Chapter VI: Part 6

With a persistent, fatuitous belief that they would drift to Disco, the seamen were first aroused to the extreme seriousness of their situation by a most violent gale of sixty hours in which they barely escaped death. As has been said, their igloos were built near the centre of an enormous floe nearly a hundred feet in thickness and fifteen miles in circumference. When the storm began the sea seemed covered by floes of similar size and of equally unbreakable ice. The party again failed to have in mind the many insecure and dangerous icebergs which dotted the ice-plain that covered the sea. Throughout the first night the cracking and breaking of the floes sounded like the firing of heavy artillery and the explosion of high-powered shells. Under stress of anxiety the men passed the second night dressed and ready for the worst.

The howling of the gale, the snow-filled air making everything invisible, the recurring roar of the sea, the sound of splitting floes within a few yards of the igloos, and the awful moaning of the moving pack around them, with the steady grinding of colliding bergs, made it a night of horrors. With the gale ended they found themselves saved almost as by miracle, for though their igloos were safe in the centre of a tiny fragment of the great floe, its area was less than a hundred square yards. Surrounding them were hundreds of icebergs and huge floes of all sizes and shapes inextricably entangled and disrupted. Yesterday they could walk miles on their own floe, now they were confined to a floe-fragment.

Dangerous as was the gale it brought about their safety, for the open pack made seal-hunting more productive. The twenty-three seals which were killed during the succeeding two weeks gave needful food, revived their courage, and renewed their strength. Tyson then arranged to save for emergencies their little remaining bread and pemmican. As they were now off the entrance to Hudson Strait, on the breeding grounds of the seal, their safety as regards food seemed to be assured. But another gale brought fresh and unlooked-for disaster, for while they collided with a large iceberg without destruction they were driven far to the eastward, into the open ocean, where their floe was by itself away from the main ice, with only water in sight.

Tyson knew that separation from the icebergs and floes meant speedy death, and as soon as the sea calmed, April 1, he ordered the party to prepare for the abandonment of the floe. Many objected to leaving their comfortable igloos, with plenty of meat, to seek ice so far to the west that it could not be seen, but they finally obeyed Tyson's orders.

The short-sightedness of the seamen in burning a boat was now evident to all. There were nineteen persons to be crowded into a whale-boat intended for eight. Some of the selfish would have left the natives behind, for taking them meant the leaving behind of nearly all meat and other dead weights. Bread, pemmican, some ammunition, the tent, and sleeping-gear were put in the boat, and with a spirit of loyalty criticised by the seamen, Tyson took on board the desk and records of Captain Hall. If this man lived it would be with honor; if he died it should be with his self-respect. The fearfully overcrowded boat barely escaped swamping several times--saved only through Tyson's skilful seamanship. Some men were so alarmed that in panic they threw overboard seal meat to lighten the boat. Three days of unremitting labor brought them to a floe that seemed solid, which they occupied in face of bad weather.

They had barely put up igloos when an awful gale burst on them, and for four days it was a steady battle against death. Their floe began to crumble under pressure from other bergs, and Ebierbing's hut was carried off as the floe split. Seeking the centre of the ice they built a new igloo, which lasted for the night only. Next day the floe, caught between two giant bergs, burst with a mighty roar, splitting completely in two, the crack running through the floor of the igloo. They were left on a piece of ice so small that they could not make arrangements for all to lie down together. Everything was put into the boat, and all through the night they stood watch, half-and-half, ready to launch her at a moment's notice. Again the floe split while breakfast was being cooked in the tent, the crack running through the tent; the cook escaped but the breakfast fell into the sea. The tent was again pitched alongside the whale-boat. The tent could not shelter all the party, but by turns they got a little sleep.

