A Negro Explorer at the North Pole Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT E. PEARY IN HIS NORTH POLE FURS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FOUR NORTH POLE ESKIMOS

(From Henson's own Photograph)]

Day does not break in the Arctic regions, it just comes on quietly the same as down here, but I must say that at daybreak on March 1, 1909, we were all excitement and attention. A furious wind was blowing, which we took as a good omen; for, on all of Commander Peary's travelings, a good big, heavy, storm of blinding snow has been his stirrup-cup and here he had his last. Systematically we had completed our preparations on the two days previous, so that, by six A. M. of the 1st of March, we were ready and standing at the upstanders of our sledges, awaiting the command "Forward! March!"

Already, difficulties had commenced. Ooblooyah and Sloc.u.m (Esquimo name, Inighito, but, on account of his dilatory habits, known as Sloc.u.m) were incapacitated; Ooblooyah with a swelled knee, and Sloc.u.m with a frozen heel. The cold gets you in most any place, up there.

I and my three boys were ordered to take the lead. We did so, at about half past six o'clock in the morning. Forward! March! and we were off.

CHAPTER XI

FIGHTING UP THE POLAR SEA--HELD UP BY THE "BIG LEAD"

Following the trail made by Captain Bartlett, we pushed off, every man at the upstander of his sledge to urge his team by whip and voice. It was only when we had perfect going over sheets of young ice that we were able to steal a ride on the sledges.

The trail led us over the glacial fringe for a quarter of a mile, and the going was fairly easy, but, after leaving the land ice-foot, the trail plunged into ice so rough that we had to use pickaxes to make a pathway. It took only about one mile of such going, and my sledge split.

"Number one," said I to myself, and I came to a halt. The gale was still blowing, but I started to work on the necessary repairs. I have practically built one sledge out of two broken ones, while out on the ice and in weather almost as bad as this; and I have almost daily during the journey had to repair broken sledges, sometimes under fiercer conditions; and so I will describe this one job and hereafter, when writing about repairing a sledge, let it go at that.

Cold and windy. Undo the lashings, unload the load, get out the brace and bit and bore new holes, taking plenty of time, for, in such cold, there is danger of the steel bit breaking. Then, with ungloved hands, thread the sealskin thongs through the hole. The fingers freeze. Stop work, pull the hand through the sleeve, and take your icy fingers to your heart; that is, put your hand under your armpit, and when you feel it burning you know it has thawed out. Then start to work again. By this time the party has advanced beyond you and, as orders are orders, and you have been ordered to take the lead, you have to start, catch up, and pa.s.s the column before you have reached your station.

Of course, in catching up and overtaking the party, you have the advantage of the well-marked trail they have made. Once again in the lead; and my boy, Ootah, had to up and break his sledge, and there was some more tall talking when the Commander caught up with us and left us there mending it. A little farther on, and the amiable Kudlooktoo, who was in my party at the time, busted his sledge. You would have thought that Kudlooktoo was the last person in Commander Peary's estimation, when he got through talking to him and telling him what he thought of him. The sledge was so badly broken it had to be abandoned. The load was left on the spot where the accident happened, and Kudlooktoo, much chastened and crestfallen, drove his team of dogs back to the land for a new sledge.

We did not wait for him, but kept on for about two hours longer, when we reached the Captain's first igloo, twelve miles out; a small day's traveling, but we were almost dead-beat, from having battled all day with the wind, which had blown a full-sized gale. No other but a Peary party would have attempted to travel in such weather. Our breath was frozen to our hoods of fur and our cheeks and noses frozen. Spreading our furs upon the snow, we dropped down and endeavored to sleep, but sound sleep was impossible. It was a night of Plutonian Purgatory. All through the night I would wake from the cold and beat my arms or feet to keep the circulation going, and I would hear one or both of my boys doing the same. I did not make any entries in the diary that day, and there was many a day like it after that.

It was cold and dark when we left camp number one on the morning of March 2, at half past six o'clock. Breakfast had warmed us up a bit, but the hard pemmican had torn and cut the roofs and sides of our mouths so that we did not eat a full meal, and we decided that at our next camp we would boil the pemmican in the tea and have a combination stew. I will say now that this experiment was tried, but it made such an unwholesome mess that it was never repeated.

