Chapter III: Part 3

Hastily loading his musket with a part of his remaining powder, the sergeant was forced to use the screw of his ramrod as a missile, with which he pierced the neck of the steadily advancing musk-ox. As this still failed to check the advance the hunter withdrew slowly, reloading his gun with his single remaining missile, the ramrod of the musket. By this time the thoroughly enraged animal was within a few feet of the sergeant when the last shot was fired. The ramrod passed diagonally through the body of the ox, making a raking wound from which the animal fell dead at the very feet of the anxious hunter. The larger musk-ox, with its shaggy mane, curly horns, menacing air, and formidable appearance, was quite a monster. Its huge head and massive horns made up one hundred and thirty pounds of its full weight of seven hundred and sixty-seven pounds.

During the brief arctic summer, under the surgeon's orders, the valleys were searched for sorrel and scurvy grass, which contributed to the improved physical health of the men. It was not possible, however, to dispel the mental dejection that affected all of the crew as the summer passed without such changes in the ice as would permit the _Investigator_ to be moved. All knew that the ship's provisions were inadequate for another year, which must now be faced. If game was not killed in much larger quantities, it would be necessary to face death by starvation, unless some unforeseen and providential relief should come to them.

After long deliberation M'Clure made known his plans to the assembled crew on September 9, 1852. In April twenty-eight men and officers would be sent eastward with sledges to Beechey Island, five hundred and fifty miles distant. At that point they would take a boat and stores there cached and endeavor to reach the Danish settlements on the west coast of Greenland. Nine other men would endeavor to reach the Hudson Bay posts via the Mackenzie River, taking up en route the cache of provisions deposited by the _Investigator_ on Prince Royal Islands in 1850. Thirty of the healthiest of the crew would remain with the ship for the fourth arctic winter, awaiting relief from the British Admiralty in 1854.

Of necessity the daily allowances were again reduced, so that the amount of food issued was six ounces of meat, ten of flour, and two and one-half of canned vegetables. Surgeon Armstrong records that "the feeling was now one of absolute hunger, the cravings of which were ever present."

The ration was generally eaten by the officers at a single meal, and to insure exact fairness, and to remove any ground for complaint, the mess adopted the rule that turn about should be taken in the disagreeable duty of making the daily issue. The officer of the day arranged the food in as many portions as there were persons. Then, in an order fixed by lot, each officer inspected the various piles of food and chose that which most pleased him. The officer making the division for the day took the lot left.

It is to be presumed that the men suffered even more than the officers on these starvation rations. Certainly they were unable to restrain their feelings as well as did the officers, and on October 4, 1853, occurred an act doubtless unprecedented in the royal navy. Suffering from prolonged cravings of hunger, made more acute by the late reduction of food and by the severe winter cold, the ship's crew assembled on the quarterdeck in a body and asked Captain M'Clure for more food, which he refused to grant.

By hunting, which duty now fell almost entirely on the officers, a few ounces of fresh meat--deer, field-mice, or even wolf--were now and then added to their meagre meals. The fortunate hunter, besides his game perquisites of head and heart, also enjoyed other privileges that almost always brought him back to the ship in a condition that made him a frightful spectacle from blood and dirt. When he killed a deer or other animal, the first act of the hunter was to put his lips to the mortal wound and take therefrom a draught of fresh, warm blood that ebbed from the dying animal. In taste and in effect this blood was found to be very like a warm uncooked egg. As water for washing was precious and rarely to be had, owing to lack of fuel, and then in small amounts, the ghastly spectacle that a man presented when the blood of an animal was glued over his face, and was frozen into the accumulated grime of weeks without washing, may be better imagined than described.

The awful cold in which lived and hunted these half-starved men taxed to the utmost their impaired powers of endurance. For two days in January the temperature was ninety-one degrees below the freezing-point, and the average for that month was four degrees below that of frozen mercury.

The pall of gloom and despair that had come with the winter darkness, from the frightful cold, and from increasing sickness was somewhat broken on March 15, 1853, when the weakest half of the crew was told off in parties to make the spring retreat with sledges. To put them in condition for the field M'Clure gave them full rations. It was strange to note how closely they, eating once more heartily, were watched and to what extent the few ounces of extra food made them objects of envy to their healthier and stronger comrades, who were to stay by the ship another awful winter.

The doctors, however, were under no delusion as to the ultimate outcome of the situation. The weaker members of the crew were to take the field and die like men, falling in the traces as they dragged along the fatal sledge, as the surgeons Armstrong and Piers had reported in writing "the absolute unfitness of the men for the performance of this journey."

