American Merchant Ships and Sailors Part 8

Naturally, with the explorers' love for adventure, eagerness to see any impressive manifestations of nature's powers, and the ambition to attain a spot for which men have been striving for half a century, are the animating purposes. So we find Fridjof Nansen, who for a time held the record of having attained the "Furthest North," writing on this subject to an enquiring editor: "When man ceases to wish to know and to conquer every foot of the earth, which was given him to live upon and to rule, then will the decadence of the race begin. Of itself, that mathematical point which marks the northern termination of the axis of our earth, is of no more importance than any other point within the unknown polar area; but it is of much more importance that this particular point be reached, because there clings about it in the imagination of all mankind, such fascination that, till the Pole is discovered, all Arctic research must be affected, if not overshadowed, by the yearning to attain it."

George W. Melville, chief engineer of the United States Navy, who did such notable service in the Jeanette expedition of 1879, writes in words that stir the pulse:

"Is there a better school of heroic endeavor than the Arctic zone? It is something to stand where the foot of man has never trod. It is something to do that which has defied the energy of the race for the last twenty years. It is something to have the consciousness that you are adding your modic.u.m of knowledge to the world's store. It is worth a year of the life of a man with a soul larger than a turnip, to see a real iceberg in all its majesty and grandeur. It is worth some sacrifice to be alone, just once, amid the awful silence of the Arctic snows, there to communicate with the G.o.d of nature, whom the thoughtful man finds best in solitude and silence, far from the haunts of men--alone with the Creator."

Thus the explorers. The scientists look less upon the picturesque and exciting side of Arctic exploration, and more upon its useful phases. "It helps to solve useful problems in the physics of the world," wrote Professor Todd of Amherst college. "The meteorology of the United States to-day; perfection of theories of the earth's magnetism, requisite in conducting surveys and navigating ships; the origin and development of terrestrial fauna and flora; secular variation of climate; behavior of ocean currents--all these are fields of practical investigation in which the phenomena of the Arctic and Antarctic worlds play a very significant role."

Lieutenant Maury, whose eminent services in mapping the ocean won him international honors, writes of the polar regions:

"There icebergs are launched and glaciers formed. There the tides have their cradle, the whales their nursery. There the winds complete their circuits, and the currents of the sea their round in the wonderful system of inter-oceanic circulation. There the aurora borealis is lighted up, and the trembling needle brought to rest, and there, too, in the mazes of that mystic circle, terrestrial forces of occult power, and vast influence upon the well-being of men, are continually at play.... n.o.ble daring has made Arctic ice and waters cla.s.sic ground. It is no feverish excitement nor vain ambition that leads man there. It is a higher feeling, a holier motive, a desire to look into the works of creation, to comprehend the economy of our planet, and to grow wiser and better by the knowledge."

Nor can it be said fairly that the polar regions have failed to repay, in actual financial profit, their persistent invasion by man. It is estimated by competent statisticians, that in the last two centuries no less than two thousand million dollars' worth of furs, fish, whale-oil, whalebone, and minerals, have been taken out of the ice-bound seas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THEY FELL DOWN AND DIED AS THEY WALKED"]

The full story--at once sorrowful and stimulating--of Arctic exploration, can not be told here. That would require volumes rather than a single chapter. Even the part played in it by Americans can be sketched in outline only. But it is worth remembering that the systematic attack of our countrymen upon the Arctic fortress, began with an unselfish and humane incentive. In 1845 Sir John Franklin, a gallant English seaman, had set sail with two stout ships and 125 men, to seek the Northwest Pa.s.sage.

Thereafter no word was heard from him, until, years later, a searching party found a cairn of stones on a desolate, ice-bound headland, and in it a faintly written record, which told of the death of Sir John and twenty-four of his a.s.sociates. We know now, that all who set out on this ill-fated expedition, perished. Struggling to the southward after abandoning their ships, they fell one by one, and their lives ebbed away on the cruel ice. "They fell down and died as they walked," said an old Esquimau woman to Lieutenant McClintock, of the British navy, who sought for tidings of them, and, indeed, her report found sorrowful verification in the skeletons discovered years afterward, lying face downward in the snow. To the last man they died. Think of the state of that last man--alone in the frozen wilderness! An eloquent writer, the correspondent McGahan, himself no stranger to Arctic pains and perils, has imagined that pitiful picture thus:

"One sees this man after the death of his last remaining companion, all alone in that terrible world, gazing round him in mute despair, the sole, living thing in that dark frozen universe. The sky is somber, the earth whitened with a glittering whiteness that chills the heart. His clothing is covered with frozen snow, his face lean and haggard, his beard a cl.u.s.ter of icicles. The setting sun looks back to see the last victim die.

