My Attainment of the Pole Part 2

So far as the needs of my own personal expedition were concerned, I had with me on the yacht plenty of hard hickory wood for the making of sledges, instruments, clothing and other apparatus gathered with much economy during my former years of exploration, and about one thousand pounds of pemmican. These supplies, necessary to offset the danger of shipwreck and detention by ice, were also all that would be required for a Polar trip. When, later, I finally decided on a Polar campaign, extra ship supplies, contributed from the boat, were stored at Annoatok.

There, also, my supply of pemmican was amplified by the stores of walrus meat and fat prepared during the long winter by myself, Rudolph Francke and the Eskimos.

As the yacht slowly soared toward the ocean, and night descended over the fishing village with its home lights glimmering cheerfully as the stars one by one flecked the firmament with dots of fire, I felt that at last I had embarked upon my destiny. Whether I should be able to follow my heart's desire I did not know; I did not dare hazard a guess. But I was leaving my country, now on the eve of celebrating its freedom, behind me; I had elected to live in a world of ice and cold, of hunger and death, which lay before me--thousands of miles to the North.

Day by day pa.s.sed monotonously; we only occasionally saw writhing curves of land to the west of us; about us was the illimitable sea. That I had started on a journey which might result in my starting for the Pole, that my final chance had come, vaguely thrilled me. Yet the full purport of my hope seemed beyond me. On the journey to Sydney my mind was full.

I thought of the early days of my childhood, of the strange ambition which grew upon me, of my struggles, and the chance which favored me in the present expedition.

In the early days of my childhood, of which I now had only indistinct glimmerings, I remembered a restless surge in my little bosom, a yearning for something that was vague and undefined. This was, I suppose, that nebulous desire which sometimes manifests itself in early youth and later is a.s.serted in strivings toward some splendid, sometimes spectacular aim. My boyhood was not happy. As a tiny child I was discontented, and from the earliest days of consciousness I felt the burden of two things which accompanied me through later life--an innate and abnormal desire for exploration, then the manifestation of my yearning, and the constant struggle to make ends meet, that sting of poverty, which, while it tantalizes one with its horrid grind, sometimes drives men by reason of the strength developed in overcoming its concomitant obstacles to some extraordinary accomplishment.

As a very small boy, I remember being fascinated by the lure of a forbidden swimming pool. One day, when but little over five, I, impelled to test the depth, plunged to the center, where the water was above my head, and nearly lost my life. I shall never forget that struggle, and though I nearly gave out, in that short time I learned to swim. It seems to me now I have been swimming and struggling ever since.

Abject poverty and hard work marked my school days. When quite a boy, after the death of my father, I came to New York. I sold fruit at one of the markets. I saved my money. I enjoyed no luxuries. These days vividly occur in my mind. Later I engaged in a dairy business in Brooklyn, and on the meager profits undertook to study medicine.

At that time the ambition which beset me was undirected; it was only later that I found, almost by accident, what became its focusing point.

I graduated from the University of New York in 1890. I felt (as what young man does not?) that I possessed unusual qualifications and exceptional ability. An office was fitted up, and my anxiety over the disappearing pennies was eased by the conviction that I had but to hang out my shingle and the place would be thronged with patients. Six months pa.s.sed. There had been about three patients.

I recall sitting alone one gloomy winter day. Opening a paper, I read that Peary was preparing his 1891 expedition to the Arctic. I cannot explain my sensations. It was as if a door to a prison cell had opened.

I felt the first indomitable, commanding call of the Northland. To invade the Unknown, to a.s.sail the fastness of the white, frozen North--all that was latent in me, the impetus of that ambition born in childhood, perhaps before birth, and which had been stifled and starved, surged up tumultuously within me.

I volunteered, and accompanied Peary, on this, the expedition of 1891-92, as surgeon. Whatever merit my work possessed has been cited by others.

Unless one has been in the Arctic, I suppose it is impossible to understand its fascination--a fascination which makes men risk their lives and endure inconceivable hardships for, as I view it now, no profitable personal purpose of any kind. The spell was upon me then. It was upon me as I recalled those early days on the _Bradley_ going Northward. With a feeling of sadness I realize that the glamor is all gone now.

On the Peary and all my subsequent expeditions I served without pay.

On my return from that trip I managed to make ends meet by meager earnings from medicine. I was nearly always desperately hard pressed for money. I tried to organize several cooperative expeditions to the Arctic. These failed. I then tried to arouse interest in Antarctic exploration, but without success. Then came the opportunity to join the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, again without pay.

On my return I dreamed of a plan to attain the South Pole, and for a long time worked on a contrivance for that end--an automobile arranged to travel over ice. Financial failure again confronted me.