Though Captain M'Clure, with the spirit of optimism that belongs to a commander, endeavored to persuade himself to the contrary, it was evident to Dr. Armstrong that critical conditions had developed that threatened the extermination of the expeditionary force.

The able and clear-sighted doctor realized that the sick were not simply suffering from physical exhaustion induced by the short rations of many months. He recognized with horror that far the greater number of the crew were slowly perishing from the dreaded and fatal arctic scourge--scurvy. The progress and prevalence of the disease were such that it was to be feared there would not remain after a few months enough well men to properly care for their sick comrades. It was a living death that was being faced from day to day.

But fate, inexorable and inexplicable, was doubly placing its veto on the feeble plans of man. Three of the men who were told off for the forlorn hope died within a fortnight, while thirty-three of the remaining thirty-six men were suffering from materially impaired health. Then came the relief from outside sources, which saved the expedition as a whole.

Meanwhile, unknown to M'Clure, a searching squadron of five British ships, commanded by Captain Sir Edward Belcher, R.N., was wintering about two hundred miles to the eastward of the _Investigator_. Sledging from one of these ships, the _Resolute_, at Bridgeport Inlet, Melville Island, Lieutenant Mecham, in October, 1852, had visited Winter Harbor, and on top of the famous sandstone rock had found the record there deposited by M'Clure in his visit to that point in April, 1852, six months earlier, which stated that the _Investigator_ was wintering in Mercy Bay. The fast-approaching darkness made the trip to Mercy Bay impossible, even if the ship was yet there--most doubtful from the record. For M'Clure had added: "If we should not be again heard of ... any attempt to succor would be to increase the evil."

Nevertheless, Captain Kellet, commanding the _Resolute_, thought it wise to send a party to Mercy Bay the coming spring, not for M'Clure alone, but to seek at that place and far beyond such news as was attainable about Collinson's squadron. For this duty was selected Lieutenant Bedford C. T. Pim, R.N., a young officer of spirit and determination, who had volunteered for the journey. Kellet's advisers urged that he delay the departure until the end of March, with its longer days and warmer weather. Pim insisted on an early start, for it was a long journey. Collinson's squadron was provisioned only for that year and so would break out through the ice early from their more southerly ports. Providentially, Kellet listened to Pim's importunate pleas, as otherwise at least half of the crew of the _Investigator_ would have perished.

On March 10, 1853, Pim started on this journey of nearly two hundred miles, the first long sledge trip ever attempted in an arctic expedition at such an early date--twenty-five days in advance of any other sledge journey from the _Resolute_ that year. Pim with eight men hauled the man-sledge, while Dr. Domville with one man supported him with a dog-sledge of six animals. Eleven other men were to assist them for five days.

Things went badly from the very beginning, and Kellet was half inclined to recall Pim. Under frightful conditions of weather and of ice travel one man fell sick and two sledges broke down. Fearing that he would be kept back, Pim wisely stayed in the field, sending back for other men and sledges. The first night out was quite unendurable, the temperature falling to seventy-six degrees below the freezing-point. Then followed violent blizzards which storm-stayed the party for four days, during which the temperature inside their double tent fell to fifty-six degrees below freezing. One comfort to the young lieutenant was the presence of a veteran polar seaman, Hoile, who had learned all the tricks and secrets of handling gear and stores in the field during his campaigns under the famous arctic sledgeman Sir Leopold McClintock. But no skill could make men comfortable under such awful cold. For instance, the fur sleeping bags at the start had been dry, pliant, and cold-proof. Now the vapor from the men's bodies had dampened the bags which, frozen solid, would stand on end without falling, as though made of light sheet-iron.

Marching onward, Pim's next trouble was with a food-cache, laid down by himself the previous autumn, which wild animals--probably bears and wolves--had plundered in large part, though some of the thick metal coverings of the solidly frozen meats had escaped with rough marks of the teeth and claws.

Pim took everything with jovial humor, and was entirely happy when he left the firm land of Melville Island to cross frozen Banks Strait to Mercy Bay, Banks Land. Bad as was travel along the ice-foot bordering the land, it was far worse in the strait. Domville officially reported that their course "was beset with every difficulty, every variety of hummocks and deep snow barring our progress in all directions. Some of the ridges, too irregular for a loaded sledge, required portages to be made, a mode of proceeding almost equally difficult and dangerous to the limbs, from the men sinking to the middle through the soft snow amongst the masses of forced-up hummocks."