He meets her sinister gaze with a steady eye, as though bidding her defiance. For a few minutes they glare at each other, then the curtain is drawn, and all is dark."

As fears for Franklin's safety deepened into certainty of his loss with the pa.s.sage of months and years, a mult.i.tude of searching expeditions were sent out, the earlier ones in the hope of rescuing him; the later ones with the purpose of discovering the records of his voyage, which all felt sure must have been cached at some accessible point. Americans took an active--almost a leading--part in these expeditions, braving in them the same perils which had overcome the stout English knight. By sea and by land they sought him. The story of the land expeditions, though full of interest, is foreign to the purpose of this work, and must be pa.s.sed over with the mere note that Charles F. Hall, a Cincinnati journalist, in 1868-69, and Lieutenant Schwatka, and W.H. Gilder in 1878-79 fought their way northward to the path followed by the English explorer, found many relics of his expedition, and from the Esquimaux gathered indisputable evidence of his fate. By sea the United States was represented in the search for Franklin, by the ships "Advance" and "Rescue." They accomplished little of importance, but on the latter vessel was a young navy surgeon, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who was destined to make notable contributions to Arctic knowledge, both as explorer and writer.

One who studies the enormous volume of literature in which the Arctic story is told, scarcely can fail to be impressed by the pertinacity with which men, after one experience in the polar regions, return again and again to the quest for adventure and honors in the ice-bound zone. The subaltern on the expedition of to-day, has no sooner returned than he sets about organizing a new expedition, of which he may be commander. The commander goes into the ice time and again until, perhaps, the time comes when he does not come out. The leader of a rescue party becomes the leader of an exploring expedition, which in its turn, usually comes to need rescue.

So we find Dr. Kane, who was surgeon of an expedition for the rescue of Franklin, commanding four years later the brig "Advance," and voyaging northward through Baffin's Bay. Narrowly, indeed, he escaped the fate of the man in the search for whom he had gained his first Arctic experience.

His ship, beset by ice, and sorely wounded, remained fixed and immovable for two years. At first the beleaguered men made sledge journeys in every direction for exploratory purposes, but the second year they sought rather by determined, though futile dashes across the rugged surface of the frozen sea, to find some place of refuge, some hope of emanc.i.p.ation from the thraldom of the ice. The second winter all of the brig except the hull, which served for shelter, was burned for fuel; two men had died, and many were sick of scurvy, the sledge dogs were all dead, and the end of the provisions was in sight. In May, 1855, a retreat in open boats, covering eighty-five days and over fifty miles of open sea, brought the survivors to safety.

When men have looked into the jaws of death, it might be thought they would strenuously avoid such another view. But there is an Arctic fever as well as an Arctic chill, and, once in the blood, it drags its victim irresistibly to the frozen North, until perhaps he lays his bones among the icebergs, cured of all fevers forever. And so, a year or two after the narrow escape of Dr. Kane, the surgeon of his expedition, Dr. Isaac I.

Hayes, was hard at work fitting out an expedition of which he was to be commander, to return to Baffin's Bay and Smith sound, and if possible, fight its way into that open sea, which Dr. Hayes long contended surrounded the North Pole. No man in the Kane expedition had encountered greater perils, or withstood more cruel suffering than Dr. Hayes. A boat trip which he made in search of succor, has pa.s.sed into Arctic history as one of the most desperate expedients ever adopted by starving men. But at the first opportunity he returned again to the scenes of his peril and his pain. His expedition, though conducted with spirit and determination, was not of great scientific value, as he was greatly handicapped in his observations by the death of his astronomer, who slipped through thin ice into the sea, and froze to death in his water-soaked garments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE TREACHEROUS ICE-PACK"]