About midnight there was heard a fearful crash, and, as Hans relates, "The ice which served us as a camping-place parted between the boat on which I slept and the tent. I jumped out to the other side, while that piece on which the boat was placed moved off quickly with Mister Maje [Meyer] who was seated in the boat, and we were separated from it by the water. Our Master [Tyson] asked the sailors to make a boat out of a piece of ice and try to reach it, but they refused. We had never felt so distressed as at this moment, when we had lost our boat. At last I said to my comrade [Ebierbing]: '_We must try to get at it!_' Each of us then formed an _umiardluk_ [a bad boat] out of a piece of ice, and in this way passed to the other fragment. As now we were three men we could manage to put the boat into the water. On doing so Mister Maje [Meyer] fell into the sea; Ebierbing pulled him up. Meanwhile the ice had screwed together, and we stood still. At this time night fell, and our companion who had been in the sea, now lying in the boat, was like to freeze to death. I said to my comrade that if he remained so he would really die. When I had spoken we asked him to rise, saying that if he remained he would perish. The first time he rose he tumbled down, but, after having walked a long time, he recovered. At daybreak we discovered our friends close by, and the ice joined together. They came to us and assisted us to drag the boat over to them."

From Tyson's "Arctic Experiences."]

The crucial trial on the evening of April 20 may best be realized from Tyson's graphic description: "Finally came a tremendous wave, carrying away our tent, skins, and bed-clothing, leaving us destitute. The women and children were already in the boat (Merkut having her tiny baby Charlie Polaris, Inuit-fashion, in the hood of her fur jacket), or the little ones would have been swept into watery graves. All we could do was to try and save the boat. All hands were called to man the boat--to hold on to it with might and main to prevent it being washed away. With our boat warp and strong line of _oogjook_ (seal) thongs we secured the boat to vertical projecting points of ice. Having no grapnels or ice-anchors these fastenings were frequently unloosed and broken, and we had to brace ourselves and hold on with all the strength we had.

"I got the boat over to the edge of our ice where the seas first struck, for toward the farther edge the gathered momentum of the waves would more than master us and the boat would go.... We were nearly carried off, boat and all, many times during this dreadful night. The heaviest seas came at intervals of fifteen to twenty minutes.... There we stood all night long, from 9 P. M. to 7 A. M., enduring what few, if any, have gone through and lived. Tremendous seas would come and lift up the boat bodily, and carry it and us forward almost to the extreme opposite edge of our piece.

"Several times the boat got partly over the edge and was only hauled back by the superhuman strength which a knowledge of the desperate condition its loss would reduce us to gave us. With almost every sea would come an avalanche of ice-blocks in all sizes, from a foot square to the size of a bureau, which, striking our legs and bodies, bowled us off our feet. We were black and blue with bruises for many a day.

"We stood hour after hour, the sea as strong as ever, but we weakening. Before morning we had to make Tookoolito and Merkut [the women] get out and help us hold on too.... That was the greatest fight for life we had yet had. God must have given us strength for the occasion. For twelve hours there was scarcely a sound uttered save the crying of the children and my orders: '_Hold on! Bear down! Put on all your weight!_' and the responsive '_ay, ay, sir!_' which for once came readily enough."

These awful experiences past, they were rescued ten days later, off the coast of Labrador, by Captain Bartlett of the sealing-steamer _Tigress_. They had lived on an ice-floe one hundred and ninety-six days and drifted fifteen hundred miles. Through God's providence they were restored to the world in health and without the loss of a life or even of a limb.

His work accomplished, the heroic sailor, Tyson, went back to the every-day things of life without parade or boastings, and in an humble position did well and contentedly the ordinary round of work.

In the difficult and dangerous arctic service herein told Tyson did from day to day what seemed his present duty as best he could without thought of self. Without other ambition than to save the lives of the men, the women, and the children whom Providence had intrusted to his charge, he did not seek but he found fame and good report. Let the youth of our great land note that this is but one of the many cases in our day and generation in which, as Tennyson sings:

"Let his great example stand,
Till in all lands and thro' all human story
The path of duty be the path of glory."

FOOTNOTES:

[14] See map, page 95.

[15] Of this situation Hans Hendrik, in his "Memoirs," written in Eskimo, says: "But especially I pitied my poor little wife and her children in the terrible snow-storm. I began thinking: 'Have I searched for this myself by travelling to the north? But no! we have a merciful Providence to watch over us.' At length our children fell asleep, while we covered them with ox-hides in the frightful snow-drift."

