True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World Part 7

The precautions that the sergeant had taken on leaving the man saved his life, as a half-hour's longer exposure to the extreme cold would have proved fatal. As it was, Anderson was brought to the ship insensible, with his heart scarcely beating, with clinched, frozen hands, rigid limbs, gla.s.sy eyes, and hard-set jaws. He lost parts of both feet, of both hands, and of his nose by amputation, but with his robust const.i.tution recovered his general health and returned safely to England.

The courage and devotion of Woon was recognized by his promotion to be color-sergeant, the highest grade to which Captain M'Clure could advance him. Welcome as was this increase of rank to Woon, it stood second in his mind to a sense of the high honor and deeper regard with which he was ever after held by the men of the ship. All felt that to his strength of will, powers of endurance, and heroic spirit of comradeship was due the life of the ship's favorite, first from death by exhaustion and exposure and then from a more horrible fate at the ravenous jaws of the greatly feared wolves.

In after time when, in the midst of a heated argument as to service matters, some exultant marine would refer to the story of the big seaman and the little sergeant, with a modesty equal to his courage and creditable to his spirit of comradeship Color-Sergeant Woon would at once interrupt the speaker and change the subject of conversation.

Nor is Woon's heroism an especially unusual episode in the thrilling history of arctic service. In countless and too-often unrecorded cases not only the officers, but especially also the rank and file, have practically and gloriously ill.u.s.trated by personal heroism those splendid qualities of uplifted humanity--fort.i.tude, loyalty, patience, best of all, solidarity and the spirit of self-sacrifice. These unheralded and humble heroes have at the call of duty, as circ.u.mstances required, done their part each in his own way. Among these the name of Color-Sergeant Woon stands high, simply because his rising to a n.o.ble occasion is a matter of written record.

We know not his later career in war or in peace, but we feel sure that as color-sergeant he lived up to the ideal of an American private when, as others of his caste, for the honor and safety of a nation--

"He shows in a nameless skirmish How the color-guard can die."

THE ANGEKOK KALUTUNAH AND THE STARVING WHITES

"Every one hears the voice of humanity, under whatever clime he may be born, through whose breast flows the gushing stream of life, pure and unrestrained."--GOETHE.

As elsewhere noted, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, United States Navy, in the brig _Advance_, while in search of Sir John Franklin, was forced into winter quarters at Van Rensselaer Harbor, Greenland, in the Autumn of 1853. As the harbor ice did not break up the following summer, the question arose in August, 1854, as to the proper line of action to be taken in order to preserve the lives of the crew. The stock of fuel was practically exhausted, the provisions were so depleted in quant.i.ty and restricted in quality as to threaten starvation, while in the matter of health Kane describes the crew as "a set of scurvy-riddled, broken-down men." He believed, nevertheless, and events proved that his judgment was sound and practicable, that the safety of the party would be best insured by remaining in the brig during the winter, saying: "In spite of the uncertainty, a host of expedients are to be resorted to and much Robinson-Crusoe work ahead. Moss was to be gathered for eking out our winter fuel; willow-stems, sorrel, and stone-crops collected as anti-s...o...b..tics and buried in the snow."

The Danish interpreter, Petersen, strongly urged the abandonment of the ship and an attempt to reach by boats the Danish colony at Upernavik, thus crossing Baffin Bay. Though his ice experiences were only as a subordinate with Penny's arctic expedition, his opinion caused a separation of the party.

With his unfailing quality of courtesy Kane accorded free action to each individual. He called all hands "and explained to them frankly the considerations that have determined me to remain. I advised them strenuously to forego the project, and told them I should freely give my permission to those desirous of making the attempt." Eight decided to remain and nine to make the attempt, among whom were Dr. Hayes and Petersen. The main incidents of their unsuccessful journey and their relations with the Etah Eskimo, whose material aid saved their lives, form the princ.i.p.al parts of this narrative.[8]

The boat party, under command of the Dane, J. C. Petersen, started August 28, 1854, provided with all that they could carry in the way of food, arms, ammunition, clothing, camp and boat gear. "I gave them [says Kane] their portion of our resources justly, and even liberally. They carried with them a written a.s.surance of a brother's welcome should they be driven back; and this a.s.surance was redeemed when hard trials had prepared them to share again our fortunes."