The Captain's and Borup's trail was still evident, in spite of the low drifts of the snow, but progress was slow. We were still in the heavy rubble-ice and had to continuously hew our way with pickaxes to make a path for the sledges. While we were at work making a pathway, the dogs would curl up and lie down with their noses in their tails, and we would have to come back and start them, which was always the signal for a fight or two. We worked through the belt of rubble-ice at last, and came up with the heavy old floes and rafters of ice-blocks, larger than very large flag-stones and fully as thick as they were long and wide; the fissures between them full of the drifted snow. Even with our broad snow-shoes on, we sank knee-deep, and the dogs were in up to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the sledges up to the floors and frequently turning over, so it was a long time before we had covered seven miles, to be stopped by open water. I took no chances on this lead, although afterwards I did not hesitate at more desperate looking leads than this was. Instead of ferrying across on a block of ice, I left one of my boys to attend the dogs and sledges, and with Ootah I started to reconnoiter. We found that there were two leads, and the safest way to cross the first was to go west to a point where the young ice was strong enough to bear the weight of the sledges. We got across and had not gone very far before the other lead, in spite of a detour to the east, effectually blocked us. Starting back to the sledges, Ootah said he was "_d.a.m.n feel good_," and in Esquimo gave me to understand that he was going back to the ship. I tried to tell him different, as we walked back; and when we reached camp we found the Commander and his party, who had just come in; and the Commander gave Ootah to distinctly understand that he was not going back just yet. Orders were given to camp, and while the igloos were being built, Marvin and MacMillan took soundings. There had been more daylight than on the day before, and the gale had subsided considerably, but it was dark when we turned in to have our evening meal and sleep.

March 3: Right after breakfast, my party immediately started, taking the trail I had found the day previous. Examining the ice, we went to the westward, until we came to the almost solid new ice, and we took a chance. The ice commenced to rafter under us, but we got across safely with our loads, and started east again, for two miles; when we found ourselves on an island of ice completely surrounded by the heavy raftered ice. Here we halted and mended sledges and in the course of an hour the whole party had caught up. The ice had begun to rafter and the shattering reports made a noise that was almost ear-splitting, but we pushed and pulled and managed to get out of the danger-zone, and kept going northwestward, in the hope of picking up the trail of the Captain and Borup, which we did after a mile of going. Close examination of the trail showed us that Borup and his party had retraced their steps and gone quite a distance west in order to cross the lead. It was on this march that we were to have met Borup and his party returning, so Marvin and his boy Kyutah were sent to look them up. The rest of the party kept on in the newly found trail and came to the igloo and cache that had been left there by Borup. The Commander went into the igloo, and we made the dogs fast and built our own igloos, made our tea and went to sleep.

March 4: Heavy snow fall; but Commander Peary routed out all hands, and by seven o'clock we were following the Captain's trail. Very rough going, and progress slow up to about nine o'clock, when conditions changed. We reached heavy, old floes of waving blue ice, the best traveling on sea ice I had ever encountered in eighteen years'

experience. We went so fast that we more than made up for lost time and at two o'clock, myself in the lead, we reached the igloo built by Captain Bartlett. It had been arranged that I should stop for one sleep at every igloo built by the Captain, and that he should leave a note in his igloo for my instructions; but, in spite of these previous arrangements, I felt that with such good traveling it would be just as wise to keep on going, and so we did, but it was only about half or three-quarters of an hour later when we were stopped by a lead, beside which the Captain had camped. With Ootah and Tommy to help, we built an igloo and crawled inside. Two hours later, the Commander and his party arrived, and we crawled out and turned the igloo over to him. Tommy, Ootah, and I then built another igloo, crawled inside, and blocked the doorway up with a slab of snow, determined not to turn out again until we had had a good feed and snooze.

From my diary, the first entry since leaving the land; with a couple of comments added afterward:

March 5: A clear bright morning, 20 below zero; quite comfortable.

Reached here yesterday at two-forty-five P. M., after some of the finest going I have ever seen. Commander Peary, Captain Bartlett, and Dr.

Goodsell here, and fourteen Esquimos. First view of the sun to-day, for a few minutes at noon, makes us all cheerful. It was a crimson sphere, just balanced on the brink of the world. Had the weather been favorable, we could have seen the sun several days earlier. Every day following he will get higher and higher, until he finally swings around the sky above the horizon for the full twenty-four hours.

Early in the morning of the 5th, Peary sent a detachment of three Esquimos, in charge of MacMillan, back to bring in Borup's cache, left by him at the point where he turned back to return to the land for more loads. This detachment was back in camp by four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. Nothing left to do but to rearrange the loads and wait for the lead to close.