Later there came some level stretches, and then Pim hoisted a sail on the man-sledge to help it along. It nearly proved their ruin, for the sledge took charge on a steep, glassy hummock, knocked over the men, plunged into a deep crevasse, and broke a runner. Pim did not hesitate an hour over the best thing to do. Leaving Domville to patch up the sledge and to return and await him at the last depot, Pim started ahead with his six dogs and two men toward Mercy Bay. Sleepless nights of fearful cold, days of weary toil with sun-dazzled eyes, biting blasts of sharp blizzards, exhausting struggles through rubble ice--these one and all could neither quench the spirit nor bend the will of this forceful man. Ever faithful to the motto of his sledge flag, "Hope on: hope ever," he ceased not until the land was reached and success insured.

Skirting the ice-foot of the northeastern coast of Banks Land, his heart came into his mouth as, rounding a cape, he saw the dark spars of an ice-beset ship loom up against the sullen southern sky. Blistered and brazened, half snow-blinded, with face covered with accumulations of greasy soot, what wonder that this fur-clad figure was thought by the amazed M'Clure to be an Eskimo, a mistake aided by the wild gesticulations and loud, unintelligible shouts of a man whose face was as black as ebony.

Of Pim's coming Dr. Armstrong of the _Investigator_ says: "No words could express the feelings of heart-felt gladness which all experienced at this unlooked-for, this most providential arrival."

Over the rough, winding trails of the arctic highway, Pim had travelled four hundred and twenty-seven miles from ship to ship, and made a journey that will ever live in polar annals as fraught with vital interests beyond those of any other single sledge trip.

Of Pim's work a fellow-officer, McDougal, wrote: "Each member of our little community must have felt his heart glow to reflect that he formed one of the little band whose undertakings in the cause of humanity had been crowned with such success."

Thus it happened that through the heroic energy and persistent efforts of Bedford Pim, the outcome of the voyage of the _Investigator_[7] was changed from that of certain disaster to one of astounding success. Save for this timely sledge journey, many of his sailor comrades must have found unknown graves among the ice-crowned isles of the northern seas, and an awful tragedy would have marked the splendid annals of the Franklin search.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] M'Clure abandoned the _Investigator_ shortly after Pim's sledge journey, and crossing the ice with his men joined Belcher's squadron. M'Clure and his crew thus made the northwest passage and received therefor the reward of ten thousand pounds sterling. Captain J. E. Bernier, who wintered at Melville Island in the Canadian steamer _Arctic_, 1908-9, says of the _Investigator_: "M'Clure anchored his vessel ... to be cast on a shoal, where, he said, she would last for ages. He was mistaken, as no sign was visible of the vessel when the officer of the Arctic visited Mercy Bay in 1908."

KANE'S RESCUE OF HIS FREEZING SHIPMATES

"Men in no particular approach so nearly to the gods as by giving
safety to their fellow-men."--CICERO.

In 1853 the United States co-operated a second time in the search for Sir John Franklin, and sent into Smith Sound an expedition fitted out through the liberality of Henry Grinnell and George Peabody. Doctor Elisha Kent Kane, United States Navy, commanded the expedition, and placed his brig _Advance_ in winter quarters in Rensselaer Harbor, West Greenland, whence he planned by boats and sledges to "examine the coast lines for vestiges of the lost (Franklin's) party." This sketch relates particularly to Kane's personal and heroic endeavors to save from death one of his own field parties.

* * * * *

Among arctic explorers there is no more striking and interesting figure than that of Elisha Kent Kane, whose enthusiasm created and individuality dominated the search of 1853. Well-intended, his expedition was fallacious in plan, unsuitably equipped, inadequately supplied, and manned by inexperienced volunteers. It seemed doomed to utter and dismal failure, yet through the activities of the versatile leader its general results exceeded those of any other arctic expedition of his generation. With a literary charm and a beauty of expression unexcelled by any other polar explorer, Kane revealed to the world the human relations and racial qualities of the Etah Eskimo, told of the plant and animal life of that desolate region, recorded the march of physical forces, and outlined the safe and practicable route whereby alone the north pole has been reached. But if his mind was imbued with a spirit of philosophy, and if his poetic vision saw first the beautiful, yet his sense of duty and strength of will inevitably involved his exposure to any and all privations that promised definite results.