It required eight days of heavy and unremitting labor to get the boats and stores to open water, a start so discouraging that one man deserted the party and returned to the _Advance_. The ice conditions were most adverse from the very beginning, entailing sufferings and hazards from day to day. Among their experiences were besetment in the open pack, separation of boat and cargo during portages, some of the men adrift on detached floes, and stormy weather that kept them once for thirty hours without either warm food or drinking water. With courage, even if judgment was wanting, they pushed on and improved matters by obtaining food and another boat from the cache made at Littleton Island by Kane the preceding year. A gale nearly swamped them in rounding Cape Alexander, south of which they were forced to sh.o.r.e by the insetting ice-pack. Ice and weather were too much for them, and they eventually landed in Whale Sound, twenty miles north of Cape Parry. They had come to the end, a hundred miles from Kane--scarcely an eighth of their proposed voyage completed.

Here they were most hospitably received at an Eskimo encampment and had their first view of native life in its own environment. The princ.i.p.al man of the band was swarthy-faced Kalutunah, the Angekok, or medicine-man, of the wandering bands that travel to and fro along the narrow, ice-free land between Cape York and Etah. He was one of the Etahs who had visited the _Advance_ the preceding winter and so recognized them as friends. In a spirit of hospitality the Angekok invited the voyagers to his encampment, where a feast of walrus blubber and meat would be given them. It appeared, however, that the natives as a body did not relish the inroads to be made on their scanty supply of food, and one old woman especially inveighed against the feast. In the end the dark-skinned Kalutunah, enforcing his authority and a.s.serting his dignity as the Angekok of the tribe, tersely and firmly said: "The white man shall have blubber!" which ended the discussion.

Hayes records: "Our savage friends were kind and generous. They antic.i.p.ated every wish. Young women filled our kettles with water.

Kalutunah's wife brought us a steak of seal and a dainty piece of liver.

The hunt had latterly been unproductive, and they had not in the whole settlement food for three days. The supply of blubber obtained was sufficient to fill our keg. We distributed to them a few small pieces of wood, a dozen needles, and a couple of knives. We could not obtain any food, for the poor creatures had none either to give or to barter."

The architectural skill of these, the most northerly people of the world, was not without interest to Hayes. "I found the huts to be in shape much like an old-fashioned clay oven, square in front and sloping back into the hill. The whole interior was about ten feet in diameter and five and a half feet high. The walls were made of stones, moss, and of the bones of whale, narwhal, and other animals. They were not arched, but drawn in gradually and capped by long slabs of slate-stone stretching from side to side. The floor was covered with flat stones, and the rear half of it was elevated a foot. This elevation, called a _breck_, served both as bed and seat, being covered with dry gra.s.s over which were spread the skins of bears and dogs. Under a small corner _breck_ lay a litter of pups[9] and under another was stowed a joint of meat. Above the pa.s.sageway opened a window, a square sheet of dried intestines, neatly sewed together. The entrance hole, close to the front wall, was covered with a piece of seal-skin. The walls were lined with seal or fox skins stretched to dry. In the cracks between the stones of the walls were thrust whip-stocks and bone pegs on which hung coils of harpoon-lines. The lamps were made of soapstone and in shape much resembled a clam-sh.e.l.l, being about eight inches in diameter. The cavity was filled with oil and on the straight edge a flame was burning brilliantly. The wick which supplied fuel to the flame was of moss.

Above the flame hung, suspended from the roof, an oblong, nearly square, cooking-pot made of soapstone. Over this was a rack, made of bear rib-bones lashed together crosswise, on which were placed to dry stockings, mittens, trousers, and other articles of clothing. There were three lamps, and centring around its own particular lamp were three families, one represented by three generations."

Petersen's party went into winter quarters sixteen miles south of Cape Parry, where their equipment was landed, the boats hauled up, and their tents pitched. As the men suffered frightfully in the thin tents, a hut was built in a crevice of a neighboring cliff. With the well-known resourcefulness of the American sailor, they put up quite a comfortable shelter roofed with the sails of the boat. A canvas-covered wooden frame served as a door, and an old muslin shirt greased with seal blubber admitted a feeble light through the hole called a window.

