Chapter XXXVI: How a Geographic Society Prostituted Its Name 541 (7)

The sled equipment consisted of two sleds weighing fifty-two pounds each; one twelve-foot folding canvas boat, the wood of which formed part of a sled; one silk tent, two canvas sled covers, two reindeer skin sleeping bags, floor furs, extra wood for sled repairs, screws, nails and rivets.

My instruments were as follows: One field glass; one pocket compass; one liquid compass; one aluminum surveying compass, with azimuth attachment; one French surveyor's sextant, with radius 71/2, divided on silver to 10', reading by Vernier to 10'' (among the extra attachments were a terrestrial and an astronomical telescope, and an extra night telescope mounted in aluminum, and also double refracting prisms, thermometers, etc.--the instrument was made by Hurleman of France and bought of Keuffel & Esser); one glass artificial horizon; three Howard pocket chronometers; one Tiffany watch; one pedometer; map-making material and instruments; three thermometers; one aneroid barometer; one camera and films; notebook and pencils.

The personal bags contained four extra pairs of kamiks, with fur stockings, a woolen shirt, three pairs of sealskin mittens, two pairs of fur mittens, a piece of blanket, a sealskin coat (netsha), extra fox tails and dog harness, a repair kit for mending clothing, and much other necessary material.

On the march we wore snow goggles, blue fox coats (kapitahs) and birdskin shirts (Ah-tea), bearskin pants (Nan-nooka), sealskin boots (Kam-ik), hare-skin stockings (Ah-tee-shah), and a band of fox tails under the knee and about the waist.

The food supply, as will be seen by the following list, was mostly pemmican:

Eight hundred and five pounds of beef pemmican, one hundred and thirty pounds of walrus pemmican, fifty pounds of musk ox tenderloin, twenty-five pounds of musk ox tallow, two pounds of tea, one pound of coffee, twenty-five pounds of sugar, forty pounds of condensed milk, sixty pounds of milk biscuit, ten pounds of pea soup powdered and compressed, fifty pounds of surprises, forty pounds petroleum, two pounds of wood alcohol, three pounds of candles and one pound of matches.

We planned our future food supply with pemmican as practically the sole food; the other things were to be mere palate satisfiers. For the eighty days the supply was to be distributed as follows:

For three men: Pemmican, one pound per day for eighty days, two hundred and forty pounds. For six dogs: Pemmican, one pound per day for eighty days, four hundred and eighty pounds. This necessitated a total of seven hundred and twenty pounds of pemmican.

Of the twenty-six dogs, we had at first figured on taking sixteen over the entire trip to the Pole and back to our caches on land, but in this last calculation only six were to be taken. Twenty, the least useful, were to be used one after the other, as food on the march, as soon as reduced loads and better ice permitted. This, we counted, would give one thousand pounds of fresh meat over and above our pemmican supply. We carried about two hundred pounds of pemmican above the expected consumption, and in the final working out the dogs were used for traction purposes longer than we anticipated. But, with a cautious saving, the problem was solved somewhat more economically than any figuring before the start indicated.

Every possible article of equipment was made to do double service; not an ounce of dead weight was carried which could be dispensed with.

After making several trips about Svartevoeg, arranging caches for the return, studying the ice and land, I decided to make the final start on the Polar sea on March 18, 1908.

The time had come to part with most of our faithful Eskimo companions. Taking their hands in my manner of parting, I thanked them as well as I could for their faithful service to me. "_Tigishi ah yaung-uluk!_" (The big nail!), they replied, wishing me luck.

Then, in a half gale blowing from the northwest and charged with snow, they turned their backs upon me and started upon the return track. They carried little but ammunition, because we had learned that plenty of game was to be provided along the return courses.

Even after they were out of sight in the drifting snowstorm their voices came cheerily back to me. The faithful savages had followed me until told that I could use them no longer; and it was not only for their simple pay of knives and guns, but because of a real desire to be helpful. Their parting enforced a pang of loneliness.[10]

With a snow-charged blast in our faces it was impossible for us to start immediately after the Eskimos returned. Withdrawing to the snow igloo, we entered our bags and slept a few hours longer. At noon the horizon cleared. The wind veered to the southwest and came with an endurable force. Doubly rationed the night before, the dogs were not to be fed again for two days. The time had come to start. We quickly loaded our sleds. Hitching the dogs, we let the whips fall, and with bounds they leaped around deep ice grooves in the great paleocrystic floes.

Our journey was begun. Swept of snow by the force of the preceding storm, the rough ice crisply cracked under the swift speed of our sleds. Even on this uneven surface the dogs made such speed that I kept ahead of them only with difficulty. Their barking pealed about us and re-echoed from the black cliffs behind. Dashing about transparent ultramarine gorges, and about the base of miniature mountains of ice, we soon came into a region of undulating icy hills. The hard irregularity of the ice at times endangered our sleds. We climbed over ridges like walls. We jumped dangerous crevasses, keeping slightly west by north; the land soon sank in the rear of us. Drifting clouds and wind-driven snows soon screened the tops of black mountains. Looking behind, I saw only a swirling, moving scene of dull white and nebulous gray. On every side ice hummocks heaved their backs and writhed by. Behind me followed four snugly loaded sleds, drawn by forty-four selected dogs, under the lash of four expert Eskimo drivers. The dogs pranced; the joyous cries of the natives rose and fell. My heart leaped; my soul sang. I felt my blood throb with each gallop of the leaping dog teams. The sound of their feet pattering on the snow, the sight of their shaggy bodies tossing forward, gave me joy. For every foot of ice covered, every minute of constant action, drew me nearer, ever nearer, to my goal.