THE SAVING OF PETERSEN

"Only action gives life strength."
--RICHTER.

In 1875 the British arctic expedition steamed northward through Kane Sea in its attempt to reach the north pole. Its commander, Captain George S. Nares, R.N., thought it prudent to insure a safe retreat by establishing a southerly base of operations where one ship should remain. Nares, in the flag-ship _Alert_, chose the dangerous and exposed winter quarters at Floeberg Beach, an open roadstead of the ice-clad Arctic Ocean at the northern entrance of Robeson Channel. The _Discovery_, under command of Captain S. F. Stephenson, R.N., was laid up at a sheltered anchorage in Lady Franklin Bay, more than a hundred miles to the southward of the _Alert_. An attempt to open communication between the two ships by sledge party failed in the autumn of 1875. With the return of the sun in 1876, after an absence of one hundred and fifty days, it became most important to establish communication with the _Discovery_ at the earliest moment. From the _Alert_ there was visible far to the eastward, on clear days, the mountains of northwest Greenland, which Nares wished Stephenson to explore instead of making a sledge trip to the Etah Eskimos to the south as originally planned. The heroic conduct of the officers attempting this journey and their success in saving the life of Petersen are set forth in this tale.

* * * * *

The efficiency of every army and of every navy of the world is known only by the final and supreme test of active service in war, but it is plain that the essential attributes to success--skill, solidarity, and devotion to duty--are acquired in times of peace. Nowhere are greater efforts made to cultivate these admirable qualities than in the royal navy of Great Britain, the most formidable of the world.

Among its chiefs is the second naval lord, whose duties lie especially with the hearts of oak, the men behind the guns, whose courage and skill are the very soul of the service. The second naval lord has in charge the manning and officering of the war-ships; he plans the bringing together at a special place and in a given time the mighty dreadnoughts, the tiny torpedo-boats, the swaying submarines, and the swift destroyers; and he sees that gunnery, marksmanship, and other special training are up to the highest mark. Such a lord should, above all, be a man among men--one inspiring confidence both by knowing when and how times of peril should be met and also through having himself done such service in earlier life.

Such is the life history of Admiral Sir George Le Clerc Egerton, who, passing from a high sea command to duty as the naval aid to his majesty the King, rose a few years since to this lofty station and assumed its important duties. Great as may be the respect and high as can be the admiration of the world for efficient performance of public duties by officials of high station, yet the hearts of sympathetic, tender-hearted men and women are more deeply moved whenever and where-ever they hear a tale of self-sacrifice and of heroic comradeship. Such is the story of this great naval lord, enacted by him as a sub-lieutenant far from the civilized world, on the ice-bound coast of a desolate arctic land, for the safety of an humble dog driver. The nobler the heart the greater is its sense of duty to helpless dependents in deep distress. And more heroic was the work of Lieutenant Egerton, flying his sledge flag, "_Tanq je puis_ (All that I can)," than any done under his stately flag as a naval lord or as admiral of the fleet.

When Captain Nares looked longingly southward from his ship on the Arctic Ocean, wishing in his heart for word of his assistant, he was not blind to the dangers and difficulties of the journey. The preceding September gallant Lieutenant Rawson with strength and courage had pressed on to Cape Rawson. The precipitous cliffs there made a farther journey by land impossible, while the half-open sea was covered with a shifting, ever-moving ice-pack that made the ocean as impassable for a boat as the ice was for a sledge.

Now in late winter the surface of Robeson Channel was covered by a solid, unmoving pack, but the cold was so intense that it could be endured in the field only by men of iron. Day after day the temperature was eighty degrees below the freezing-point, and even when it should moderate the travelling party must be carefully chosen. Rawson was to go as a passenger, for his ship was the _Discovery_ to which he was now to return. Of all available officers Egerton seemed to have physical and mental qualities that promised well. Naturally the dog driver--for they were to travel with a dog-sledge--would have been Eskimo Frederick. In this emergency Niels Christian Petersen offered his services, claiming that his arctic experiences and powers of endurance fitted him for such a journey. A Dane by birth, his years of service in Greenland had made him a skilled dog driver, and experiences with Dr. Hayes in his expedition of 1860 had made him familiar with field service. A vigorous man of forty years, he seemed the best of the three sledgemen for stanch endurance in such ice and weather.