Disappointment only added to my ambition; it scourged me to a determination, a conviction that--I want you to remember this, to bear in mind the mental conviction which buoyed me--I must and should succeed. It is always this innate conviction which encourages men to exceptional feats, to tremendous failures or splendid, single-handed success.

A summer in the Arctic followed my Antarctic trip, and I returned to invade the Alaskan wilds. I succeeded in scaling Mt. McKinley. After my Alaskan expeditions, the routine of my Brooklyn office work seemed like the confinement of prison. I fretted and chafed at the thought. Let me have a chance, and I would succeed. This thought always filled my mind.

I convinced myself that in some way the attainment of one of the Poles--the effort on which I had spent sixteen years--would become possible.

I had no money. My work in exploration had netted me nothing, and all my professional income was soon spent. Unless you have felt the goading, devilish grind of poverty hindering you, d.o.g.g.i.ng you, you cannot know the mental fury into which I was lashed.

I waited, and fortune favored me in that I met Mr. John R. Bradley. We planned the Arctic expedition on which I was now embarked. Mr. Bradley's interest in the trip was that of a great sportsman, eager to seek big game in the Arctic. My immediate purpose was to return again to the frozen North. The least the journey would give me was an opportunity to complete the study of the Eskimos which I had started in 1891.

Mr. Bradley and I had talked, of course, of the Pole; but it was not an important incentive to the journey. Back in my brain, barely above the subconscious realm, was the feeling that this, however, might offer opportunity in the preparation for a final future determination. I, therefore, without any conscious purpose, and with my last penny, paid out of my purse for extra supplies for a personal expedition should I leave the ship.[1]

Aboard the _Bradley_, going northward, my plans were not at all definite. Even had I known before leaving New York that I should try for the Pole, I should not have sought any geographical license from some vague and unknown authority. Though much has since been made by critics of our quiet departure, I always felt the quest of the Pole a personal ambition[2], a crazy hunger I had to satisfy.

Fair weather followed us to Sydney, Cape Breton.

From this point we sailed over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then entered the Straits of Belle Isle at a lively speed. On a cold, cheerless day in the middle of July we arrived at Battle Harbor, a little town at the southeastern point of Labrador, where Mr. Bradley joined us. He had preceded us north, by rail and coasting vessels, after watching a part of the work of outfitting the schooner.

On the morning of July 16 we left the rockbound coast of North America and steered straight for Greenland. In this region a dense and heavy fog almost always lies upon the sea. Then nothing is visible but slow-swaying gray ma.s.ses, which veil all objects in a shroud of ghostly dreariness. Through the fog can be heard the sound of fisher-boat horns, often the very voices of the fishermen themselves, while their crafts are absolutely hidden from view. On this trip, however, from time to time, great fragments of fog slowly lifted, and we saw, emerging out of the gray mistiness, islands, bleak and black and weathertorn, and patches of ocean dotted with scores of Newfoundland boats, which invade this region to fish for cod. We entered the Arctic current, and breasting its stream, a fancy came that perhaps this current, flowing down from out of the mysterious unknown, came from the very Pole itself.

Continuing, we entered Davis Straits, where we encountered headwinds that piled up the water in great waves. It was a good test of the sailing qualities of the _Bradley_, and well did the small craft respond.

Long before the actual coast line of Greenland could be seen we had a first glimpse of the beauties that these northern regions can show.

Like great sapphires, blue ice floated in a golden sea; towering ma.s.ses of crystal rose gloriously, dazzling the eye and gladdening the heart with their superb beauty. The schooner sailed into this wonderful yellow sea, which soon became a broad and gleaming surface of molten silver.

Although this striking beauty of the North, which it often is so chary of displaying, possesses a splendor of color equal to the gloriousness of tropical seas, it always impresses one with a steely hardness of quality suggestive of the steely hardness of the heart of the North. And it somehow seemed, curiously enough, as if all this wonderful glitter was a shimmering reflection from the ice-covered mountains of the Greenland interior, although the mountains themselves were still invisible.

We swung from side to side, dodging icebergs. We steered cautiously around low-floating ma.s.ses, watching to see that the keel was not caught by some treacherous jutting spur just beneath the water-line. Through this fairyland of light and color we sailed slowly into a region rich in animal life, a curious and striking sight. Seals floundered in the sunbeams or slumbered on ma.s.ses of ice, for even in this Northland there is a strange commingling and contrast of heat and cold. Gulls and petrels darted and fluttered about us in every direction, porpoises were making swift and curving leaps, even a few whales added to the magic and apparent unreality of it all.