A most extraordinary record of daring and suffering in Arctic exploration was made by Charles F. Hall, to whom I have already referred. Beginning life as an engraver in Cincinnati, he became engrossed in the study of Arctic problems, as the result of reading the stories of the early navigators. Every book bearing on the subject in the library of his native city, was eagerly read, and his enthusiasm infected some of the wealthy citizens, who gathered for his use a very considerable collection of volumes. Mastering all the literature of the Arctic, he determined to undertake himself the arduous work of the explorer. Taking pa.s.sage on a whaler, he spent several years among the Esquimaux, living in their crowded and fetid _igloos_, devouring the blubber and uncooked fish that form their staple articles of diet, wearing their garb of furs, learning to navigate the treacherous kayak in tossing seas, to direct the yelping, quarreling team of dogs over fields of ice as rugged as the edge of some monstrous saw, studying the geography so far as known of the Arctic regions, perfecting himself in all the arts by which man has contested the supremacy of that land with the ice-king. In 1870, with the a.s.sistance of the American Geographical Society, Hall induced the United States Government to fit him out an expedition to seek the North Pole--the first exploring party ever sent out with that definite purpose. The steamer "Polaris," a converted navy tug, which General Greely says was wholly unfit for Arctic service, was given him, and a scientific staff supplied by the Government, for though Hall had by painstaking endeavor qualified himself to lead an expedition, he had not enjoyed a scientific education.

Neither was he a sailor like DeLong, nor a man trained to the command of men like Greely. Enthusiasm and natural fitness with him took the place of systematic training. But with him, as with so many others in this world, the attainment of the threshold of his ambition proved to be but opening the door to death. By a sledge journey from his ship he reached Cape Brevoort, above lat.i.tude 82, at that time the farthest north yet attained, but the exertion proved too much for him, and he had scarcely regained his ship when he died. His name will live, however, in the annals of the Arctic, for his contributions to geographical knowledge were many and precious.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHIP WAS CAUGHT IN THE ICE PACK]

The men who survived him determined to continue his work, and the next summer two fought their way northward a few miles beyond the point attained by Hall. But after this achievement the ship was caught in the ice-pack, and for two months drifted about, helpless in that unrelenting grasp. Out of this imprisonment the explorers escaped through a disaster, which for a time put all their lives in the gravest jeopardy, and the details of which seem almost incredible. In October, when the long twilight which precedes the polar night, had already set in, there came a fierce gale, accompanied by a tossing, roaring sea. The pack, racked by the surges, which now raised it with a mighty force, and then rolling on, left it to fall unsupported, began to go to pieces. The whistling wind accelerated its destruction, driving the floes far apart, heaping them up against the hull of the ship until the grinding and the prodigious pressure opened her seams and the water rushed in. The cry that the ship was sinking rung along the decks, and all hands turned with desperate energy to throwing out on the ice-floe to windward, sledges, provisions, arms, records--everything that could be saved against the sinking of the ship, which all thought was at hand. Nineteen of the ship's company were landed on the floe to carry the material away from its edge to a place of comparative safety. The peril seemed so imminent that the men in their panic performed prodigious feats of strength--lifting and handling alone huge boxes, which at ordinary times, would stagger two men. A driving, whirling snowstorm added to the gloom, confusion, and terror of the scene, shutting out almost completely those on the ice from the view of those still on the ship. In the midst of the work the cry was raised that the floes were parting, and with incredible rapidity the ice broke away from the ship on every side, so that communication between those on deck and those on the floe was instantly cut off by a broad interval of black and tossing water, while the dark and snow-laden air cut off vision on every side. The cries of those on the ice mingled with those from the fast vanishing ship, for each party thought itself in the more desperate case.

The ice was fast going to pieces, and boats were plying in the lanes of water thus opened, picking up those clinging to smaller cakes of ice and transporting them to the main floe. On the ship the captain's call had summoned all hands to muster, and they gazed on each other in dumb despair as they saw how few of the ship's company remained. All were sent to the pumps, for the water in the hold was rising with ominous rapidity. The cry rang out that the steam-pumps must be started if the ship was to be saved, but long months had pa.s.sed since any fire had blazed under those boilers, and to get up steam was a work of hours. With tar-soaked oak.u.m and with dripping whale blubber the engineer strove to get the fires roaring, the while the men on deck toiled with desperate energy at the hand-pumps. But the water gained on them. The ship sunk lower and lower in the black ocean, until a glance over the side could tell all too plainly that she was going to her fate. Now the water begins to ooze through the cracks in the engine-room floor, and break in gentle ripples about the feet of the firemen. If it rises much higher it will flood the fire-boxes, and then all will be over, for there is not one boat left on the ship--all were landed on the now invisible floe. But just as all hope was lost there came a faint hissing of steam, the pumps began slowly moving, and then settled down into their monotonous "chug-chug," the sweetest sound, that day, those desperate mariners had ever heard. They were saved by the narrowest of chances.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ADRIFT ON AN ICE-FLOE]

We must pa.s.s hastily to the sequel of this seemingly irreparable disaster.