Our first run was auspicious; it seemed to augur success. By the time we paused to rest we had covered twenty-six miles.

We pitched camp on a floeberg of unusual height; about us were many big hummocks, and to the lee of these banks of hardened snow. Away from land it is always more difficult to find snow suitable for cutting building blocks. There, however, was an abundance. We busily built, in the course of an hour, a comfortable snow igloo. Into it we crept, grateful for shelter from the piercing wind.

The dogs curled up and went to sleep without a call, as if they knew that there would be no food until to-morrow. My wild companions covered their faces with their long hair and sank quietly into slumber. For me sleep was impossible. The whole problem of our campaign had again to be carefully studied, and final plans made, not only to reach our ultimate destination, but for the two returning Eskimos and for the security of the things left at Annoatok, and also to re-examine the caches left en route for our return. These must be protected as well as possible against the bears and wolves.

Already I had begun to think of our return to land. It was difficult at this time even to approximate any probable course. Much would depend upon conditions to be encountered in the northward route. Although we had left caches of supplies with the object of returning along Nansen Sound, into Cannon Fiord and over Arthur Land, I entertained grave doubts of our ability to return this way. I knew that if the ice should drift strongly to the east we might not be given the choice of working out our own return. For, in such an event, we should perhaps be carried helplessly to Greenland, and should have to seek a return either along the east or the west coast.

This drift, in my opinion, would not necessarily mean dangerous hardships, for the musk oxen would keep us alive to the west, and to the east it seemed possible to reach Shannon Island, where the Baldwin-Zeigler expeditions had abandoned a large cache of supplies. It appeared not improbable, also, that a large land extension might offer a safe return much further west. I fell asleep while pondering over these things. By morning the air was clear of frost crystals. It was intensely cold, not only because of a temperature of 56 deg. below zero, Fahrenheit, but a humid chill which pierced to the very bones. A light breeze came from the west. The sun glowed in a freezing field of blue.

Hitching our dogs, we started. For several hours we seemed to soar over the white spaces. Then the ice changed in character, the expansive, thick fields of glacier-like ice giving way to floes of moderate size and thickness. These were separated by zones of troublesome crushed ice thrown into high-pressure lines, which offered serious barriers. Chopping the pathway with an ice axe, we managed to make fair progress. We covered twenty-one miles of our second run on the Polar sea. I expected, at the beginning of this final effort, to send back by this time the two extra men, Koo-loo-ting-wah and In-u-gi-to, who had remained to help us over the rough pack-ice. But progress had not been as good as I had expected; so, although we could hardly spare any food to feed their dogs, the two volunteered to push along for another day without dog food.

Taking advantage of big, strong teams and the fire of early enthusiasm, we aimed to force long distances through the extremely difficult ice jammed here against the distant land. The great weight of the supplies intended for the final two sleds were now distributed over four sleds. With axe and compass in hand, I led the way. With prodigious effort I chopped openings through barriers after barriers of ice. Sled after sled was passed over the tumbling series of obstacles by my companions while I advanced to open a way through the next. With increasing difficulties in some troublesome ice, we camped after making only sixteen miles. Although weary, we built a small snowhouse. I prepared over my stove a pot of steaming musk ox loins and broth and a double brew of tea. After partaking of this our two helpers prepared to return. To have taken them farther would have necessitated a serious drain on our supplies and an increased danger for their lives in a longer return to land.

By these men I sent back instructions to Rudolph Francke to remain in charge of my supplies at Annoatok until June 5th, 1908, and then, if we should not have returned by that date, to place Koo-loo-ting-wah in charge and go home either by a whaler or some Danish ship. I knew that, should we get in trouble, he could offer no relief to help us, and that his waiting an indefinite time alone would be a needless hardship.

A BREATHING SPELL

POLEWARD!]

The way before Koo-loo-ting-wah and In-u-gi-to, who had so cheerfully remained to the last possible moment that they could be of help, was not an entirely pleasant one. Their friends were by now well on their journey toward Annoatok, and they had to start after them with sleds empty of provisions and dogs hungry for food.

They hoped to get back to land and off the ice of the Polar sea in one long day's travel of twenty-four hours. Even this would leave their fourth day without food for their dogs. In case of storms or moving of the ice, other days of famine might easily fall to their lot. However, they faced possible dangers cheerfully rather than ask me to give them anything from the stores that were to support their two companions, myself and our dogs on our way onward to the Pole and back. I was deeply touched by this superlative devotion. They assured me too (in which they were right) that they had an abundance of possible food in the eighteen dogs they took with them. If necessary, they could sacrifice a few at any time for the benefit of the others, as must often be done in the Northland.