Three weeks had now pa.s.sed since the party had left Kalutunah, and the attempt to live on the resources of the country had utterly failed, the only game killed by the hunter Petersen being eighteen ptarmigan (arctic grouse). With food for a week only, "to appease the gnawing pains of hunger we resorted to the expedient of eating the rock-lichen, which our party called stone-moss. Black externally with a white interior, it is an inch in diameter and the thickness of a wafer. When boiled it makes a glutinous and slightly nutritious fluid. Poor as was this plant, it at least filled the stomach and kept off the horrid sensation of hunger until we got to sleep."

By the middle of October the situation was impossible, with the cold forty degrees below the freezing-point, their bedding damp, the stone-moss disagreeing with some, and one man sick. They talked of a desperate foot journey to seek aid at Netlik, the native encampment forty miles to the north, but food and strength seemed equally lacking.

Even if made, would the journey be profitable? Hayes had already noted that the Eskimos "were poor beyond description. Nature seems to have supplied them with nothing but life, and they appear to have wrested from the animal world everything which they possessed. Clothed wholly in skins, with weapons fashioned of bone, they subsisted exclusively on animal food. [He adds:] There seems no hope for us save in stone-moss."

During an awful blizzard, when hopes were feeblest, two native hunters burst into the hut equally to the astonishment and relief of the boat party. Hayes says: "Invested from head to foot in a coating of ice and snow, shapeless lumps of whiteness, they reminded me of my boy-made snow kings. Their long, heavy fox-skin coats, surmounted by head-hoods, their bear-skin trousers, their seal-skin boots and mittens were saturated with snow. Their hair, eyelashes, and few chin hairs were sparkling with white frost. Each carried in his right hand a whip and in his left a lump of frozen meat and blubber. Throwing the meat on the floor, they stripped off their outer garments and hung them on the rafters.

Underneath their frosty garments they wore a shirt of bird-skins. One of these new-comers was the Angekok, the st.u.r.dy, good-natured, and voluble Kalutunah. Soon we were rejoicing in a good substantial meal at the expense of our guests."

The next morning when the Inuits were leaving the starving sledge dogs attacked Hayes, who says: "An instant more and I should have been torn to pieces. I had faced death before, but never had I felt as then; my blood fairly curdled in my veins. Death down the red throats of a pack of wolfish dogs was something peculiarly unpleasant.... The poor animals, howling piteously, had been tied separately for thirty-six hours and were savagely hungry. Every line or piece of skin or article of food was out of their reach. One, however, had already eaten the trace by which he was tied."

Of the critical situation Hayes writes: "We had thirty-six biscuits and three pints of bread-dust. Each man had a biscuit a day, a quant.i.ty insufficient for our need. The hunt having failed utterly to supply us, we must get our food of the natives or not at all. Accordingly we made with the Angekok a treaty by which his people are to furnish as much food as we might want, and we are to supply them with wood, iron, knives, and needles at rates to be subsequently fixed upon."

It was a fortnight before the Inuits again appeared, and meanwhile the whale-boat was broken up for fuel. All of the party had become frightfully weak and three men were sick. Hayes piteously says: "What _shall we_ do? Will the Eskimos never come? I never go out without expecting to find a corpse when I return."

At last, after two weeks, the natives returned, coming from a hunt with the greater part of three bears. While the starving men "were fattening on the juicy bear's meat they left us," yet there was a key-note of fear in the statement that the natives "were very chary of the meat, as we obtained only enough to suffice us for a few days." Their grat.i.tude for trifles and the willingness of the natives to give their last bit of food was shown a few days later by a young Eskimo. "He had nothing on his sledge but two small pieces of blubber, four birds, about a pound of bear meat, a bear-skin, and a small lamp. All these he laid at our feet."