The "Polaris" was beached, winter quarters established, and those who had clung to the ship spent the winter building boats, in which, the following spring, they made their way southward until picked up by a whaler. Those on the floe drifted at the mercy of the wind and tide 195 days, making over 1300 miles to the southward. As the more temperate lat.i.tudes were reached, and the warmer days of spring came on, the floe began going to pieces, and they were continually confronted with the probability of being forced to their boat for safety--one boat, built to hold eight, and now the sole reliance of nineteen people. It is hard to picture through the imagination the awful strain that day and night rested upon the minds of these hapless castaways. Never could they drop off to sleep except in dread that during the night the ice on which they slept, might split, even under their very pallets, and they be awakened by the deathly plunge into the icy water. Day and night they were startled and affrighted by the thunderous rumblings and cracking of the breaking floe--a sound that an experienced Arctic explorer says is the most terrifying ever heard by man, having in it something of the hoa.r.s.e rumble of heavy artillery, the sharp and murderous crackle of machine guns, and a kind of t.i.tanic grinding, for which there is no counterpart in the world of tumult. Living thus in constant dread of death, the little company drifted on, seemingly miraculously preserved. Their floe was at last reduced from a great sheet of ice, perhaps a mile or more square, to a scant ten yards by seventy-five, and this rapidly breaking up. In two days four whalers pa.s.sed near enough for them to see, yet failed to see them, but finally their frantic signals attracted attention, and they were picked up--not only the original nineteen who had begun the drift six months earlier, but one new and helpless pa.s.senger, for one of the Esquimau women had given birth to a child while on the ice.

The next notable Arctic expedition from the United States had its beginning in journalistic enterprise. Mr. James Gordon Bennett, owner of the _New York Herald_, who had already manifested his interest in geographical work by sending Henry M. Stanley to find Livingston in the heart of the Dark Continent, fitted out the steam yacht "Pandora," which had already been used in Arctic service, and placed her at the disposal of Lieutenant DeLong, U.S.N., for an Arctic voyage. The name of the ship was changed to "Jeannette," and control of the expedition was vested in the United States Government, though Mr. Bennett's generosity defrayed all charges. The vessel was manned from the navy, and Engineer Melville, destined to bear a name great among Arctic men, together with two navy lieutenants, were a.s.signed to her. The voyage planned was then unique among American Arctic expeditions, for instead of following the conventional route north through Baffin's Bay and Smith Sound, the "Jeannette" sailed from San Francisco and pushed northward through Bering Sea. In July, 1879, she weighed anchor. Two years after, no word having been heard of her meanwhile, the inevitable relief expedition was sent out--the steamer "Rodgers," which after making a gallant dash to a most northerly point, was caught in the ice-pack and there burned to the water's edge, her crew, with greatest difficulty, escaping, and reaching home without one ray of intelligence of DeLong's fate.

That fate was bitter indeed, a trial by cold, starvation, and death, fit to stand for awesomeness beside Greely's later sorrowful story. From the very outset evil fortune had attended the "Jeannette." Planning to winter on Wrangle Land--then thought to be a continent--DeLong caught in the ice-pack, was carried past its northern end, thus proving it to be an island, indeed, but making the discovery at heavy cost. Winter in the pack was attended with severe hardships and grave perils. Under the influence of the ocean currents and the tides, the ice was continually breaking up and shifting, and each time the ship was in imminent danger of being crushed. In his journal DeLong tries to describe the terrifying clamor of a shifting pack. "I know of no sound on sh.o.r.e that can be compared with it," he writes. "A rumble, a shriek, a groan, and the crash of a falling house all combined, might serve to convey an idea of the noise with which this motion of the ice-floe is accompanied. Great ma.s.ses from fifteen to twenty-five feet in height, when up-ended, are sliding along at various angles of elevation and jam, and between and among them are large and confused ma.s.ses of debris, like a marble yard adrift. Occasionally a stoppage occurs; some piece has caught against or under our floe; there follows a groaning and crackling, our floe bends and humps up in places like domes. Crash! The dome splits, another yard of floe edge breaks off, the pressure is relieved, and on goes again the flowing ma.s.s of rumbles, shrieks, groans, etc., for another spell."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DELONG'S MEN DRAGGING THEIR BOATS OVER THE ICE]