There were no formalities in our parting on the desolate ice. Yet, as the three of us who were left alone gazed after our departing companions, we felt a poignant pang in our hearts. About us was a cheerless waste of crushed wind-and-water-driven ice. A sharp wind stung our faces. The sun was obscured by clouds which piled heavily and darkly about the horizon. The cold and brilliant jeweled effects of the frozen sea were lost in a dismal hue of dull white and sombre gray. On the horizon, Svartevoeg, toward which the returning Eskimos were bound, was but a black speck. To the north, where our goal lay, our way was untrodden, unknown. The thought came to me that perhaps we should never see our departing friends. With it came a pang of tenderness for the loved ones I had left behind me. Although our progress so far had been successful, and half the distance was made, dangers unknown and undreamed of existed in the way before us. My Eskimos already showed anxiety--an anxiety which every aboriginal involuntarily feels when land disappears on the horizon. Never venturing themselves far onto the Polar sea, when they lose sight of land a panic overcomes them. Before leaving us one of the departing Eskimos had pointed out a low-lying cloud to the north of us. "Noona" (land), he said, nodding to the others. The thought occurred to me that, on our trip, I could take advantage of the mirages and low clouds on the horizon and encourage a belief in a constant nearness to land, thus maintaining their courage and cheer.[11]

Regrets and fears were not long-lasting, however, for the exigencies of our problem were sufficiently imperative and absorbing. To the overcoming of these we had now to devote our entire attention and strain every fibre.

We had now advanced, by persistent high-pressure efforts, over the worst possible ice conditions, somewhat more than sixty miles. Of the 9 deg. between land's end and the Pole, we had covered one; and we had done this without using the pound of food per day allotted each of us out of the eighty days' supply transported.

OVER THE POLAR SEA TO THE BIG LEAD

WITH TWO ESKIMO COMPANIONS, THE RACE POLEWARD CONTINUES OVER ROUGH AND DIFFICULT ICE--THE LAST LAND FADES BEHIND--MIRAGES LEAP INTO BEING AND WEAVE A MYSTIC SPELL--A SWIRLING SCENE OF MOVING ICE AND FANTASTIC EFFECTS--STANDING ON A HILL OF ICE, A BLACK, WRITHING, SNAKY CUT APPEARS IN THE ICE BEYOND--THE BIG LEAD--A NIGHT OF ANXIETY--FIVE HUNDRED MILES ALREADY COVERED--FOUR HUNDRED TO THE POLE

XIV

TO EIGHTY-THIRD PARALLEL

Our party, thus reduced to three, went onward. Although the isolation was more oppressive, there were the advantages of the greater comfort, safety, speed and convenience that came from having only a small band. The large number of men in a big expedition always increases responsibilities and difficulties. In the early part of a Polar venture this disadvantage is eliminated by the facilities to augment supplies by the game en route and by ultimate advantages of the law of the survival of the fittest. But after the last supporting sleds return, the men are bound to each other for protection and can no longer separate. A disabled or unfitted dog can be fed to his companions, but an injured or weak man cannot be eaten nor left alone to die. An exploring venture is only as strong as its weakest member, and increased numbers, like increased links in a chain, reduce efficiency.

Moreover, personal idiosyncrasies and inconveniences always shorten a day's march. And, above all, a numerous party quickly divides into cliques, which are always opposed to each other, to the leader, and invariably to the best interests of the problem in hand. With but two savage companions, to whom this arduous task was but a part of an accustomed life of frost, I did not face many of the natural personal barriers which contributed to the failure of former Arctic expeditions.

In my judgment, when you double a Polar party its chances for success are reduced one-half; when you divide it, strength and security are multiplied.

We had been traveling about two and one-half miles per hour. By making due allowances for detours and halts at pressure lines, the number of hours traveled gave us a fair estimate of the day's distance. Against this the pedometer offered a check, and the compass gave the course. Thus, over blank charts, our course was marked.

By this kind of dead reckoning our position on March 20 was: Latitude, 82 deg. 23'; Longitude, 95 deg. 14'. A study of our location seemed to indicate that we had passed beyond the zone of ice crushed by the influence of land pressure. Behind were great hummocks and small ice; ahead was a cheerful expanse of larger, clearer fields, offering a promising highway.

Our destination was now about four hundred and sixty miles beyond. Our life, with its pack environment, assumed another aspect. Previously we permitted ourselves some luxuries. A pound of coal oil and a good deal of musk ox tallow were burned each day to heat the igloo and to cook abundant food. Extra meals were served when occasion called for them, and for each man there had been all the food and drink he desired. If the stockings or the mittens were wet there was fire enough to dry them out. All of this had now to be changed.

Hereafter there was to be a short daily allowance of food and fuel--one pound of pemmican a day for the dogs, about the same for the men, with just a taste of other things. Fortunately, we were well provided with fresh meat for the early part of the race by the lucky run through game lands. Because of the need of fuel economy we now cut our pemmican with an axe. Later it split the axe.

At first no great hardship followed our changed routine. We filled up sufficiently on two cold meals daily and also depended on superfluous bodily tissue. It was no longer possible to jump on the sled for an occasional breathing spell, as we had done along the land.

Such a journey as now confronted us is a long-continued, hard, difficult, sordid, body-exhausting thing. Each day some problem presents some peculiar condition of the ice or state of the weather. The effort, for instance, to form some shield from intense cold gives added interest to the game. That one thing after another is being met, with always the anticipation of next day's struggle, adds a thrill to the conquest, spurs one to greater and ever greater feats, and really constitutes the actual victory of such a quest. With overloaded sleds the drivers must now push and pull at them to aid the dogs. My task was to search the troubled ice for easy routes, cutting away here and there with the ice-axe to permit the passing of the sleds.

Finally stripping for the race, man and dog must walk along together through storms and frost for the elusive goal. Success or failure must depend mostly upon our ability to transport nourishment and to keep up the muscular strength for a prolonged period.