Temporarily saved from death by starvation through food from the natives, the whites planned for the future. There was much wild talk about wintering at Cape York, of hiring the natives to take them across the unknown ice of Baffin Bay to Upernavik. Finally it was agreed that life depended on their obtaining supplies from or by their return to Kane and the _Advance_--either of these alternatives a difficult as well as a bitter resort. The distance along the ice-foot of the winding coast was estimated to be about three hundred miles, and it was hard to admit that their departure from the brig against the wishes and advice of their commander had been a serious mistake. At least they would try their friend Kalutunah on their various schemes before admitting their error.

The Angekok came with food, as usual, and at the same time there was a new visitor, a widow with a load of frozen birds--the little auks killed the summer before and stored for winter consumption. She declined to eat the walrus and held fast to her own food. It appeared at last that she was a patient of the medicine-man, Kalutunah, whose power over his comrades lay in his virtues as a sorcerer. Hayes says: "The widow greatly interested me. She ate birds for conscience' sake. Her husband's soul had pa.s.sed into the body of a walrus as a temporary habitation, and Angekok Kalutunah had prescribed that for a certain period she should not eat the flesh of this animal. As bear and seal were scarce, she was compelled to fall back on birds. This penance [he adds] was of a kind which every Eskimo undergoes upon the death of a near relation. The Angekok announces to the mourners into what animal the soul of the departed has pa.s.sed, and henceforth, until the spirit has shifted its quarters, they are not to partake of the flesh of that animal."

The party, cheered by the food brought by Kalutunah, broached to him their wishes. He listened gladly to the tales of the delight and charms of Upernavik sung by Petersen, but declined to attempt the ice journey across Baffin Bay, which was known to him only as a great, ice-filled ocean wherein had perished many of his tribe, as had lately the husband of the bird-eating widow. Neither would he sell his dogs, without whom he could neither travel nor hunt. To their surprise he consented to take one of the party north to the _Advance_. The commander of the boat-party, Petersen, decided to make the journey, and with him a seaman, G.o.dfrey, was unwisely allowed to go, and the sledge was also accompanied to the native settlement at Netlik by two other men. The Netlik visit resulted in feasts for the men who stopped there, but Petersen and G.o.dfrey turned back a few days later to the boat camp. They said that they were in fear of their lives from an Eskimo, Sip-su, with whom they had trouble. Hayes records the despair of the party at this situation, saying: "We are at the end of our plans and in two days more shall be at the end of our provisions. We are dest.i.tute--helpless. What _shall_ we do?"

The day that food failed he rejoices thus: "Again the Eskimos appear to us more as our good angels than as our enemies. Kalutunah and another hunter came to us to-day and threw at our feet a large piece of walrus beef and a piece of liver." Doubtless through the friendly influence of the Angekok other hunters came to the starving whites from time to time with meat--even the dreaded bully, Sip-su--receiving in payment bits of wood or of iron.

It was none the less clear that the party, unable to hunt itself, could not hope to live through the winter on meat from the natives who at times were themselves on the verge of starvation. It was decided to obtain a sledge and dogs wherewith to make the journey back to the brig.

To build a sledge Hayes examined those of the Inuits of which he says: "It was the most ingeniously contrived specimen of the mechanic art that I have ever seen, made wholly of bone and leather. The runners, square behind and rounded upward in front, about five feet long, were slabs of bone; not solid, but composed of pieces of various shapes and sizes cunningly fitted and tightly lashed together. Near their margins were rows of little holes, through which were run strings of seal-skin, by which the blocks were fastened together, making a slab almost as firm as a board. These bones were flattened and ground--a work of months for a single runner--into the required shape with stones.

"The runners were shod with ivory from the tusk of the walrus, ground flat and its corners squared with stones; it was fastened to the runner by a seal-skin string which was looped through two counter-sunk holes.

This sole, though composed of a number of pieces, was uniform and as smooth as gla.s.s.

"The runners, fourteen inches apart, were fastened together by bones tightly lashed. These cross-bars were the femur of the bear, the antlers of the reindeer, and the ribs of the narwhal. Two walrus ribs were lashed, one to the after-end of each runner, for upstanders, and were braced by a piece of reindeer antler secured across the top."