Time and again this nerve-racking experience was encountered. More than once serious leaks were started in the ship, which had to be met by working the pumps and building false bulwarks in the hold; but by the exercise of every art known to sailors, she was kept afloat and tenable until June 11, 1881, when a fierce and unexpected nip broke her fairly in two, and she speedily sunk. There followed weeks and months of incessant and desperate struggling with sledge and boat against the forces of polar nature. The ship had sunk about 150 miles from what are known as the New Siberian Islands, for which DeLong then laid his course. The ice was rugged, covered with soft snow, which masked treacherous pitfalls, and full of chasms which had to be bridged. Five sleds and three boats were dragged by almost superhuman exertions, the sick feebly aiding the st.u.r.dy in the work. Imagine the disappointment, and despair of the leader, when, after a full week of this cruel labor, with provisions ever growing more scanty, an observation showed him they were actually twenty-eight miles further away from their destination than when they started! While they were toiling south, the ice-floe over which they were plodding was drifting more rapidly north. _Nil desperandum_ must ever be the watchword of Arctic expeditions, and DeLong, saying nothing to the others of his discovery, changed slightly the course of his march and labored on. July 19 they reached an island hitherto unknown, which was thereupon named Bennett Island. A curious feature of the toilsome march across the ice, was that, though the temperature seldom rose to the freezing point, the men complained bitterly of the heat and suffered severely from sun-burn.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DELONG'S MEN DRAGGING THEIR BOATS OVER THE ICE]

At Bennett Island they took to the boats, for now open water was everywhere visible. DeLong was making for the Lena River in Siberia, where there were known to be several settlements, but few of his party were destined to reach it. In a furious storm, on the 12th of September, the three boats were separated. One, commanded by Lieutenant Chipp, with eight men, must have foundered, for it was never again heard of. A second, commanded by George W. Melville, afterward chief engineer of the United States Navy, found one of the mouths of the Lena River, and ascending it reached a small Siberian village. Happy would it have been had DeLong and his men discovered the same pathway to safety, but the Lena is like our own Mississippi, a river with a broad delta and a multiplicity of mouths.

Into an estuary, the banks of which were untrodden by man, and which itself was too shallow for navigation for any great distance, remorseless fate led DeLong. Forced soon to take to their sleds again, his companions toiled painfully along the river bank, with no known destination, but bearing ever to the south--the only way in which hope could possibly lie.

Deserted huts and other signs of former human habitation were plenty, but nothing living crossed their path. At last, the food being at the point of exhaustion, and the men too weary and weak for rapid travel, DeLong chose two of the st.u.r.diest, Nindemann and Noros, and sent them ahead in the hope that they might find and return with succor. The rest stumbled on behind, well pleased if they could advance three miles daily. Food gave out, then strength. Resignation took the place of determination. DeLong's journal for the last week of life is inexpressibly pitiful:

"Sunday, October 23--133d Day: Everybody pretty weak. Slept or rested all day, and then managed to get in enough wood before dark. Read part of divine service. Suffering in our feet. No foot-gear.

"Monday, October 24--134th Day: A hard night.

"Tuesday, October 25--135th Day.

"Wednesday, October 26--136th day.

"Thursday, October 27--137th Day: Iverson broken down.

"Friday, October 28--138th Day: Iverson died during early morning.

"Sat.u.r.day, October 29th--139th Day: Dressier died during the night.

"Sunday, October 30--140th Day: Boyd and Cortz died during the night. Mr.

Collins dying."

This is the last entry. The hand that penned it, as the ma.n.u.script shows, was as firm and steady as though the writer were sitting in his library at home. Words are spelled out in full, punctuation carefully observed. How long after these words were set down DeLong too died, none may ever know; but when Melville, whom Nindemann and Noros had found after sore privations, reached the spot of the death camp, he came upon a sorrowful scene. "I came upon the bodies of three men partly buried in the snow," he writes, "one hand reaching out, with the left arm of the man reaching way above the surface of the snow--his whole left arm. I immediately recognized them as Captain DeLong, Dr. Ambler, and Ah Sam, the cook.... I found the journal about three or four feet in the rear of DeLong--that is, it looked as though he had been lying down, and with his left hand tossed the book over his shoulder to the rear, or to the eastward of him."