The autumnal journeys of 1853 had led to nothing promising in the neighborhood of the _Advance_, so throughout the winter he was busy in preparing for the spring sledge trips in order to search the northern coast line for the lost explorers. Thus planning and laboring he definitely recognizes the unfavorable situation. "The death of my dogs, fifty-seven in all, the rugged obstacles of the ice, and the intense cold (the temperature had fallen to one hundred degrees below the freezing-point) have obliged me to reorganize our whole equipment. We have had to discard all our India-rubber fancy-work. Canvas shoemaking, fur-socking, sewing, carpentering are all going on. Pemmican cases are thawing, buffalo robes drying, camp equipments are in the corners." He adds: "The scurvy spots that mottled our faces made it plain that we were all unfit for arduous travel on foot at the intense temperatures of the nominal spring. _But I felt that our work was unfinished._"

The very start of the party, on March 19, 1854, indicated clearly that two errors, frequent in arctic work, had been committed--overloading and too early a start in periods of extreme cold. Kane had himself noticed that in extreme cold, say fifty degrees below freezing, "the ice or snow covering offers great resistance to the sledge-runners. The dry snow in its finely divided state resembles sand, and the runners creak as they pass over it." In a temperature of seventy-one degrees below freezing "we packed the sledge and strapped on the boat to see how she would drag. Eight men were scarcely able to move her.... Difficulties of draught must not interfere with my parties." Erroneously attributing the trouble to the thin runners of his Eskimo sledge, he changed it for one with broad-gauged sledge-runners, and then added two hundred pounds of pemmican to the load.

The party started to the north in a temperature of seventy-five degrees below freezing, and even with extra men in the rue-raddies (canvas shoulder-belts for dragging the sledge) they were barely able to move the sledge forward over the smooth, level floes near the brig.

When the sledgemen came to rough ice they promptly dumped both boat and pemmican, realizing the impossibility of hauling them. Soon they came to high, uptilted ice-hummocks, separated by precipitous ice-chasms filled with drifting snow. It then became necessary to divide the load and so travel three times over the same road.

Meanwhile they seemed to be advancing over a sea of desolation whereon were utterly lacking the signs of life--few enough even there along the shore. From the snow-covered floes were entirely absent the tiny traces of the snowy ptarmigan, the weaving, wandering trails of the arctic fox, and the sprawling foot-marks of the polar bear. Once, indeed, they saw a short distance seaward a blow-hole, where lately a seal had come for needful air, as shown by the thin glassy ice-covering, unbroken for days.

Suddenly the weather changed, the clear atmosphere giving way to a frosty fog, which shut out any distant views, and save for their compass bearings they did not know the direction of their march, nor indeed whether the frozen sea continued or that land, so desired, was near or far.

The coming of a northeast blizzard caused frightful sufferings to these inexperienced arctic sledgemen. Neither wind or snow proof, the tent was speedily filled with the drifting, sand-like snow, which saturated the sleeping-gear and nearly stopped the cooking. Travel in such weather would have been dangerous for strong, active men, but Baker was too sick even to walk, and so the days were passed in endeavors to keep themselves warm and bring about a state of comfort. Still they went on with courage the first fine day, though their progress was very slow, and there seemed to be no definite hope of reaching land where their depot of provisions could be cached.

A second blizzard ended the advance of the worn-out, thoroughly discouraged men. When the weather cleared Brooks, the mate in charge, found further progress hopeless. "The hummocks in front consist of pieces of ice from one to two feet thick, having sharp edges and piled up from ten to fifteen feet high. Single piles sometimes exceeded thirty feet in height, and at a distance have the appearance of icebergs. We failed to perceive a single opening in their chain." His wise decision to return was all that saved any member of the party.

Of the conditions under which the men slept, Sonntag, who was one of the sledgemen, says: "The evaporation from the bodies of the sleepers became condensed on the blanket-bags and buffalo-skins, which acquired a lining of ice as soon as the men emerged from them in the morning, and when required for use at night these bedclothes were stiffly frozen. The labor of sledge-hauling was so excessive that, notwithstanding the severity of the cold, the men were often thrown into profuse perspiration, and this was soon followed by the clothes being frozen together so firmly that they were not thawed asunder until the men entered their sleeping-bags."

Inspired by the fact they that were homeward bound, the men worked with desperate energy, and camped only when they were ready to drop with exhaustion. The last part of the march was through deep snow, which sifted into every crevice of the men's garments, and, melting there from the heat of the body, saturated their clothing. The most essential rules for the safety of arctic sledgemen are the careful brushing of all snow from the garments before entering the tent and the replacing of the always damp foot-gear with dry socks. Exhausted and unadvised, most of the men sought refuge from the fearful cold by crawling unbrushed into their frozen sleeping-bags, without even removing their boots let alone their socks. That day of the march had been one of awful cold, the average temperature being more than seventy degrees below freezing, and the imprudent sledgemen paid that night the exacting penalty of their rash ignorance. The following morning the situation was hopeless unless help could be had from the brig. The feet of four of the men were so badly frozen that they could not even walk, much less drag the sledge. It was impossible for the four well men to haul their four disabled shipmates to the _Advance_, thirty miles distant.

