My Attainment of the Pole Part 33

Deprived as we were of most of the usual comforts of life, many things were taught us by the creatures about. From the hare, with its scrupulous attention to cleanliness, we learned how to cleanse our hands and faces. With no soap, no towels and very little water, we had some difficulty in trying to keep respectable appearances. The hare has the same problem to deal with, but it is provided by nature with a cleansing apparatus. Its own choice is the forepaw, but with its need for snow shoes the hind legs serve a very useful purpose, and then, too, the surface is developed, a surface covered with tough fur which, we discovered, possessed the quality of a wet sponge and did not require, for efficiency, either soap or water. With hare paws, therefore, we kept clean. These paws also served as napkins. To take the place of a basin and a towel we therefore gathered a supply of hare paws, enough to keep clean for at least six months.

The hare was a good mark for E-tuk-i-shook with the sling shot, and many fell victims to his primitive genius. Ah-we-lah, never an expert at stone slinging, became an adept with the bow and arrow. Usually he returned with at least a hare from every day's chase. Our main success resulted from a still more primitive device. Counting on its inquisitiveness we devised a chain of loop lines arranged across the hare's regular lines of travel. In playing and jumping through these loops, the animal tightened the lines and became our victim automatically.

The ptarmigan chase was possible only for Ah-we-lah. The bird was not at all shy, for it often came close to our den and scattered the snow like a chicken. It was too small a mark for the sling shot and only Ah-we-lah could give the arrow the precise direction for these feathered creatures. Altogether, fifteen were secured in our locality, and all served as dessert for my special benefit. According to Eskimo custom, a young, unmarried man or woman cannot eat the ptarmigan, or "_ahr-rish-shah_" as they call it. That pleasure is reserved for the older people, and I did not for a moment risk the sacrilege of trying to change the custom. It was greatly to my advantage, for it not only impressed with suitable force my dignity as a superior Eskimo, but it enabled me to enjoy an entire bird at a time instead of only a teasing mouthful.

To us the ptarmigan was at all times fascinating, but it proved ever a thing of mystery. Descending from the skies at unexpected times it embarks again for haunts unknown. At times we saw the birds in great numbers. At other times they were absent for months. In summer the bird has gray and brown feathers, mingled with white. It keeps close to the inland ice, making its course along the snowy coast of Noonataks, beyond the reach of man or fox. Late in September it seeks the lower ground along the sea level.

Like the hare and the musk ox, it delights in windy places where the snow has been driven away. There it finds bits of moss and withered plants which satisfy its needs. The summer plumage is at first sight like that of the partridge. On close examination one finds the feathers are only tipped with color--underneath, the plumage is white. In winter it retains only the black feathers of its tail, otherwise it is as white as the hare. Its legs often are covered with tough fur, like that of the hare's lower hind legs. The meat is delicate in flavor and tender. It is the most beautiful of the four birds that remain in the white world when all is bleak during the night.

We sought the fox more diligently than the ptarmigan. We had a more tangible way of securing it. Furthermore, we were in great need of its skin. E-tuk-i-shook and Ah-we-lah regarded fox hams as quite a delicacy--a delicacy which I never willingly shared when there were musk tenderloins about. We had no steel traps, and with its usual craft the fox usually managed to evade our crude weapons by keeping out of sight.

Bone traps were made with a good deal of care after the pattern of steel traps. We used a musk-ox horn as a spring. But with these we were only partially successful. As a last resort, little domes were arranged in imitation of the usual caches, with trap stone doors. In these we managed to secure fourteen white and two blue animals. After that they proved too wise for our craft.

The fox becomes shy only in the end of October, when its fur begins to be really worth taking. Before that it followed us everywhere on the musk ox quest, for it was not slow to learn the advantage of being near our battle scenes. We frequently left choice bits for its picking, a favor which it seemed to appreciate by a careful watchfulness of our camps. Although a much more cunning thief than the bear, we could afford its plunderings, for it had not so keen a taste for blubber and its capacity was limited. We thus got well acquainted.