As we awoke on the morning of March 21 and peered out of the eye-port of the igloo, the sun edged along the northeast. A warm orange glow suffused the ice and gladdened our hearts. The temperature was 63 deg. below zero, Fahrenheit; the barometer was steady and high. There was almost no wind. Not a cloud lined the dome of pale purple blue, but a smoky streak along the west shortened our horizon in that direction and marked a lead of open water.

Our breakfast consisted of two cups of tea, a watch-sized biscuit, a chip of frozen meat and a boulder of pemmican. Creeping out of our bags, our shivering legs were pushed through bearskin cylinders which served as trousers. We worked our feet into frozen boots and then climbed into fur coats. Next we kicked the front out of the snowhouse and danced about to stimulate heart action.

Quickly the camp furnishings were tossed on the sleds and securely lashed. We gathered the dog traces into the drag lines, vigorously snapped the long whips, and the willing creatures bent to the shoulder straps. The sleds groaned. The unyielding snows gave a metallic ring. The train moved with a cheerful pace.

"_Am-my noona terronga dosangwah_" (Perhaps land will be out of sight today), we said to one another.[12] But the words did not come with serious intent. In truth, each in his own way felt keenly that we were leaving a world of life and possible comfort for one of torment and suffering. Axel Heiberg Land, to the south, was already only a dull blue haze, while Grant Land, on the eastward, was making fantastic figures of its peaks and ice walls. The ice ran in waves of undulating blue, shimmering with streams of gold, before us. Behind, the last vestiges of jagged land rose and fell like marionettes dancing a wild farewell. Our heart-pulls were backward, our mental kicks were forward.

Until now this strange white world had been one of grim reality. As though some unseen magician had waved his wand, it was suddenly transformed into a land of magic. Leaping into existence, as though from realms beyond the horizon, huge mirages wove a web of marvelous delusional pictures about the horizon. Peaks of snow were transformed into volcanoes, belching smoke; out of the pearly mist rose marvelous cities with fairy-like castles; in the color-shot clouds waved golden and rose and crimson pennants from pinnacles and domes of mosaic-colored splendor. Huge creatures, misshapen and grotesque, writhed along the horizon and performed amusing antics.

Beginning now, and rarely absent, these spectral denizens of the North accompanied us during the entire journey; and later, when, fagged of brain and sapped of bodily strength, I felt my mind swimming in a sea of half-consciousness, they filled me almost with horror, impressing me as the monsters one sees in a nightmare.

At every breathing spell in the mad pace our heads now turned to land. Every look was rewarded by a new prospect. From belching volcanoes to smoking cities of modern bustle, the mirages gave a succession of striking scenes which filled me with awed and marveling delight. A more desolate line of coast could not be imagined. Along its edge ran low wind-swept and wind-polished mountains. These were separated by valleys filled with great depths of snow and glacial ice.

Looking northward, the sky line was clear of the familiar pinnacles of icebergs. In the immediate vicinity many small bergs were seen; some of these were grounded, and the pack thus anchored was thrown in huge uplifts of pressure lines and hummocks. The sea, as is thereby determined, is very shallow for a long distance from land.

This interior accumulation of snow moves slowly to the sea, where it forms a low ice wall, a glacier of the Malaspina type. Its appearance is more like that of heavy sea ice; hence the name of the paleocrystic ice, fragments from this glacier, floebergs, which, seen in Lincoln Sea and resembling old floes, were supposed to be the product of the ancient upbuilding of the ice of the North Polar Sea.

Snapping our whips and urging the dogs, we traveled until late in the afternoon, mirages constantly appearing and melting about us. Now the land suddenly settled downward as if by an earthquake. The pearly glitter, which had raised and magnified it, darkened. A purple fabric fell over the horizon and merged imperceptibly into the lighter purple blue of the upper skies. We saw the land, however, at successive periods for several days. This happened whenever the atmosphere was in the right condition to elevate the terrestrial contour lines by refracting sun rays.

Every condition favored us on this march. The wind was not strong and struck us at an angle, permitting us to guard our noses by pushing a mitten under our hoods or by raising a fur-clad hand.

We had not been long in the field, however, when the wind, that ever-present dragon guardian of the unseen northern monarch's demesne, began to suck strength from our bodies. Shortly before Grant Land entirely faded the monster fawned on us with gentle breathing.

The snow was hard, and the ice, in fairly large fields separated by pressure lines, offered little resistance. On March 21, at the end of a forced effort of fourteen hours, the register indicated a progress of twenty-nine miles.

Too weary to build an igloo, we threw ourselves thoughtlessly upon the sleds for a short rest, and fell asleep. I was awakened from my fitful slumber by a feeling of compression, as if stifling arms hideously gripped me. It was the wind. I breathed with difficulty. I struggled to my feet, and about me hissed and wailed the dismal sound. It was a sharp warning to us that to sleep without the shelter of an igloo would probably mean death.

On the heavy floe upon which we rested were several large hummocks. To the lee of one of these we found suitable snow for a shelter.

Lines of snowy vapor were rushing over the pack. The wind came with rapidly increasing force. We erected the house, however, before we suffered severely from the blast. We crept into it out of the storm and nested in warm furs.