At the call for volunteers for the dangerous journey, which must be made in one march, all four of the well men responded, and astronomer Sonntag, with two Danes, Ohlsen and Petersen, made the journey. Irish Tommy, as the crew called Seaman Hickey, rebelled at first because he was not accepted, but his generous heart reconciled him to remaining when it was pointed out that his qualities as cook and as handy-man made him the best person to care for his crippled shipmates.

Kane tells the story of the rescue in language that cannot be improved. "We were at work cheerfully, sewing on moccasins by the blaze of our lamps, when, toward midnight, we heard steps and the next minute Sonntag, Ohlsen, and Petersen came into the cabin, swollen, haggard, and hardly able to speak. They had left their companions in the ice, risking their own lives to bring us the news. Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and Pierre were all lying frozen and disabled. Where? They could not tell--somewhere in and among the hummocks to the north and east; it was drifting heavily around them when they parted."

With impaired health, in feeble strength, ignoring the protests of his officers against such exposure, the heroic Kane waited not a moment, but decided to take the field and risk his life, if necessary, to rescue his crippled shipmates.

Kane continues: "Rigging out the _Little Willie_ sledge with a buffalo cover, a small tent, and a package of pemmican, Ohlsen (who seemed to have his faculties rather more at command than his associates) was strapped on in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog-skins and eider-down, and we were off. Our party consisted of myself and nine others. We carried only the clothes on our backs. The thermometer stood at seventy-eight degrees below the freezing-point....

"It was not until we had travelled sixteen hours that we began to lose our way. Our lost companions were somewhere in the area before us, within a radius of forty miles. For fifty hours without sleep, Ohlsen fell asleep as soon as we began to move, and now awoke with unequivocal signs of mental disturbance. He had lost the bearings of the icebergs. I gave orders to abandon the sledge and disperse in search of foot-marks. We raised our tent, gave each man a small allowance of pemmican to carry on his person, and poor Ohlsen, just able to keep his legs, was liberated.

"The thermometer had fallen to eighty-one degrees below freezing, with the wind setting in sharply from the northwest. It was out of the question to halt; it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. I could not even melt ice for water, and any resort to snow for allaying thirst was followed by bloody lips and tongue; it burnt like caustic.

"We moved on looking for traces as we went. When the men were ordered to spread themselves, to multiply the chances, they kept closing up continually. The strange manner in which we were affected I attribute as much to shattered nerves as to the cold. McGary and Bonsall, who had stood out our severest marches, were seized with trembling fits and short breath. In spite of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound bearing, I fainted twice on the snow.

"We had been out eighteen hours when Hans, our Eskimo hunter, thought he saw a broad sledge-track which the drift had nearly effaced. We were some of us doubtful at first whether it was not one of those accidental rifts which the gales make in the surface snow. But as we traced it on to the deep snow among the hummocks we were led to footsteps. Following these with religious care, we at last came in sight of a small American flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower down a little masonic banner hanging from a tent-pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our disabled comrades; we reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.

"The little tent was nearly covered with snow. I was not among the first to come up; but when I reached the tent-curtain the men were standing in single file on each side of it. With more kindness and delicacy of feeling than is often supposed to belong to sailors, but which is almost characteristic, they intimated their wish that I should go in alone, and I crawled in. Coming upon the darkness, as I heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from the four poor fellows stretched on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my weakness and my gratitude together almost overcame me. _They had expected me! They were sure that I would come!_

"We were now fifteen souls; the thermometer seventy-five degrees below the freezing-point. Our sole accommodation was a tent barely able to hold eight persons; more than half of our party were obliged to keep from freezing by walking outside while the others slept."

For the return journey: "The sick, with their limbs sewed up carefully in reindeer-skins, were placed upon the bed of buffalo-robes, in a half-reclining posture; other skins and blankets were thrown above them, and the whole litter was lashed together so as to allow but a single opening opposite the mouth for breathing. This necessary work cost us a great deal of effort, but it was essential to the lives of the sufferers. After repeating a short prayer we set out on our retreat."

The journey homeward was made under conditions of almost insuperable difficulty and distress in which lack of sleep played a greater part than either cold or physical labor, severe as they both were. As the energy of the sledgemen failed the tent of the field party was pitched, and McGary left with orders to move forward after a sleep of four hours.