At length the coast showed dimly upon the horizon, veiled in a glow of purple and gold. The wind freshened, the sails filled, and the speed of the schooner increased. We were gradually nearing Holsteinborg, and the course was set a point more in towards sh.o.r.e. The land was thrown into bold relief by the brilliancy of lights and shadows, and in the remarkably clear air it seemed as if it could be reached in an hour. But this was an atmospheric deception, of the kind familiar to those who know the pure air of the Rocky Mountains, for, although the land seemed near, it was at least forty miles away. The general color of the land was a frosty blue, and there were deep valleys to be seen, gashes cut by the slow movement of centuries of glaciers, with rocky headlands leaping forward, bleak and cold. It appeared to be a land of sublime desolation.

The course was set still another point nearer the coast; the wind continued fair and strong; and, with every possible st.i.tch of canvas spread, the schooner went rapidly onward.

We saw rocky islands, drenched by clouds of spray and battered by drifting ma.s.ses of ice. There the eider duck builds its nest and spends the brief summer of the Arctic. We saw dismal cliffs, terra cotta and buff in color, in the creva.s.ses of which millions of birds made their homes, and from which they rose, frightened, in dense clouds, giving vent to a great volume of clamorous hoa.r.s.eness.

Through our gla.s.ses we could see a surprising sight in such a land--little patches of vegetation, seal brown or even emerald green.

Yet, so slight were these patches of green that one could not but wonder what freak of imagination led the piratical Eric the Red, one thousand years ago, to give to this coast a name so suggestive of luxuriant forests and shrubs and general lushness of growth as "Greenland." Never, surely, was there a greater misnomer, unless one chooses to regard the old-time Eric as a practical joker.

Between the tall headlands there were fiords cutting far into the interior; arms of the sea, these, winding and twisting back for miles.

Along these quiet land-locked waters the Eskimos love to hunt and fish, just as their forefathers have done for centuries. s.h.a.ggy looking fellows are these Eskimos, clothed in the skins of animals, relieved by dashes of color of Danish fabric, most of them still using spears, and thus, to outward appearance, in the arts of life almost like those that Eric saw.

Although this rugged coast, with its low-lying islands, its icebergs and floating icefields, its bleak headlands, its picturesque scenes of animal life, is a continuous delight, it presents the worst possible dangers to navigation, not only from reefs and under-water ice, but because there are no lighthouses to mark permanent danger spots and because signs of impending storm are ever on the horizon. While navigating the coast, our officers spent sleepless nights of anxiety; but the shortening of the nights and lengthening of the days, the daily night brightening resulting from the northerly movement, combined with an occasional flash of the aurora, gradually relieved the tension of the situation.

By the time the island of Disco rose splendidly out of the northern blue, the Arctic Circle had been crossed, and a sort of celestial light-house brightened the path of the schooner. Remaining on deck until after midnight, we were rewarded by a sight of the sun magnified to many times its normal size, glowing above the rim of the frosty sea. A light wind blew gently from the coast, the sea ran in swells of gold, and the sky was streaked with topaz and crimson.

Bathed in an indescribable glow, the towering sides of the greatest icebergs showed a medley of ever-changing, iridescent colors. The jutting pinnacles of others seemed like oriental minarets of alabaster fretted with old gold. Here and there, as though flung by an invisible hand from the zenith, straggled long cloud ribbons of flossy crimson and silver. Gradually, imperially, the sun rose higher and flushed sky and sea with deeper orange, more burning crimson, and the bergs into vivid ruby, chalcedony and chrysophase walls. This suddenly-changing, kaleidoscopic whirl of color was rendered more effective because, in its midst, the cliffs of Disco rose frowningly, a great patch of blackness in artistic contrast. A pearly vapor now began to creep over the horizon, and gradually spread over the waters, imparting a gentle and restful tone of blue. This gradually darkened into irregular shadows; the brilliant color glories faded away. Finally we retired to sleep with a feeling that sailing Poleward was merely a joyous pleasure journey over wonderful and magic waters. This, the first glorious vision of the midnight sun, glowed in my dreams--the augury of success in that for which my heart yearned. The glow never faded, and the weird lure unconsciously began to weave its spell.

Next morning, when we went on deck, the schooner was racing eastward through heavy seas. The terraced cliffs of Disco, relieved by freshly fallen snow, were but a few miles off. The cry of gulls and guillemots echoed from rock to rock. Everything was divested of the glory of the day before. The sun was slowly rising among mouse-colored clouds. The bergs were of an ugly blue, and the sea ran in gloomy lines of ebony.