The land is still in sight. Professor Marvin has gone back with two boys and is expected to keep on to the alcohol cache at Cape Columbia, turn back and meet us here, or, if the ice freezes, to follow us until he catches up with us. We are husbanding our fuel, and two meals a day is our programme. We are still south of the Big Lead of 1906, but to all intents and purposes this is it. I am able to recognize many of the characteristics of it, and I feel sure it is the same old lead that gave us many an anxious hour in our upward and downward journey three years ago.

Fine weather, but we are still south of the 84th parallel and this open water marks it. 8 below zero and all comfortable. We should be doing twenty or twenty-five miles a day good traveling, but we are halted by this open water.

March 7: Professor MacMillan came into camp to-day with the cache he had picked up. There was quite a hullabaloo among the boys, and a great deal of argument as to who owned various articles of provender and equipment that had been brought into camp by MacMillan, and even I was on the point of jumping into the fracas in order to see fair play, until a wink from MacMillan told me that it was simply a put-up job of his to disconcert the Esquimos. Confidentially and on the side he has been dressing his heel, which in spite of all keeps on freezing, and is in very bad shape. His kamiks stick to the loose flesh and the skin will not form. All of the frost has been taken out, but I think skin-grafting is the only thing that will cure it. He wants to keep on going and asks me how far we have gone and wants to know if he shall tell Commander Peary about his injury. I have advised him to make a clean breast of it, but he feels good for a week or so more, and it is up to him.

We eat, and sleep, and watch the lead, and wonder. Are we to be repulsed again? Is the unseen, mysterious guardian of this mist-covered region foiling us? The Commander is taking it with a great deal more patience than he usually has with obstacles, but in the face of this one he probably realizes the necessity of a calm, philosophic mood.

Captain Bartlett has been here longer than any of us, and he is commencing to get nervous. Commander Peary and he have done what is nautically known as "swinging the ship," for the purpose of correcting compa.s.s errors, and after that there is nothing for them to do but wait. Captain Bartlett describes it as "h.e.l.l on Earth"; the Commander has nothing to say, and I agree with him. Dr. Goodsell reads from his little books, studies Esquimo language, writes in his diary and talks to me and the rest of the party, and waits.

Professor MacMillan, with his eye ever to the south, and an occasional glance at his frozen heel, cracks a joke and bids us be cheerful. He is one _man_, and has surely made good. His first trip to this forsaken region, yet he wakes up from his sleep with a smile on his face and a question as to how a nice, large, juicy steak would go about now. This is no place for jokes, yet his jokes are cheering and make us all feel more light-hearted. He is the "life of the funeral" and by his cheerfulness has kept our spirits from sinking to a dead level, and when the Esquimos commenced to get cranky, by his diplomacy he brought them to think of other subjects than going back to the ship.

He has started to kid us along by inst.i.tuting a series of compet.i.tions in athletic endeavors, and the Esquimos fall for it like the Innocents that they are, and that is the object he is after. They have tried all of their native stunts, wrestling, boxing, thumb-pulling, and elbow-tests; and each winner has been awarded a prize. Most of the prizes are back on the ship and include the anchors, rudders, keel, and spars. Everything else has long since been given away, and these people have keen memories.

The Big Lead has no attraction for the Esquimos and the waiting for a chance to cross it has given them much opportunity to complain of cold feet. It is fierce, listening to their whines and howls. Of all yellow-livered curs deliver me. We have the best Esquimos in the tribe with us, and expect them to remain steadfast and loyal, but after they have had time to realize their position, the precariousness of it begins to magnify and they start in to whimper, and beg to be allowed to go back. They remember the other side of this d.a.m.nable open water and what it meant to get back in 1906. I do not blame them, but I have had the Devil's own time in making my boys and some of the others see it the way the Commander wants us to look at it.

Indeed, two of the older ones, Panikpah and Pooadloonah, became so fractious that the Commander sent them back, with a written order to Gushue on the ship, to let them pack up their things and take their families and dogs back to Esquimo land, which they did. When the _Roosevelt_ reached Etah the following August, on her return, these two men were there, fat and healthy, and merrily greeted us. No hard feelings whatever.

March 10: We could have crossed to-day, but there was a chance of Marvin and Borup catching up with their loads of alcohol, etc. Whether they catch up or not, to-morrow, early, we start across, and the indications are that the going will be heavy, for the ice is piled in rafters of pressure-ridges.

It was exasperating; seven precious days of fine weather lost; and fine weather is the exception, not the rule, in the Arctic. Here we were resting in camp, although we were not extremely tired and nowhere near exhausted. We were ready and anxious to travel on the 5th, next morning after we reached the "Big Lead," but were perforce compelled to inaction. And so did we wait for nearly seven days beside that lead, before conditions were favorable for a crossing.