Not sparing himself, Kane went on with one man and reached the half-way tent, to melt ice and pemmican, in time to save its destruction by a predatory polar bear. He says: "The tent was uninjured though the bear had overturned it, tossing the buffalo-robes and pemmican into the snow. All we recollect is that we had great difficulty in raising the tent. We crept into our reindeer-bags without speaking, and for the next three hours slept on in a dreamy but intense slumber. When I awoke my long beard was a mass of ice, frozen fast to the buffalo-skin; Godfrey had to cut me out with his jack-knife."

A few hours later the crippled party rejoined Kane and after refreshment went on toward the ship. Fortunately the weather was fine and the cold less severe. Yet, says Kane, "Our halts multiplied, and we fell, half-sleeping, in the snow. Strange to say, it refreshed us. I ventured on the experiment, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes. I felt so much benefited that I timed the men in the same way. They sat on the runners of the sledge, fell asleep instantly, and were forced to wakefulness when their three minutes were out."

In an utterly exhausted, half-delirious condition, they were met a few miles from the brig by a dog-sledge bringing restoratives. Of the outcome of the sledge journey out and back Kane says: "Ohlsen suffered some time from strabismus and blindness; two others underwent amputation of parts of the foot without unpleasant consequences; and two died in spite of all our efforts.

"The rescue party had been out for seventy-two hours. We had halted in all eight hours, half of our number sleeping at a time. We travelled between eighty and ninety miles, most of the way dragging a heavy sledge. The mean temperature of the whole time was seventy-three degrees below freezing, including the warmest hours of the three days. We had no water except at our two halts, and were at no time able to intermit vigorous exercise without freezing."

Such remarkable and successful efforts to rescue their suffering shipmates cannot fail to excite the admiration of all, if merely as an astonishing instance of man's physical endurance. Yet on the whole such feelings are subordinate in the hearts of most men to a sense of reverence for the spirit that animated Kane and his fellows to sacrifice their personal comfort and venture their lives for the relief and safety of their disabled comrades.

HOW WOON WON PROMOTION

"Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
A heart with English instinct fraught,
He only knows that _not through him_
Shall England come to shame."
--DOYLE.

This tale recites one of the many stirring experiences of the crew of her majesty's ship _Investigator_, which, after having been frozen fast in the ice-floes of Mercy Bay, Banks Land, for two years, was abandoned, June 3, 1853. Owing to lack of provisions, the men, living on two-thirds rations for twenty months, were obliged to keep the field for hunting purposes so as to avoid death by starvation. The incidents herein related occurred in connection with the chase.

* * * * *

The sun had been entirely absent for ninety-four days, and the coldest period of the winter was at hand. Even at the warmest moment of the midwinter month, February, the temperature had barely risen to zero. At times the mercury froze solid, and the cold was so intense that even the ship herself seemed to suffer as much as the half-starved, ill-clad men. The metal bolts and rivets glared at one with their ice-covered ends, while the wooden tree-nails, timbers, and doors cracked continually under the twin action of frost and contraction. And so since the New Year's coming the crew had shielded themselves as best they could from the utter darkness of the land and the frightful cold of the air. Even when it was possible hunting was unfruitful of results; the deer had migrated to the pastures of the milder south, while the hares and small game had huddled in crannies and nooks for shelter against the wind.

But now a few hours of feeble twilight, steadily increasing in duration and in brightness, were marked by broad bands of life-giving light at mid-day in the southern sky. Though the longer days were those of sharper cold, yet hunger and want early drove the hunters from the ship. As soon as there was enough glimmering light to make it possible, the keen-eyed sportsmen started inland to find and follow the trails of such animals as might yet be in the country. At the same time they were charged to take the utmost care to make sharp note of prominent landmarks by which they could safely take up their return march to the _Investigator_.

The spring hunt may be said to have fairly opened ten days before the return of the long-absent sun, when a wretchedly gaunt reindeer was killed on January 28, 1852. For days individual deer had been seen, evidently returned from the south, where their winter life must have been a constant struggle against starvation, judging from the slain animal. While the deer of the previous autumn were always in good flesh, there was in this case not a bit of fat on any rib. A collection of mere skin and bones, this deer weighed less than ninety pounds, about the same as a large wolf or draught-dog.

This early success stimulated to action the hungry hunters, who thenceforth let no day pass without ranging the distant hills for sign of deer or musk-ox, anxious for the hunter's perquisites--the longed-for head and heart of the game.