Nares said in his letter of instructions: "In performing this duty in the present cold weather, with the temperature more than seventy-seven degrees below freezing, great caution is necessary." The date of departure was originally fixed for March 4, 1876, the day on which the retiring sun was first clearly seen above the southern hills at 11.30 A. M. The cold was intense, being one hundred and one degrees below the freezing-point. Whiskey placed on the floe froze hard in a few minutes. Egerton's departure was therefore postponed until the prolonged cold ended eight days later.

Meantime it was clear that such awful temperatures would seriously affect the dogs, who were suffering in short exercise marches from the action of the intense cold on the sharp, sand-like snow particles--all separate. Nares relates that in crossing the trails of the dogs near the ship he "noticed, lying on the floe, numerous frozen pellets of blood which always form between the toes of these animals when working during severely cold weather. The heat of the foot causes the snow to ball; this soon changes into ice, and collecting between the toes cuts into the flesh. On board of the _Resolute_ in 1853 we endeavored to fit our dogs with blanket pads on their feet, but these were found to increase the mischief by first becoming damp and then freezing, when the hardened blanket cut into the sinews at the back of the dogs' legs."[16]

On March 12, 1876, Petersen threw forward the long flexible lash of his Eskimo whip, calling sharply to the waiting dogs, and the party dashed off in a temperature of minus thirty degrees. Petersen, Rawson, and Egerton took turns on the sledge, one riding at a time. The others ran behind the sledge, holding fast each to one of the upstanders.[17]

The dogs ran freely with their very light load of fifty-one pounds per animal, for a full load would be about one hundred pounds for each dog. An hour's travel in a cross wind--filled with the fine drift of sand-like snow so common in the arctic--made them all put on their _blinkers_ (face-protectors against the cold, made of carpeting material) to keep their faces from freezing solid. Every care was taken by the watchful Egerton to guard against frost-bites. Each quarter of an hour he stopped the sledge for a moment, when each sledgeman examined the faces of his comrades. Whenever a whitish spot was seen, the warm palm of the bare hand was placed against the frozen flesh which at once thaws.[18]

As closely as possible Egerton followed the favorite line of travel, along the high ice-foot of the bold shore, inside or outside as conditions required. This name is given to the ice-ledge which forms by gradual accretion on the rocks or earth of the shore. As the main sea ice rises and falls with the tides, the ice necessarily breaks near the shore; the inner, fast-adhering ice is known as the ice-foot, the outer ice as the main pack or the floe. The break is in the form of an irregular fissure called the tidal crack. In the period of the spring tides (when the tides have their greatest ranges) the main pack rises at high tide above the ice-foot, and through the tidal crack flows the sea, covering and filling the irregularities of the ice-foot. This overflow freezes, leaving a smooth, level surface particularly favorable for sledge travel until it is broken up by pressure from the moving pack.

Egerton found the ice-foot in good shape for some distance, but now and then was driven to the main floe of Robeson Channel. The ice of the strait was a mass of broken, irregular blocks, often loose in arrangement and sharp in forms. Its surface and the difficulties of travel may be best likened to marching over great blocks of anthracite coal, save that the ice is bluish-white instead of black.

The lieutenant made a short day's march, going early into camp to avoid overworking the unhardened muscles of man and beast--a sound practice followed by wise arctic sledgemen at the beginning of a long journey.

Even in good weather the making of camp is the worst feature of arctic travel. Everything is frozen solid, from the bread to the bacon, from the tent to the sleeping-bags, which become as stiff as a board. Now conditions were worse than usual owing to the increasing violence of the blizzard. With snow-blinded eyes and a high, annoying wind the putting up of the tent was most difficult, but it was finally done. This gave a wind-protected place where the cook could light his lamp, melt his snow for tea, and thaw out the frozen meat.