But early in the morning of March 11th the full party started; through the heaviest of going imaginable. Neither Borup nor Marvin had caught up, but we felt that unless something had happened to them, they would surely catch up in a few more days.

CHAPTER XII

PIONEERING THE WAY--BREAKING SLEDGES

March 11, 1909: Clear, 45. Off we go! Marvin and Borup have not yet shown up, but the lead is shut and the orders since yesterday afternoon have been to stand by for only twelve hours more; and while the tea is brewing I am using the warmth to write. We could have crossed thirty hours ago, but Commander Peary would not permit us to take chances; he wants to keep the party together as long as possible, and expects to have to send at least eight men back after the next march. MacMillan is not fit, and there are four or five of the natives who should be sent away. Three Esquimos apiece are too many, and I think Commander Peary is about ready to split the different crews of men and dogs. He himself is in very good shape and, due to his example, Captain Bartlett has again taken the field. A heavy storm of wind and snow is in progress, but the motion of the ice remains satisfactory.

This is not a regular camp. We are sheltered north of a huge paleocrystic floeberg; and the dogs are at rest, with their noses in their tails. Dr. Goodsell has set his boys to work building an igloo, which will not be needed, for I see Ooqueah and Egingwah piling up the loads on their sledges, and Professor MacMillan is very busy with his own personal sledge. No halt, only a breathing spell and, as I have predicted, we are on our way again. This is an extremely dangerous zone to halt or hazard in. The ice is liable to open here at any moment and let us either sink in the cold, black water or drift on a block of frozen ice, much too thin to enable us to get on to the heavy ice again.

Three miles wide at least.

The foregoing was written while out on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, just after crossing the raftered hummocks of the ice of the Big Lead. While we were waiting for the rest of the expedition to gather in, I slumped down behind a peak of land or paleocrystic ice, and made the entry in my diary. We were not tired out; we had had more than six days' rest at the lead; and when it closed we pushed on across the pressure-ridges on to the heavy and c.u.mbrous ice of the circ.u.mpolar sea. We were sure that we had pa.s.sed the main obstruction, and in spite of the failure of Marvin and Borup to come in with the essentials of fuel-alcohol and food, Commander Peary insisted on pushing forward.

Prof. Donald B. MacMillan was with the party, but Commander Peary knew, without his telling him, that he was really no longer fit to travel, and Dr. Goodsell was not as far north of the land as original plans intended, so when both MacMillan and Goodsell were told that they must start back to the ship, I was not surprised.

It was on March 14 that the first supporting-party finally turned back.

It was my impression that Professor MacMillan would command it, but Commander Peary sent the Doctor back in charge, with the two boys Arco and Wesharkoupsi. A few hours before the turning back of Dr. Goodsell, an Esquimo courier from Professor Marvin's detachment had overtaken us, with the welcome news that both Borup and Marvin, with complete loads, were immediately in our rear, safe across the lead that had so long delayed us. I was given instructions to govern my conduct for the following five marches and I was told to be ready to start right after breakfast.

Dr. Goodsell came to me, congratulated me and, with the best wishes for success, bade me good-by. He was loath to go back, but he returned to the ship with the hearty a.s.surance of every one that he had done good and effective work, equal to the best efforts of the more experienced members of the party.

My boys, Ootah, Ahwatingwah, and Koolootingwah, under my command started north, to pioneer the route for five full marches, and it was with a firm resolve that I determined to cover a big mileage. We had been having extreme cold weather, as low as 59 below zero, and on the morning my party started the thermometers in the camp showed 49 below zero.

An hour's travel brought us to a small lead, which was avoided by making a detour, and about four miles beyond this lead we came up to heavy old floes, on which the snow lay deep and soft. The sledges would sink to the depth of the cross-bars. Traveling was slow, and the dogs became demons; at one time, sullen and stubborn; then wildly excited and savage; and in our handling of them I fear we became fiendlike ourselves. Frequently we would have to lift them bodily from the pits of snow, and snow-filled fissures they had fallen into, and I am now sorry to say that we did not do it gently. The dogs, feeling the additional strain, refused to make the slightest effort when spoken to or touched with the whip, and to break them of this stubbornness, and to prevent further trouble, I took the leader or king dog of one team and, in the presence of the rest of the pack, I clubbed him severely. The dogs realized what was required of them, and that I would exact it of them in spite of what they would do, and they became submissive and pulled willingly, myself and the Esquimos doing our share at the upstanders.