On February 9 the day broke calm, clear, and unusually bright; especially attractive because of an hour of sunlight, the sun having come above the horizon at mid-day four days earlier. Every man who could get permission was enticed into the field, and great was the furore when one party brought in a small deer, giving promise of more from the hunters still in the open. With the passing hours one man after another reached the ship, while the slowly vanishing twilight became fainter and fainter. When the darkness of night had come and the officer of the deck had checked off the hunters, he reported to the captain that two men were yet absent--Sergeant John Woon and Seaman Charles Anderson, both excellent men, active-bodied and distinguished as hunters.

Woon was the non-commissioned officer in charge of the detachment of royal marines, whose standing and popularity were almost as high with the seamen as with his own corps. Dr. Armstrong says of him: "He proved himself invaluable, was always a ready volunteer, most correct and soldier-like in conduct, ever contributed to the hilarity and cheerfulness of the crew, and was brave and intrepid on every occasion, which fully tested the man."

Whether on shipboard or on land, Woon never failed to do a lion's share of the work in hand, and was always the first to cheer and help a tired comrade. An indefatigable and successful hunter, he was familiar with the white wolves that so menaced the safety of individuals. On one occasion, going for a deer shot that day, he killed at a distance of a hundred yards a gaunt wolf who was greedily devouring the precious carcass. This monster wolf, with a thick coat of pure, unstained white, weighed eighty pounds, was three feet four inches high and five feet ten inches in length.

It was Sergeant Woon also who had distinguished himself in killing, under thrilling circumstances, two infuriated and charging musk-oxen, as elsewhere related in the sketch, "Pim's Timely Sledge Journey." Altogether he was a man quite able to care for himself, though not coming to the ship with such a reputation for woodcraft, hunting skill, and physical activity as had Seaman Anderson.

Able Seaman Charles Anderson was a man of powerful build and great muscular strength, who had made himself a leader among the seamen by his success in athletic sports, in which he easily excelled any other man on the ship. A Canadian by birth, his color and his personality disclosed in his veins deep strains of Indian or other alien blood. Inured to the hardships and labors of a hunter's life in the Hudson Bay territory, where he claimed to have been an employee, he displayed in his social relations the mercurial and attractive qualities which distinguish the French half-breeds, the famous _coureurs de bois_.

At the evening meal there was more or less chaffing between the marines and the seamen as to where were Woon and Anderson and what success they were having in the field. With a trace of that special pride of corps which goes so far to make the various arms of the military services so efficient, the seamen said that it was a pity that the absent men were not together so that Woon's safety might be better assured by the skill and strength of his friend Anderson. To these jests the royal marines answered, as was their wont, in kind, enlarging ludicrously by side remarks and flings on the reputed helplessness of sailors on land, especially on _deer-back_.

At eight o'clock that night affairs took a different turn, when it was known that M'Clure and the other officers felt serious alarm over the continued absence of two hunters who were said to be in the field apart. The fog had given place to a bright sky, with feeble light and rapidly falling temperature, so that disaster to one or both was thought to be probable. The presence and boldness of the prowling bands of ravenous wolves in the immediate neighborhood of the ship was viewed as one of the greatest dangers to a single disabled man.

To show the location of the ship and to guide the absentees to it in the darkness of the night, a mortar was first fired to attract the notice of the hunters, and then every ten or fifteen minutes a rocket was sent up, but with the closest attention no one could detect any sound that at all resembled a human voice. Nothing could be heard save now and then the ominous howling of wolves, doleful sounds to the anxious crew.

After two disquieting hours of signals by mortar and rockets, with no responsive answers from the hunters, Captain M'Clure sent out three search-parties, each headed by an officer. Arranging a code of signals, both for recall to and for assistance from the ship, they set forth on an agreed plan in different directions, each party provided with rockets, blue light, food, wraps, and stimulants. In less than a quarter of an hour one of the searching-parties met Sergeant Woon coming to the ship for help. Summoning another squad to join them, they hastened under the direction of Sergeant Woon to the relief of Anderson, who was perishing of cold in a snow-drift a scant mile distant.

It appears that Anderson, discovering a herd of deer, had pursued and wounded one of them, which fled inland away from the ship. Following fast after the wounded animal, without noting the winding direction of the trail, he at length not only lost the tracks of the deer but also found that the country was being covered by a light fog. Climbing the nearest hill-top, he was panic-stricken to find himself unable to note either the face of the bright southern sky, the hunters' usual method of finding their bearings, or to see any landmark that was at all familiar. He hurried from hill-top to hill-top, exhausting his strength, confusing his mind, and destroying his faith in his ability to find his homeward way. In utter despair he sat down in the snow and gave himself up for lost.