Although the sea was high, there was little wind, but we felt that a storm was gathering and sought to hasten to shelter in G.o.dhaven--a name which speaks eloquently of the dangers of this coast and the precious value of such a harbor.

As we entered the narrow channel, which turns among low, polished rocks and opens into the harbor, two Eskimos in kayaks came out to act as pilots. Taking them aboard, we soon found a snug anchorage, secure from wind and sea. The launch was lowered, and in it we left the schooner for a visit to the Governor.

Coming up to a little pier, we were cordially greeted by Governor Fenker, who escorted us to his home, where his wife, a cultivated young Danish woman, offered us sincere hospitality.

The little town itself was keenly alive. All the inhabitants, and all the dogs as well, were jumping about on the rocks, eagerly gazing at our schooner. The houses of the Governor and the Inspector were the most important of the town. They were built of wood imported from Denmark, and were covered with tarred paper. Though quite moderate in size, the houses seemed too large and out of place in their setting of ice-polished rocks. Beyond them were twenty Eskimo huts, nearly square in shape, constructed of wood and stone, the cracks of which were filled tightly with moss.

We deferred our visit to the native huts, and invited Governor Fenker and his wife to dine aboard the schooner. The surprise of the evening for these two guests was the playing of our phonograph, the tunes of which brought tears of homesickness to the eyes of the Governor's gentle wife.

Anywhere on the coast of Greenland, the coming of a ship is always one of the prime events of the season. So uneventful is life in these out-of-the-way places that such an arrival is the greatest possible social enlivener. The instant that the approach of our schooner had been noted, the Eskimo girls--queer little maids in queer little trousers--decided upon having a dance, and word was brought us that everyone was invited to take part. The sailors eagerly responded, and tumbled ash.o.r.e as soon as they were permitted, leaving merely enough for a watch on board ship. Then, to the sound of savage music, the dance was continued until long after midnight. A curious kind of midnight dance it was, with the sun brightly shining in a night unveiled of glitter and color glory. The sailors certainly found pleasure in whirling about, their arms encircling fat and clumsy waists. They did admit, however, when back on board the schooner, that the smell of the furs within which the maidens had spent the past winter was less agreeable than the savor of fish. The name of this scattered settlement of huts, G.o.dhaven, comes, clearly enough, from its offering fortunate refuge from storms; that the place is also known as Lively is not in the least to be wondered at, if one has watched a midnight dance of the little population and their visitors.

Before hauling in anchor in the harbor of G.o.dhaven, we made some necessary repairs to the yacht and filled our tanks with water. With a free wind speeding onward to the west of Disco, we pa.s.sed the narrow strait known as the Vaigat early the following morning. As I stood on deck and viewed the pa.s.sing of icebergs, glittering in the limpid, silvery light of morning like monstrous diamonds, there began to grow within me a feeling--that throbbed in pulsation with the onward movement of the boat--that every minute, every mile, meant a nearing to that mysterious center, on the attaining of which I had set my heart, and which, even now, seemed unlikely, improbable. Yet the thought gave me a thrill.

Before noon we reached the mouth of Umanak Fiord, into the delightful waters of which we were tempted to enter. The lure of the farther North decided us against this, and soon the striking Svarten Huk (Black Hook), a great rock cliff, loomed upon the horizon. Beyond it, gradually appeared a long chain of those islands among which lies Upernavik, where the last traces of civilized or semi-civilized life are found. The wind increased in force but the horizon remained remarkably clear. Over a bounding sea we sped rapidly along to the west, into the labyrinth of islands that are sprinkled along the southern sh.o.r.e of Melville Bay.[3]

Beyond, we were to come into the true boreal wilderness of ice, where there were only a few savage aborigines, its sole inhabitants.

On the following day, with reduced sail and the help of the auxiliary engine, we pushed far up into Melville Bay, where we ran into fields of pack-ice. Here we decided to hunt for game. With this purpose it was necessary to keep close to land. Here also came our first realistic experience with the great forces of the North. The pack-ice floated close around us, young ice cemented the broken ma.s.ses together, and for several days we were thus closely imprisoned in frozen seas.

These days of enforced delay were days of great pleasure, for the bears and seals on the ice afforded considerable sport. The constant danger of our position, however, required a close watch for the safety of the schooner. The Devil's Thumb, a high rock shaped like a dark thumb pointing at the sky, loomed darkly and beckoningly before us. A biting wind descended from the interior.

The ice groaned; the eiderducks, guillemots and gulls uttered shrill and disturbing cries, seemingly sensing the coming of a storm.

For three days we were held in the grip of the relentless pack; then the glimmer of the land ice changed to an ugly gray, the pack around us began to crack threateningly, and the sky darkened to the southward.