Up to the present we had failed in the quest of the seal. During the open season of summer, without a _kayak_, we could not get near the animal. As the winter and the night advanced, we were too busy with the land animals to watch the blow-holes in the new ice. When the sea is first spread with the thin sheet of colorless ice, which later thickens, the seal rises to the surface, makes a breathing hole, descends to its feeding grounds on the sea bottom for about ten minutes, then rises and makes another hole. This line of openings is arranged in a circle or a series of connecting, oblong lines, marking that particular seal's favorite feeding ground. Before the young ice is covered with snow, these breathing holes are easily located by a ring of white frost crystals, which condense and fall as the seal blows. But now that the winter had sheeted the black ice evenly with a white cover, the seal holes, though open, could not be found. We were not in need of either fat or meat, but the seal skins were to fill an important want. We required for boots and sled lashing the thin, tough seal hide. How could we get it?

From our underground den we daily watched the wanderings of the bears.

They trailed along certain lines which we knew to be favorable feeding grounds for seals, but they did not seem to be successful. Could we not profit by their superb scenting instinct and find the blow-holes? The bear had been our worst enemy, but unconsciously it also proved to be our best friend.

We started out to trail the bear's footprints. By these we were led to the blow-holes, where we found the snow about had been circled with a regular trail. Most of these had been abandoned, for the seal has a scent as keen as the bear, but a few "live" holes were located. Sticks were placed to locate these, and after a few days' careful study and hard work we harpooned six seals. Taking only the skins and blubber, we left the carca.s.ses for bruin's share of the chase--to be consumed later.

We did not hunt together with the bear--at least, not knowingly.

In these wanderings over game lands we were permitted a very close scrutiny of the animals about, and it was at this time that I came to certain definite conclusions as to prevailing laws of color and dress of our co-habitants of the Polar wastes.

The animals of the Arctic a.s.sume a color in accordance to their need for heat transmission. The prevailing influence is white, as light furs permit the least escape of heat. It is evidently more important to confine the heat of the body, than to gather heat from the sun's feeble rays. The necessity for bleaching the furry raiment becomes most operative in winter when the temperature of the air is 150 below that of the body. In the summer, when the continued sunshine is made more heating by the piercing influence of the reflecting snow-fields, there is a tendency to absorb heat. Then nature darkens the skin, which absorbs heat accordingly.

The relative advantage of light and dark shades can be easily demonstrated by placing pieces of white and black cloth on a surface of snow, with a slope at right angles to the sun's rays. If, after a few hours, the cloth is removed the snow under the black cloth will be melted considerably, while that under the white cloth will show little effect.

Nature makes use of this law of physics to ease the hard lot of its creatures fighting the weather in the icy world. The laws of color protection as advocated in the rules of natural selection are not operative here, because of the vitally important demand of heat economy.

If we now seek the problem of nature's body colored dyes, with heat economy as the key, our calculations will become easy. The serwah, a species of guillemot, which is as black as the raven in summer, is white in winter. The ptarmigan is light as pearl in winter, but its feathers become tipped with amber in summer. The hare is slightly gray in summer, but, in winter, becomes white as the snow under which it finds food and shelter.

The white fox is gray in summer, the blue fox darkens as the sun advances, while its under fur becomes lighter with increasing cold. The caribou is dark brown as it grazes the moss-colored fields, but becomes nearly white with the permanent snows. The polar bear, as white as nature can make it, with only blubber to mix its paints, basks in the midnight sun with a raiment suggestive of gold. The musk ox changes its dark under-fur for a lighter shade. The raven has a white under-coat in winter. The rat is gray in summer but bleaches to blue-gray in winter time. The laws of selection and heat economy are thus combined.

While thus preparing for the coming winter by seeking animals with furry pelts, the weather conditions made our task increasingly difficult. The storm of the descending sun whipped the seas into white fury and brushed the lands with icy clouds. With the descent of the sun, nature again set its seal of gloom on Arctic life. The cheer of a sunny heaven was blotted from the skies, and the coming of the winter blackness was signalled by the beginning of a warfare of the elements. All hostile nature was now set loose to expend its restive battle energy.

For brief moments the weather was quiet, and then in awe-inspiring silence we steered for sequestered gullies in quest of little creatures.