The wind blew fiercely throughout the night. By the next morning, March 22, the storm had eased to a steady, light breeze. The temperature was 59 deg. below zero. We emerged from our igloo at noon. Although the cheerless gray veil had been swept from the frigid dome of the sky, to the north appeared a low black line over a pearly cloud which gave us much uneasiness. This was a narrow belt of "water-sky," which indicated open water or very thin ice at no great distance.

The upper surface of Grant Land was now a mere thin pen line on the edge of the horizon. But a play of land clouds above it attracted the eyes to the last known rocks of solid earth. We now felt keenly the piercing cold of the Polar sea. The temperature gradually rose to 46 deg. F. below zero, in the afternoon, but there was a deadly chill in the long shadows which increased with the swing of the lowering sun.

A life-sapping draught, which sealed the eyes and bleached the nose, still hissed over the frozen sea. We had hoped that this would soften with the midday sun. Instead, it came with a more cutting sharpness. In the teeth of the wind we persistently pursued a course slightly west of north. The wind was slightly north of west. It struck us at a painful angle and brought tears. Our moistened lashes quickly froze together as we winked, and when we rubbed them and drew apart the lids the icicles broke the tender skin. Our breath froze on our faces. Often we had to pause, uncover our hands and apply the warm palms to the face before it was possible to see.

Every minute thus lost filled me with impatience and dismay. Minutes of traveling were as precious as bits of gold to a hoarding miser.

In the course of a brief time our noses became tipped with a white skin and also required nursing. My entire face was now surrounded with ice, but there was no help for it. If we were to succeed the face must be bared to the cut of the elements. So we must suffer. We continued, urging the dogs and struggling with the wind just as a drowning man fights for life in a storm at sea.

About six o'clock, as the sun crossed the west, we reached a line of high-pressure ridges. Beyond these the ice was cut into smaller floes and thrown together into ugly irregularities. According to my surmises, an active pack and troubled seas could not be far away. The water-sky widened, but became less sharply defined.

We laboriously picked a way among hummocks and pressure lines which seemed impossible from a distance. Our dogs panted with the strain; my limbs ached. In a few hours we arrived at the summit of an unusual uplift of ice blocks. Looking ahead, my heart pained as if in the grip of an iron hand. My hopes sank within me. Twisting snake-like between the white field, and separating the packs, was a tremendous cut several miles wide, which seemed at the time to bar all further progress. It was the Big Lead, that great river separating the land-adhering ice from the vast grinding fields of the central pack beyond, at which many heroic men before me had stopped. I felt the dismay and heartsickness of all of them within me now. The wind, blowing with a vengeful wickedness, laughed sardonically in my ears.

Of course we had our folding canvas boat on the sleds. But in this temperature of 48 deg. below zero I knew no craft could be lowered into water without fatal results. All of the ice about was firmly cemented together, and over it we made our way toward the edge of the water line.

Passing through pressure lines, over smaller and more troublesome fields, we reached the shores of the Big Lead. We had, by two encouraging marches, covered fifty miles. The first hundred miles of our journey on the Polar pack had been covered. The Pole was four hundred miles beyond!

Camp was pitched on a secure old ice field. Cutting through huge ice cliffs, the dark crack seemed like a long river winding between palisades of blue crystal. A thin sheet of ice had already spread over the mysterious deep. On its ebony mirrored surface a profusion of fantastic frost crystals arranged themselves in bunches resembling white and saffron-colored flowers.

Through the apertures of this young ice dark vapors rose like steam through a screen of porous fabrics and fell in feathers of snow along the sparkling shores. After partaking of a boulder of pemmican, E-tuk-i-shook went east and I west to examine the lead of water for a safe crossing. There were several narrow places, while here and there floes which had been adrift in the lead were now fixed by young ice. Ah-we-lah remained behind to make our snowhouse comfortable.

For a long time this huge separation in the pack had been a mystery to me. At first sight there seemed to be no good reason for its existence. Peary had found a similar break north of Robeson Channel. It was likely that what we saw was an extension of the same, following at a distance the general trend of the northernmost land extension.

This is precisely what one finds on a smaller scale when two ice packs come together. Here the pack of the central polar sea meets the land-adhering ice. The movement of the land pack is intermittent and usually along the coast. The shallows, grounded ice and projecting points interfere with a steady drift. The movement of the central pack is quite constant, in almost every direction, the tides, currents and winds each giving momentum to the floating mass. The lead is thus the breaking line between the two bodies of ice. It widens as the pack separates, and narrows or widens with an easterly or westerly drift, according to the pressure of the central pack. Early in the season, when the pack is crevassed and not elastic, it is probably wide; later, as the entire sea of ice becomes active, it may disappear or shift to a line nearer the land.

In low temperature new ice forms rapidly. This offers an obstruction to the drift of the old ice. As the heavy central pack is pressed against the unyielding land pack the small ice is ground to splinters, and even heavy floes are crushed. This reduced mass of small ice is pasted and cemented along the shores of the Big Lead, leaving a broad band of troublesome surface as a serious barrier to sled travel. It seems quite probable that this lead, or a condition similar to it, extends entirely around the Polar sea as a buffer between the land and the middle pack.

In exploring the shore line, a partially bridged place was found about a mile from camp, but the young ice was too elastic for a safe track. The temperature, however, fell rapidly with the setting sun, and the wind was just strong enough to sweep off the heated vapors. I knew better atmospheric condition could not be afforded quickly to thicken the young ice.