Quite hopeless of building anything that should be as good as this, they succeeded in making an indifferent sled from the remains of their boats, which had been broken up and largely used for fuel. Four dogs were bought, but a single day's journey showed how impossible it was to hope to reach Kane with such a wretched field outfit. They must resort to the natives, and especially to Kalutunah the Angekok.

After endless efforts the boat party succeeded in obtaining dog teams sufficient to enable them to make the return journey to the _Advance_.

As Petersen had gone ahead with one man, it left Hayes to conduct to the ship the other men, one being too sick to travel. It was a journey full of suffering from the extreme cold, of danger especially in rounding the precipitous cliffs of Cape Alexander, where the strong sea current from the north and the tides from the south cause danger spots that often bring death to the midwinter sledgemen.

Of their treatment while travelling up the coast one instance is given by Hayes: "We received all manner of kind attentions from our hosts. The women pulled off our boots, mittens, coats, and stockings and hung them up to dry. My beard was frozen fast to the fur of my coat, and it was the warm hand of Kalutunah's wife that thawed away the ice. Meats of different kinds were brought in and offered to us."

Of the pa.s.sage around the cape Hayes records: "For the s.p.a.ce of several feet the ice-foot was not more than fifteen inches wide, and sloping. A halt was called and men and dogs crouched behind the rocks for shelter.

The furious wind, still lashing the waves against the frozen sh.o.r.e at our feet, whirled great sheets of snow down upon us from the overhanging cliffs. We could not face the pitiless storm at our backs, and to go forward seemed impossible. Discarding my mittens and clinging with my bare hands to the crevices in the rock, I moved cautiously along the sloping shelf. Below the breaking surf yawned to receive any victim who made an inadvertent step. I shall not soon forget the joy and thankfulness with which I found myself upon the broad ice-belt at the farther side of this dangerous place. The dogs were driven forward by their native masters and, seized by the collars, were dragged around the point. The sledges were pushed along the shelf and turned on one runner and held until the dogs could stretch their traces and, bounding forward, at the word whirled them around in safety before they could topple over the precipice."

Finally Van Rensselaer Harbor was reached, and the returning wanderers, blinded, frost-bitten, and exhausted, staggered on to the deck of the _Advance_. With his generous heart their old commander Kane received them with open arms and brotherly greetings.

One cannot but cla.s.s as astounding these human experiences, which marked the first extended relations between the men of Etah and the adventurous explorers who had come from the outside world. In this instance there had been brought face to face the hitherto unknown men of the stone age and the representatives of the high and vaunted civilization that aims to uplift and to dominate all the nations of the earth.

On the one hand were the Etahs, who were actual children of the stone age--clothed in skins, without wood or metal, having neither houses nor boats, using stone utensils in their rude huts of skin or of rock, and living solely by the hunt. Following the chase with weapons of bone, through untold hardships they wrested, day by day, precarious food from their home environment--a habitat on one of the most desolate reaches of the arctic coasts. Their struggles for mere existence under these harsh conditions of uncertainty were such as--either among the men of the stone age or in the imperial cities of to-day--engender intense selfishness and lead to deadly contests in order to save the strong at the expense of the weak.

On the other hand were the men of the civilized world, provided with boats, furnished with selected food, especially equipped for polar service, and armed with the best weapons. Engaged in the mission of relieving the men of Franklin's missing squadron, with their superior knowledge and their trained minds, they were supposed to be able not only to be self-reliant and self-sustaining, but also to extend aid to the needy.

Through the irony of fickle fortune the civilized men had found themselves unable to maintain life by the chase of the land and sea game of the region. In dire distress, with failing food, they faced certain death unless aid should come from outside sources.

To the savage and famine-threatened men of Etah the appalling condition of their alien visitors was clearly evident. Moreover, if the helpless white men were simply left to themselves they must soon perish, leaving for the Inuits untold wealth of hitherto unknown treasures,--of iron and wood, of cloth and cordage, of robes and of weapons.

In this fearful crisis, amid arctic cold and in polar darkness, savage humanity rose to heroic heights. Selfishness and covetousness stood abashed among these children of the stone age, and in their stead were awakened holy feelings of human pity and a spirit of self-denying charity.