This death-like stillness was in harmony with our loneliness. As the sea was stilled by the iron bonds of frost, as life sought protection under the storm-driven snows of land, the winds, growing even wilder, beat a maddening onslaught over the dead, frozen world. The thunder of elements shook the very rocks under which we slept. Then again would fall a spell of that strange silence--all was dead, the sun glowed no more, the creatures of the wilds were hushed. We were all alone--alone in a vast, white dead world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEMMING]

A HUNDRED NIGHTS IN AN UNDERGROUND DEN

LIVING LIKE MEN OF THE STONE AGE--THE DESOLATION OF THE LONG NIGHT--LIFE ABOUT CAPE SPARBO--PREPARING EQUIPMENT FOR THE RETURN TO GREENLAND--SUNRISE, FEBRUARY 11, 1909

XXVIII

LIFE ABOUT CAPE SPARBO

The coming night slowly fixed its seal on our field of activity. Early in August the sun had dipped under the icy contour of North Lincoln, and Jones Sound had then begun to spread its cover of crystal. The warm rays gradually melted in a perpetual blue frost. The air thickened. The land darkened. The days shortened. The night lengthened. The Polar cold and darkness of winter came hand in hand.

Late in September the nights had become too dark to sleep in the open, with inquisitive bears on every side. Storms, too, increased thereafter and deprived us of the cheer of colored skies. Thus we were now forced to seek a retreat in our underground den.

We took about as kindly to this as a wild animal does to a cage. For over seven months we had wandered over vast plains of ice, with a new camp site almost every day. We had grown accustomed to a wandering life like that of the bear, but we had not developed his hibernating instinct. We were anxious to continue our curious battle of life.

In October the bosom of the sea became blanketed, and the curve of the snow-covered earth was polarized in the eastern skies. The final period for the death of day and earthly glory was advancing, but Nature in her last throes displayed some of her most alluring phases. The colored silhouette of the globe was perhaps the most remarkable display. In effect, this was a shadow of the earth thrown into s.p.a.ce. By the reflected, refracted and polarized light of the sun, the terrestrial shadows were outlined against the sky in glowing colors. Seen occasionally in other parts of the globe, it is only in the Polar regions, with its air of crystal and its surface of mirrors, that the proper mediums are afforded for this gigantic spectral show.

We had an ideal location. A glittering sea, with a level horizon, lay along the east and west. The weather was good, the skies were clear, and, as the sun sank, the sky over it was flushed with orange or gold.

This gradually paled, and over the horizon opposite there rose an arc in feeble prismatic colors with a dark zone of purple under it. The arc rose as the sun settled; the purple spread beyond the polarized bow; and gradually the heavens turned a deep purple blue to the zenith, while the halo of the globe was slowly lost in its own shadow.

The colored face of the earth painted on the screen of the heavens left the last impression of worldly charm on the retina. In the end of October the battle of the elements, storms attending the setting of the sun, began to blast the air into a chronic fury. By this time we were glad to creep into our den and await the vanishing weeks of ebbing day.

In the doom of night to follow, there would at least be some quiet moments during which we could stretch our legs. The bears, which had threatened our existence, were now kept off by a new device which served the purpose for a time. We had food and fuel enough for the winter.

There should have been nothing to have disturbed our tempers, but the coming of the long blackness makes all Polar life ill at ease.

Early in November the storms ceased long enough to give us a last fiery vision. With a magnificent cardinal flame the sun rose, gibbered in the sky and sank behind the southern cliffs on November 3. It was not to rise again until February 11 of the next year. We were therefore doomed to hibernate in our underground den for at least a hundred double nights before the dawn of a new day opened our eyes.

The days now came and went in short order. For hygienic reasons we kept up the usual routine of life. The midday light soon darkened to twilight. The moon and stars appeared at noon. The usual part.i.tion of time disappeared. All was night, unrelieved darkness, midnight, midday, morning or evening.

We stood watches of six hours each to keep the fires going, to keep off the bears and to force an interest in a blank life. We knew that we were believed to be dead. For our friends in Greenland would not ascribe to us the luck which came after our run of abject misfortune. This thought inflicted perhaps the greatest pain of the queer prolongation of life which was permitted us. It was loneliness, frigid loneliness. I wondered whether men ever felt so desolately alone.