Most fortunately Sergeant Woon had seen no game, and chancing to cross the trail of Anderson and of the escaping deer, he decided to follow it up and help the sailor bring in his game. With extreme astonishment he found Anderson in a state of utter helplessness, already benumbed and certain soon to perish either from wolves or by freezing. Cold, fear, and fatigue had caused the seaman to lose not alone his power of action and of decision, but had almost deprived him of the faculty of speech. He was in such a demoralized condition--half-delirious, frightened, fatigued, and frosted--that he could not at first fully realize that his comrade had come to his assistance and that his ultimate safety was quite assured.

His utter prostration was only known when Woon asked him to get up and go home, to which he feebly moaned out, "I am lost," and did not rise even when the sergeant curtly said: "Get up like a man and you are all right." Some time passed before either words of cheer or sharp words of order and abuse had any effect. His patience worn out at last, Woon seized him roughly, dragged him to his feet, gave him a shove shipward, and started him on the home trail, but in a few minutes the bewildered seaman fell down in the deep snow through which he was walking. Not only was his strength worn out to exhaustion, but to the intense horror of Woon he was no sooner put on his feet than he fell down in a convulsive fit, while blood gushed freely from his mouth and nostrils.

The appalling conditions would have shaken any man less courageous than this heroic sergeant. They were many miles from the _Investigator_, the weather was turning cold with the vanishing fog, and the feeble twilight--it was now about two o'clock in the afternoon--was giving way to coming darkness. If he went to the ship for aid, Anderson would surely perish before it could be obtained. In the hours of travel to and fro the seaman would either freeze solidly or meet a horrible alternative fate from the not-far-distant wolves, whose dismal howlings already seemed a funeral dirge to their helpless prey.

The audacity and strength of these starving, ravenous animals had been a constant source of anxiety and alarm to all the hunters. Especially had the forecastle talk run on one gigantic brute, standing nearly four feet high at the shoulder, leaving a foot-print as big as that of a reindeer, who was thought to be the recognized leader of a marauding band from whose ravages no slaughtered game was free.

If the seaman could not be left, neither could he be carried, for Anderson was one of the largest and heaviest men of the crew, while the marine was one of the smallest and lightest. At last the thought came to Woon that he could drag the seaman in to the ship. Not daring, for fear of the wolves, to quit his gun, he slung both muskets across his shoulders, and clasping Anderson's arms around his neck started to drag him in this manner through miles of snow to the ship. Such a task was of the most herculean and exhausting character. The only relief that he had was when the trail brought him to the top of a hill or the edge of a ravine. Stopping and laying Anderson on the snow, he rolled him down the hill-side to the bottom, in this way giving himself a rest and at the same time stirring the dormant blood and breaking the lethargic sleep of the steadily freezing seaman. In fact this rough treatment was the saving of Anderson, as a fresh wind had sprung up with the temperature fifty-seven degrees below the freezing-point.

For ten long hours this heroic sergeant struggled on, while the situation seemed more and more critical. The seaman was growing stupider, while his own strength was decreasing from hour to hour, although his courage was unfailing despite cold, darkness, and snow. At length, when within a mile of the ship, he felt that he could not drag his man a step farther. While resting and planning what next to do, he saw a rocket shoot up, leaving its train of welcome blazing light. Pointing to it, he called on Anderson to stand up and walk on as he was now safe. Again and again he uttered such words of cheer, with alternate threats and orders, but alas! without avail. The seaman only asked in feeble voice "to be left alone to die," having reached that benumbed state so dangerous to a freezing man.

Seeing that he could get him no farther, Woon laid him down in a drift of snow, covered him with such of his own clothing as he felt he could spare, and throwing quite a thick coating of snow over him, so as in a measure to protect him from the awful cold, went ahead for aid, which most happily proved to be near at hand.

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, glassy eyes, and hard-set jaws. He lost parts of both feet, of both hands, and of his nose by amputation, but with his robust constitution 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 illustrated by personal heroism those splendid qualities of uplifted humanity--fortitude, loyalty, patience, best of all, solidarity and the spirit of self-sacrifice. These unheralded and humble heroes have at the call of duty, as circumstances 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 noble 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 quantity 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-scorbutics 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 principal 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 assurance of a brother's welcome should they be driven back; and this assurance 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 shore 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 principal 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 asserting 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 anticipated 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."