How these few words bring the whole scene up before us! Last, perhaps, of all to die, lying by the smoldering fire, the ashes of which were in the middle of the group of bodies when found, DeLong puts down the final words which tell of the obliteration of his party, tosses the book wearily over his shoulder, and turns on his side to die. And then the snow, falling gently, pitifully covers the rigid forms and holds them in its pure embrace until loyal friends seek them out, and tell to the world that again brave lives have been sacrificed to the ogre of the Arctic.

While DeLong and his gallant comrades of the United States Navy were dying slowly in the bleak desert of the Lena delta, another party of brave Americans were pushing their way into the Arctic circle on the Atlantic side of the North American continent. The story of that starvation camp in desolate Siberia was to be swiftly repeated on the sh.o.r.es of Smith Sound, and told this time with more pathetic detail, for of Greely's expedition, numbering twenty-five, seven were rescued after three years of Arctic suffering and starving, helpless, and within one day of death. They had seen their comrades die, destroyed by starvation and cold, and pa.s.sing away in delirium, babbling of green fields and plenteous tables. From the doorway of the almost collapsed tent, in which the seven survivors were found, they could see the row of shallow graves in which their less fortunate comrades lay interred--all save two, whom they had been too weak to bury. No story of the Arctic which has come to us from the lips of survivors, has half the pathos, or a t.i.the of the pitiful interest, possessed by this story of Greely.

Studying to-day the history of the Greely expedition, it seems almost as if a malign fate had determined to bring disaster upon him. His task was not so arduous as a determined search for the Pole, or the Northwest Pa.s.sage. He was ordered by the United States Government to establish an observation station on Lady Franklin Bay, and remain there two years, conducting, meanwhile, scientific observations, and pressing exploratory work with all possible zeal. The enterprise was part of a great international plan, by which each of the great nations was to establish and maintain such an observation station within the Arctic circle, while observations were to be carried on in all at once. The United States agreed to maintain two such stations, and the one at Point Barrow, north of Alaska, was established, maintained, and its tenants brought home at the end of the allotted time without disaster.

Greely was a lieutenant in the United States Army, and his expedition was under the immediate direction of the Secretary of War--at that time Robert Lincoln, son of the great war President. Some criticism was expressed at the time and, indeed, still lingers in the books of writers on the subject, concerning the fitness of an army officer to direct an Arctic voyage. But the purpose of the expedition was largely to collect scientific facts bear-on weather, currents of air and sea, the duration and extent of magnetic and electrical disturbances--in brief, data quite parallel to those which the United States signal service collects at home.

So the Greely expedition was made an adjunct to the signal service, which in its turn is one of the bureaus of the War Department. Two army lieutenants, Lockwood and Klingsbury, and twenty men from the rank and file of the army and signal corps, were selected to form the party. An astronomer was needed, and Edward Israel, a young graduate of the University of Michigan, volunteered. George W. Rice volunteered as photographer. Both were enlisted in the army and given the rank of sergeant.

It is doubtful if any polar expedition was ever more circ.u.mstantially planned--none has resulted more disastrously, save Sir John Franklin's last voyage. The instructions of the War Department were as explicit as human foresight and a genius for detail could make them. Greely was to proceed to some point on Lady Franklin Bay, which enters the mainland of North America at about 81 44' north lat.i.tude, build his station, and prepare for a two-years' stay. Provisions for three years were supplied him. At the end of one year it was promised, a relief ship should be sent him, which failing for any cause to reach the station, would cache supplies and dispatches at specified points. A year later a second relief ship would be sent to bring the party home, and if for any reason this ship should fail to make the station, then Greely was to break camp and sledge to the southward, following the east coast of the mainland, until he met the vessel, or reached the point at which fresh supplies were to be cached. No plan could have been better devised--none ever failed more utterly.

Arctic travel is an enigma, and it is an enigma never to be solved twice in the same way. Whalers, with the experience of a lifetime in the frozen waters, agree that the lessons of one voyage seldom prove infallible guides for the conduct of the next. Lieutenant Schwatka, a veteran Arctic explorer, said in an official doc.u.ment that the teachings of experience were often worse than useless in polar work. And so, though the Washington authorities planned for the safety of Greely according to the best guidance that the past could give them, their plans failed completely. The first relief ship did, indeed, land some stores--never, as the issue showed, to be reached by Greely--but the second expedition, composed of two ships, the "Proteus" and the "Yantic," accomplished nothing. The station was not reached, practically no supplies were landed, the "Proteus" was nipped by the ice and sunk, and the remnant of the expedition came supinely home, reporting utter failure. It is impossible to acquit the commanders of the two ships engaged in this abortive relief expedition of a lack of determination, a paucity of courage, complete incompetence. They simply left Greely to his fate while time still remained for his rescue, or at least for the convenient deposit of the vast store of provisions they brought home, leaving the abandoned explorers to starve.