Returning to camp that night, we surprised our stomachs by a little frozen musk ox tenderloin and tallow, the greatest delicacy in our possession. Then we retired. Ice was our pillow. Ice was our bed. A dome of snow above us held off the descending liquid air of frost. Outside the wind moaned. Shudderingly, the deep howl of the dogs rolled over the ice. Lying on the sheeted deep, beneath my ears I heard the noise of the moving, grinding, crashing pack. It sounded terrifyingly like a distant thunder of guns. I could not sleep. Sick anxiety filled me. Could we cross the dreadful river on the morrow? Would the ice freeze? Or might the black space not hopelessly widen during the night? I lay awake, shivering with cold. I felt within me the blank loneliness of the thousands of desolate miles about me.

One hundred miles of the unknown had been covered; five hundred miles of the journey from our winter camp were behind us. Beyond, to the goal, lay four hundred unknown miles. Nothing dearly desired of man ever seemed so far away.

CROSSING MOVING SEAS OF ICE

CROSSING THE LEAD--THE THIN ICE HEAVES LIKE A SHEET OF RUBBER--CREEPING FORWARD CAUTIOUSLY, THE TWO DANGEROUS MILES ARE COVERED--BOUNDING PROGRESS MADE OVER IMPROVING ICE--THE FIRST HURRICANE--DOGS BURIED AND FROZEN INTO MASSES IN DRIFTS OF SNOW--THE ICE PARTS THROUGH THE IGLOO--WAKING TO FIND ONE'S SELF FALLING INTO THE COLD SEA.

XV

THE FIRST STEPS OVER THE GRINDING CENTRAL PACK

Ill at ease and shivering, we rose from our crystal berths on March 23 and peeped out of a pole-punched porthole. A feeble glow of mystic color came from everywhere at once. Outside, toward a sky of dull purple, columns of steam-like vapor rose from open ice water, resembling vapors from huge boiling cauldrons. We sank with chattering teeth to our cheerless beds and quivered with the ghostly unreality of this great vibrating unknown.

Long before the suppressed incandescent night changed to the prism sparkle of day we were out seeking a way over the miles of insecure young ice separating us from the central pack. On our snowshoes, with an easy tread, spread feet and with long life lines tied to each other, we ventured to the opposite shores of that dangerous spread of young ice. Beyond, the central pack glittered in moving lines and color, like quicksilver shot with rainbow hues.

The Big Lead was mottled and tawny colored, like the skin of a great constrictor. As we stood and looked over its broad expanse to the solid floes, two miles off, there came premonitions to me of impending danger. Would the ice bear us? If it broke, and the life line was not quickly jerked, our fate would almost certainly be sure death. Sontag, the astronomer of Dr. Hay's Expedition, thus lost his life. Many others have in like manner gone to the bottomless deep. On two occasions during the previous winter I had thus gone through, but the life line had saved me. What would be our fate here? But, whatever the luck, we must cross. I knew delay was fatal, for at any time a very light wind or a change in the drift might break the new ice and delay us long enough to set the doom of failure upon our entire venture.

Every precaution was taken to safeguard our lives. The most important problem was to distribute the weight so that all of it would not be brought to bear on a small area. We separated our dog teams from the sleds, holding to long lines which were fastened about our bodies and also to the sleds. The sleds were hitched to each other by another long line.

With bated breath and my heart thumping, I advanced at the end of a long line which was attached to the first sled, and picked my way through the crushed and difficult ice along shore. With the life-saving line fastened to each one of us, we were insured against possible dangers as well as forethought could provide. Running from sled to sled, from dog to dog, and man to man, it would afford a pulling chance for life should anyone break through the ice. It seemed unlikely that the ice along the entire chain would break at once, but its cracking under the step of one of us seemed probable.

I knew, as I gently placed my foot upon the thin yellowish surface, that at any moment I might sink into an icy grave. Yet a spirit of bravado thrilled my heart. I felt the grip of danger, and also that thrill of exultation which accompanies its terror.

Gently testing the ice before me with the end of my axe, with spread legs, on snowshoes, with long, sliding steps, I slowly advanced.

A dangerous cracking sound pealed in every direction under my feet. The Eskimos followed. With every tread the thin sheet ice perceptibly sank under me, and waved, in small billows, like a sheet of rubber.

Stealthily, as though we were trying to filch some victory, we crept forward. We rocked on the heaving ice as a boat on waves of water. Now and then we stepped upon sheets of thicker ice, and hastily went forward with secure footing. None of us spoke during the dangerous crossing. I heard distinctly the panting of the dogs and the patter of their feet. We covered the two miles safely, yet our snail-like progress seemed to cover many anxious years.

I cannot describe the exultation which filled me when the crossing was accomplished. It seemed as though my goal itself were stretching toward me. I experienced a sense of unbounded victory. I could have cheered with joy. Intoxicated with it, I and my companions leaped forward, new cheer quickening our steps. The dangers to come seemed less formidable now, and as we journeyed onward it was the mastering of these, as did our accomplishment in crossing the Big Lead, which gave us a daily incentive to continue our way and ever to apply brain and muscle to the subduing of even greater difficulties with zest.

It was in doing this that the real thrill, the real victory--the only thrill and victory, indeed--of reaching the North Pole lay. The attaining of this mythical spot did not then, and does not now, seem in itself to mean anything; I did not then, and do not now, consider it the treasure-house of any great scientific secrets. The only thing to be gained from reaching the Pole, the triumph of it, the lesson in the accomplishment, is that man, by brain power and muscle energy, can subdue the most terrific forces of a blind nature if he is determined enough, courageous enough, and undauntedly persistent despite failure.