We could not have been more thoroughly isolated if we had been transported to the surface of the moon. I find myself utterly unable to outline the emptiness of our existence. In other surroundings we never grasp the full meaning of the word "alone." When it is possible to put a foot out of doors into sunlight without the risk of a bear-paw on your neck it is also possible to run off a spell of blues, but what were we to do with every dull rock rising as a bear ghost and with the torment of a satanic blackness to blind us?

With the cheer of day, a kindly nature and a new friend, it is easy to get in touch with a sympathetic chord. The mere thought of another human heart within touch, even a hundred miles away, would have eased the suspense of the silent void. But we could entertain no such hopefulness.

We were all alone in a world where every pleasant aspect of nature had deserted us. Although three in number, a bare necessity had compressed us into a single composite individuality.

There were no discussions, no differences of opinion. We had been too long together under bitter circ.u.mstances to arouse each other's interest. A single individual could not live long in our position. A selfish instinct tightened a fixed bond to preserve and protect one another. As a battle force we made a formidable unit, but there was no matches to start the fires of inspiration.

The half darkness of midday and the moonlight still permitted us to creep from under the ground and seek a few hours in the open. The stone and bone fox traps and the trap caves for the bears which we had built during the last glimmer of day offered an occupation with some recreation. But we were soon deprived of this.

Bears headed us off at every turn. We were not permitted to proceed beyond an enclosed hundred feet from the hole of our den. Not an inch of ground or a morsel of food was permitted us without a contest. It was a fight of nature against nature. We either actually saw the little sooty nostrils with jets of vicious breath rising, and the huge outline of a wild beast ready to spring on us, or imagined we saw it. With no adequate means of defense we were driven to imprisonment within the walls of our own den.

From within, our position was even more tantalizing. The bear thieves dug under the snows over our heads and s.n.a.t.c.hed blocks of blubber fuel from under our very eyes at the port without a consciousness of wrongdoing. Occasionally we ventured out to deliver a lance, but each time the bear would make a leap for the door and would have entered had the opening been large enough. In other cases we shot arrows through the peep-hole. A bear head again would burst through the silk covered window near the roof, where knives, at close range and in good light, could be driven with sweet vengeance.

As a last resort we made a hole through the top of the den. When a bear was heard near, a long torch was pushed through. The snow for acres about was then suddenly flashed with a ghostly whiteness which almost frightened us. But the bear calmly took advantage of the light to pick a larger piece of the blubber upon which our lives depended, and then with an air of superiority he would move into the brightest light, usually within a few feet of our peep-hole, where we could almost touch his hateful skin. Without ammunition we were helpless.

Two weeks after sunset we heard the last cry of ravens. After a silence of several days they suddenly descended with a piercing shout which cut the frosty stillness. We crept out of our den quickly to read the riddle of the sudden bl.u.s.ter. There were five ravens on five different rocks, and the absence of the celestial color gave them quite an appropriate setting. They were restless: there was no food for them. A fox had preceded them with his usual craftiness, and had left no pickings for feathered creatures.

A family of five had gathered about in October, when the spoils of the chase were being cached, and we encouraged their stay by placing food for them regularly. Some times a sly fox, and at other times a thieving bear, got the little morsels, but there were usually sufficient picking for the raven's little crop. They had found a suitable cave high up in the great cliffs of granite behind our den.

We were beginning to be quite friendly. My Eskimo companions ascribed to the birds almost human qualities and they talked to them reverently, thereby displaying their heart's desire. The secrets of the future were all entrusted to their consideration. Would the "too-loo-ah" go to Eskimo Lands and deliver their messages? The raven said "ka-ah" (yes).

E-tuk-i-shook said: "Go and take the tears from An-na-do-a's eyes; tell her that I am alive and well and will come to take her soon. Tell Pan-ic-pa (his father) that I am in Ah-ming-ma-noona (Musk Ox Land).

Bring us some powder to blacken the bear's snout." "Ka-ah, ka-ah," said the two ravens at once.