with sledges and dogs on board they made their way up the western coast of Greenland. Arrived at Melville Bay, Peary built a little hut; here a little daughter was born who was soon "bundled in soft warm Arctic furs and wrapped in the Stars and Stripes." No European child had ever been born so far north as this; the Eskimos travelled from long distances to satisfy themselves she was not made of snow, and for the first six months of her life the baby lived in continuous lamplight.

But we cannot follow Peary through his many Polar expeditions; his toes had been frozen off in one, his leg broken in another, but he was enthusiastic enough when all preparations were complete for the last and greatest expedition of all.

The _Roosevelt_, named after the President of the United States, had carried him safely to the north of Greenland in his last expedition, so she was again chosen, and in July 1908, Peary hoisted the Stars and Stripes and steamed from New York.

"As the ship backed out into the river, a cheer went up from the thousands who had gathered on the piers to see us off. It was an interesting coincidence that the day on which we started for the coldest spot on earth was about the hottest which New York had known for years. As we steamed up the river, the din grew louder and louder; we pa.s.sed President Roosevelt's naval yacht, the _Mayflower_, and her small gun roared out a parting salute--surely no ship ever started for the ends of the earth with more heart-stirring farewells."

President Roosevelt had himself inspected the ship and shaken hands with each member of the expedition.

"I believe in you, Peary," he had said, "and I believe in your success, if it is within the possibility of man." So the little _Roosevelt_ steamed away; on 26th July the Arctic Circle was crossed by Peary for the twentieth time, and on 1st August, Cape York, the most northerly home of human beings in the world, was reached. This was the dividing line between the civilised world on one hand and the Arctic world on the other. Picking up several Eskimo families and about two hundred and fifty dogs, they steamed on northwards.

"Imagine," says Peary--"imagine about three hundred and fifty miles of almost solid ice, ice of all shapes and sizes, mountainous ice, flat ice, ragged and tortured ice; then imagine a little black ship, solid, st.u.r.dy, compact, strong, and resistant, and on this little ship are sixty-nine human beings, who have gone out into the crazy, ice-tortured channel between Baffin Bay and the Polar sea--gone out to prove the reality of a dream in the pursuit of which men have frozen and starved and died."

The usual course was taken, across Smith's Sound and past the desolate wind-swept rocks of Cape Sabine, where, in 1884, Greely's ill-fated party slowly starved to death, only seven surviving out of twenty-four.

Fog and ice now beset the ship, and on 5th September they were compelled to seek winter quarters, for which they chose Cape Sheridan, where Peary had wintered before in 1905. Here they unloaded the _Roosevelt_, and two hundred and forty-six Eskimo dogs were at once let loose to run about in the snow. A little village soon grew up, and the Eskimos, both men and women, went hunting as of yore. Peary had decided to start as before from Cape Columbia, some ninety miles away, the most northerly point of Grant Land, for his dash to the Pole.

On 12th October the sun disappeared and they entered cheerfully into the "Great Dark."

"Imagine us in our winter home," says Peary, "four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole, the ship held tight in her icy berth one hundred and fifty yards from the sh.o.r.e, ship and the surrounding world covered with snow, the wind creaking in the rigging, whistling and shrieking around the corners of the deck houses, the temperature ranging from zero to sixty below, the icepack in the channel outside us groaning and complaining with the movement of the tides."

Christmas pa.s.sed with its usual festivities. There were races for the Eskimos, one for the children, one for the men, and one for the Eskimo mothers, who carried babies in their fur hoods. These last, looking like "animated walruses," took their race at a walking pace.

At last, on 15th February 1909, the first sledge-party left the ship for Cape Columbia, and a week later Peary himself left the _Roosevelt_ with the last loads. The party a.s.sembled at Cape Columbia for the great journey north, which consisted of seven men of Peary's party, fifty-nine Eskimos, one hundred and forty dogs, and twenty-eight sledges. Each sledge was complete in itself; each had its cooking utensils, its four men, its dogs and provisions for fifty or sixty days. The weather was "clear, calm, and cold."

On 1st March the cavalcade started off from Cape Columbia in a freezing east wind, and soon men and dogs became invisible amid drifting snow.

Day by day they went forward, undaunted by the difficulties and hardships of the way, now sending back small parties to the depot at Cape Columbia, now dispatching to the home camp some reluctant explorer with a frostbitten heel or foot, now delayed by open water, but on, on, till they had broken all records, pa.s.sed all tracks even of the Polar bear, pa.s.sed the 87th parallel into the region of perpetual daylight for half the year. It was here, apparently within reach of his goal, that Peary had to turn back three years before for want of food.

Thus they marched for a month; party after party had been sent back, till the last supporting party had gone and Peary was left with his black servant, Henson, and four Eskimos. He had five sledges, forty picked dogs, and supplies for forty days when he started off alone to dash the last hundred and thirty-three miles to the Pole itself.

Every event in the next week is of thrilling interest. After a few hours of sleep the little party started off shortly after midnight on 2nd April 1909. Peary was leading.

"I felt the keenest exhilaration as I climbed over the ridge and breasted the keen air sweeping over the mighty ice, pure and straight from the Pole itself."

They might yet be stopped by open water from reaching the goal. On they went, twenty-five miles in ten hours, then a little sleep, and so on again, then a few hours' rest and another twenty miles till they had reached lat.i.tude 89 degrees.

Still breathlessly they hurried forward, till on the 5th they were but thirty-five miles from the Pole.

"The sky overhead was a colourless pall, gradually deepening to almost black at the horizon, and the ice was a ghastly and chalky white."

On 6th April the Pole was reached.

"The Pole at last!" writes Peary in his diary. "The prize of three centuries! My dream and goal for twenty years. Mine at last! I cannot bring myself to realise it. It all seems so simple and commonplace."

Flags were at once hoisted on ice lances, and the successful explorer watched them proudly waving in the bright Arctic sunlight at the Pole.

Through all his perilous expeditions to the Arctic regions, Peary had worn a silken flag, worked by his wife, wrapped round his body. He now flew it on this historic spot, "which knows no North, nor West, nor East."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEARY'S FLAG FLYING AT THE NORTH POLE, APRIL 1909. By the courteous permission of Admiral Peary, from his book _The North Pole_, published by Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton.]

Not a vestige of land was to be seen; nothing but ice lay all around.

They could not stay long, for provisions would run short, and the ice might melt before their return journey was accomplished.