On my journey northward I felt the ever constant presence of those who had died in trying to reach the goal before me. There were times when I felt a startling nearness to them--a sense like that one has of the proximity of living beings in an adjoining room. I felt the goad of their hopes within me; I felt the steps of their dead feet whenever my feet touched the ice. I felt their unfailing determination revive me when I was tempted to turn back in the days of inhuman suffering that were to come. I felt that I, the last man to essay this goal, must for them justify humanity; that I must crown three centuries of human effort with success.

With the perilous Big Lead behind us, a bounding course was set to reach the eighty-fifth parallel on the ninety-seventh meridian. What little movement was noted on the ice had been easterly. To allow for this drift we aimed to keep a line slightly west of the Pole.

We bounded northward joyously. Under our speeding feet the ice reverberated and rumbled with the echo of far-away splitting and crashing.

The sun sank into a haze like mother-of-pearl. Our pathway glowed with purple and orange. We paused only when the pale purple blue of night darkened the pack.

Starting forward in the afternoon of March 24, we crossed many small floes with low-pressure lines separated by narrow belts of new ice. Our speed increased. At times we could hardly keep pace with our dogs. The temperature rose to forty-one below zero. The western sky cleared slightly. Along the horizon remained misty appearances resembling land. This low-lying fog continued during our entire second hundred miles over the Polar basin. Under it we daily expected to see new land.

But Nature did not satisfy our curiosity for a long time. Both Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook were sure of a constant nearness to land. Because of the native panic out of its reassuring sight, I encouraged this belief, as I did concerning every other possible sign of land further northward. I knew that only by encouraging a delusion of nearness to land could I urge them ever farther in the face of the hardships that must inevitably come.

An altitude of the sun at noon on March 24 gave our position as latitude 83 deg. 31'. The longitude was estimated at 96 deg. 27'. The land clouds of Grant Land were still visible. The low bank of mist in the west occasionally brightened. For a while I believed this to be an indication of Crocker Land.

Until midday I took observations and endeavored to study the appearances of land. Our dogs sniffed the air as if scenting game. After a diligent search, one seal blow-hole was located, and later we saw an old bear track. No algae or other small life was detected in the water between the ice crevices. At the Big Lead a few algae had been gathered. But here the sea seemed sterile. Signs of seal and bear, however, were encouraging to us as possible future food supply. In returning, I calculated the season would be more advanced, and it was possible that life might move northward, thus permitting an extension of the time allowance of our rations.

Although the heat of the sun was barely felt, its rays began to pierce our eyes with painful effects. Reflected from the spotless surface of the storm-driven snows, the bright light could not long be endured without some protection, even by the Eskimos. Now came the time to test a simple expedient that had occurred to me at Annoatok. Amber-colored goggles, darkened or smoked glasses and ordinary automobile goggles had all been tried with indifferent results. They failed for one reason or another, mostly because of an insufficient range of vision or because of a faulty construction that made it impossible to proceed more than a few minutes without removing the accumulated condensation within them. At Annoatok I had made amber-colored goggles from the glass of my photographic supplies. By adjusting them I soon found they were a priceless discovery. They entirely eliminated one of the greatest torments of Arctic travel.

While effectually screening the active rays that would have injured the eye, these amber glasses at the same time possessed the inestimable advantage of not interfering with the range of vision.

Relieved of the snow glare, the eye was better enabled to see distant objects than through field glasses. It is frequently extremely difficult to detect icy surface irregularities on cloudy days. The amber glass dispelled this trouble perfectly, enabling the eye to search carefully every nook and crevice through the vague incandescence which blinds the observer in hazy weather. The glasses did not reduce the _quantity_ of light, as do smoked glasses, but the _quality_; the actinic rays, which do the greatest harm, were eliminated. We were not only relieved of the pain and fatigue of eye strain, but the color imparted a touch of cheer and warmth to our chilled blue horizon. The usual snow goggles add to the ugly gray-blue of the frozen seas, which alone sends frosty waves through the nervous fibers.

So thoroughly delighted were we with these goggles that later we wore them even in igloos while asleep, with the double object of screening the strong light which passes through the eyelids and of keeping the forehead warm.

On our march in the early part of the afternoon of the 24th the weather proved good. The ice, though newly crevassed, improved as we advanced. The late start spread our day's work close to the chill of midnight. When we started the wind blew kindly. With glad hearts we forged forward without delays. On the ice I heard the soft patter of swift dog feet and the dashing, cutting progress of the sleds. As a scene viewed from a carousel, the field of ice swept around me in our dizzy, twisting progress. We swept resistlessly onward for twenty-three miles. As we had taken a zigzag course to follow smooth ice, I therefore recorded only eighteen miles to our credit.

The night was beautiful. The sun sank into a purple haze. Soon, in the magic of the atmosphere, appeared three suns of prismatic colors. These settled slowly into the frozen sea and disappeared behind that persistent haze of obscuring mist which always rests over the pack when the sun is low. During the night a narrow band of orange was flung like a ribbon across the northern skies. The pack surface glowed with varying shades of violet, lilac and pale purplish blue. Many such splendid sights are to be constantly seen in the Arctic. Although I reveled in it now, the time was soon to come when weariness and hunger numbed my faculties into a dreary torpor in which the splendor was not seen.