The history of the Greely expedition and its achievements may well be sketched hastily, before the story of the catastrophe which overwhelmed it is told. As it was the most tragic of expeditions save one, Sir John Franklin's, so, too, it was the most fruitful in results, of any American expedition to the time of the writing of this book. Proceeding by the whaler "Proteus" in August, 1881, to the waters of the Arctic zone, Greely reached his destination with but little trouble, and built a commodious and comfortable station on the sh.o.r.es of Discovery Bay, which he called Fort Conger after a United States Senator from Michigan. A month remained before the Arctic night would set in, but the labor of building the house left little time for explorations, which were deferred until the following summer. Life at the station was not disagreeable. The house, stoutly built, withstood the bitter cold. Within there were books and games, and through the long winter night the officers beguiled the time with lectures and reading. Music was there, too, in impressive quant.i.ty, if not quality.

"An organette with about fifty yards of music," writes Lieutenant Greely, "afforded much amus.e.m.e.nt, being particularly fascinating to our Esquimau, who never wearied grinding out one tune after another." The rigid routine of Arctic winter life was followed day by day, and the returning sun, after five months' absence, found the party in perfect health and buoyant spirits. The work of exploration on all sides began, the explorers being somewhat handicapped by the death of many of the sledge dogs from disease.

Lieutenant Greely, Dr. Pavy, and Lieutenant Lockwood each led a party, but to the last named belong the honors, for he, with Sergeant Brainard and an Esquimau, made his way northward over ice that looked like a choppy sea suddenly frozen into the rigidity of granite, until he reached lat.i.tude 83 24' north--the most northerly point then attained by any man--and still the record marking Arctic journey for an American explorer.

Winter came again under depressing circ.u.mstances. The first relief ship promised had not arrived, and the disappointment of the men deepened into apprehension lest the second, also, should fail them. Yet they went through the second winter in good health and unshaken morale, though one can not read such portions of Greely's diary as he has published, without seeing that the irritability and jealousy that seem to be the inevitable accompaniments of long imprisonment in an Arctic station, began to make their appearance. With the advent of spring the commander began to make his preparations for a retreat to the southward. If he had not then felt entire confidence in the promise of the War Department to relieve him without fail that summer, he would have begun his retreat early, and beyond doubt have brought all his men to safety before another winter set in or his provisions fell low. But as it was, he put off the start to the last moment, keeping up meanwhile the scientific work of the expedition, and sending out one party to cache supplies along the route of retreat.

August 9, 1883, the march began--just two years after they had entered the frozen deep--Greely hoping to meet the relief ship oh the way. He did not know that three weeks before she had been nipped in the ice-pack, and sunk, and that her consort, the "Yantic," had gone impotently home, without even leaving food for the abandoned explorers. Over ice-fields and across icy and turbulent water, the party made its way for five hundred miles--four hundred miles of boating and one hundred of sledging--fifty-one days of heroic exertion that might well take the courage out of the stoutest heart. Sledging in the Arctic over "hummock"

ice is, perhaps, the most wearing form of toil known to man, and with such heavy loads as Greely carried, every mile had to be gone over twice, and sometimes three times, as the men would be compelled to leave part of the load behind and go back after it. Yet the party was cheerful, singing and joking at their work, as one of the sergeants records. Finally they reached the vicinity of Cape Sabine, all in good health, with instruments and records saved, and with arms and ammunition enough to procure ample food in a land well stocked with game. But they did not worry very much about food, though their supply was by this time growing low. Was not Cape Sabine the spot at which the relief expeditions were to cache food, and could it be possible that the great United States Government would fail twice in an enterprise which any Yankee whaler would gladly take a contract to fulfill? And so the men looked upon the wilderness, and noted the coming on of the Arctic night again without fear, if with some disappointment. Less than forty days' rations remained. Eight months must elapse before any relief expedition could reach their camp, and far away in the United States the people were crying out in hot indignation that the authorities were basely leaving Greely and his devoted companions to their fate.