Signs appeared of a gale from the west before we were quite ready to camp. Little sooty clouds with ragged edges suddenly began to cover the sky, scurrying at an alarming pace. Beyond us a huge smoky volume of cloud blackened the pearly glitter.

Suitable camping ice was sought. In the course of an hour we built an igloo. We made the structure stronger than usual on account of the threatening storm. We constructed double tiers of snow blocks to the windward. A little water was thrown over the top to cement the blocks. We fastened the dogs to the lee of hummocks. The sleds were securely lashed and fastened to the ice.

We expected a hurricane, and had not to wait to taste its fury. Before we were at rest in our bags the wind lashed the snows with a force inconceivable. With rushing drift, the air thickened. Dogs and sleds in a few minutes were buried under banks of snow and great drifts encircled the igloo. The cemented blocks of our dome withstood the sweep of the blast well. Yet, now and then, small holes were burrowed through the snow wall by the sharp wind. Drift entered and covered us. I lay awake for hours. I felt the terrible oppression of that raging, life-sucking vampire force sweeping over the desolate world. Disembodied things--the souls of those, perhaps, who had perished here--seemed frenziedly calling me in the wind. I felt under me the surge of the sweeping, awful sea. I felt the desolation of this stormy world within my shuddering soul; but, withal, I throbbed with a determination to assert the supremacy of living man over these blind, insensate forces; to prove that the living brain and palpitating muscle of a finite though conscious creature could vanquish a hostile Nature which creates to kill. I burned to justify those who had died here; to fulfill by proxy their hopes; to set their calling souls at rest. The storm waked in me an angry, challenging determination.

Early in the morning of the 25th the storm ceased as suddenly as it had come. A stillness followed which was appalling. It seemed as if the storm had heard my thoughts and paused to contemplate some more dreadful onslaught. The dogs began to howl desperately, as if attacked by a bear. We rushed out of our igloo, seeking guns. There was no approaching creature. It was, however, a signal of serious distress that we had heard. The dogs were in acute misery. The storm-driven snows had buried and bound them in unyielding ice. They had partly uncovered themselves. United by trace and harness, they were imprisoned in frozen masses. Few of them could even rise and stretch. They were in severe torment.

We hurriedly freed their traces and beat the cemented snows from their furs with sticks. Released, they leaped about gladly, their cries, curling tails and pointed noses telling of gratitude. While we danced about, stretching our limbs and rubbing our hands to get up circulation, the sun rose over the northern blue, flushing the newly driven snows with warm tones. The temperature during the storm had risen to only 26 deg. below, but soon the thermometer sank rapidly below 40 deg.. The west was still smoky and the weather did not seem quite settled. As it was still too early to start, we again slipped into the bags and sought quiet slumber.

As yet the dreadful insomnia which was to rob me of rest on my journey had not come, and I slept with the blissful soundness of a child. I must have been asleep several hours, when, of a sudden, I opened my eyes.

Terror gripped my heart. Loud explosive noises reverberated under my head. It seemed as though bombs were torn asunder in the depths of the cold sea beneath me. I lay still, wondering if I were dreaming. The sounds echoingly died away. Looking about the igloo, I detected nothing unusual. I saw Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook staring at me with wide-open frightened eyes. I arose and peeped through the eye port. The fields of ice without reflected the warm light of the rising sun in running waves of tawny color. The ice was undisturbed. An unearthly quiet prevailed. Concluding that the ice was merely cracking under the sudden change of temperature, in quite the usual harmless manner, I turned over again, reassuring my companions, and promptly fell asleep.

Out of the blankness of sleep I suddenly wakened again. Half-dazed, I heard beneath me a series of echoing, thundering noises. I felt the ice floor on which I lay quivering. I experienced the sudden giddiness one feels on a tossing ship at sea. In the flash of a second I saw Ah-we-lah leap to his feet. In the same dizzy instant I saw the dome of the snowhouse open above me; I caught a vision of the gold-streaked sky. My instinct at the moment was to leap. I think I tried to rise, when suddenly everything seemed lifted from under me; I experienced the suffocating sense of falling, and next, with a spasm of indescribable horror, felt about my body a terrific tightening pressure like that of a chilled and closing shell of steel, driving the life and breath from me.

In an instant it was clear what had happened. A crevasse had suddenly opened through our igloo, directly under the spot whereon I slept; and I, a helpless creature in a sleeping bag, with tumbling snow blocks and ice and snow crashing about and crushing me, with the temperature 48 deg. below zero, was floundering in the opening sea!

LAND DISCOVERED

FIGHTING PROGRESS THROUGH CUTTING COLD AND TERRIFIC STORMS--LIFE BECOMES A MONOTONOUS ROUTINE OF HARDSHIP--THE POLE INSPIRES WITH ITS RESISTLESS LURE--NEW LAND DISCOVERED BEYOND THE EIGHTY-FOURTH PARALLEL--MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED MILES FROM SVARTEVOEG--THE FIRST SIX HUNDRED MILES COVERED

XVI

THREE HUNDRED MILES TO THE APEX OF THE WORLD

I think I was about to swoon when I felt hands beneath my armpits and heard laughter in my ears. With an adroitness such as only these natives possess, my two companions were dragging me from the water. And while I lay panting on the ice, recovering from my fright, I saw them expeditiously rescue our possessions.