Meanwhile the two other men unpacked the sledge and removed the articles into the tent. It was found that the driving wind had sifted fine snow into the provision bags, the sleeping-gear, and everything that was at all exposed. It was a necessary but most tedious labor to carefully brush every particle of snow from each article before moving it into the tent. They knew that a neglect so to do would be felt the next morning through coatings of ice over their gear. While the cook was busy the other sledgemen fed and picketed the dogs. If left loose these domesticated wolves might possibly return to their fellows at the ship, where good food and fighting company were to be had. If they remained at the camp a loose dog would swallow down everything in the shape of skin, hide, or food. More than once an arctic "tenderfoot" has wakened to find his means of travel vanished--sledge-thongs and dog harness entirely gone down the capacious throats of his ravenous team. Egerton, alive to the situation, carefully stored harnesses and camp gear in the tent with the provision bags.

So bad was the weather that it took six hours of steady labor to make camp, change foot-gear, cook, eat, and enter their sleeping-bags.

With the night passed on the blizzard, and morning came--clear, calm, and bitter cold. Even in the tent the temperature was forty-two degrees below freezing. Frost-bitten hands, ravenous dogs, slowly melting snow, and the watched pot that never boils made slow the striking of camp. It was five and a half hours after leaving their sleeping-bags before they were getting a spark of warmth into their benumbed limbs by steady travel over the arctic trail. Though it was bitter cold the dogs kept taut their traces and progress was rapid for several hours. From time to time Petersen would sigh, and to Egerton's question, "What is the matter?" answer that it was only a pain that would pass. But Egerton felt anxious, as the Dane fell back now and then, and when he said that the cramps in his stomach were terrible, halt was made in a sheltered spot where the cooking-lamp could be lighted. In a half-hour a bowl of boiling-hot tea was served, the finest known restorative of vigor and warmth in cases of arctic exposure--far surpassing rum, brandy, or any alcoholic stimulant. The Dane ate neither the offered bread nor the bacon, and indeed of the latter Egerton said that it was frozen so solidly that even a well man could not put tooth through the lean parts.

Soon they came to very bad travelling, across steeply inclined snow slopes along the bordering cliffs of the ice-bound sea that they were forced to follow. In one place the trail led to a snow-drift thirty feet across, whose steep seaward face ended on a rocky ledge with a sheer outward fall of about thirty feet. It was clearly impossible to move the sledge across, and, Alpine-glacier fashion, a road was slowly hewn out with pick and axe. In other bad places the loaded sledge plunged headlong from the top of high hummocks into masses of rubble-ice in the intervening valleys. In such work animals are quite useless, for the Eskimo dog pulls hard and steady only under conditions where the sledge moves constantly forward. When once stalled the dog team sits on its haunches, welcoming a rest, and watches events composedly. In such cases the skilled driver untangles the traces, straightens out the team, calls out shrilly, cracks his whip loudly, and, as the dogs spring forward, gives a timely and skilful twist to the upstanders which helps the sledge to a new start. If the sledge does not then move it must be unloaded and the dogs again started, or it must be hauled by man-power to an easier part of the trail.

This exhausting labor fell on the young officers, as Petersen was so sick as to be unable to do his part. Standing around, the Dane began to lose that warmth of vigorous circulation that alone keeps a man alive in arctic cold. When finally the dog driver was seized with fits of spasmodic shivering and his face showed frequent frostings, with bits of seriously frozen flesh, Egerton became greatly alarmed. As they were then making their way through very bad ice, camping at once was impossible. From time to time, however, the officers, quitting the sledge, took the sufferer in hand, and by five or ten minutes of work would get him so thawed out that he could safely go on.

When a good camping-place was reached, though they had travelled only six miles, Egerton at once stopped, hoping that a good night's rest with warm drink and food would bring the Dane around.

The moment that the tent was up Egerton sent Petersen in with directions to change his clothing, get into the sleeping-bag, and make himself comfortable until dinner was ready. Meanwhile the officers unloaded the sledge, picketed the dogs, and cared for the camp gear.

On crawling into the tent Egerton found Petersen groaning, and on examination was shocked to find that he had crawled into the sleeping-bag without changing his clothing. Especially bad was his failure to replace his damp foot-gear by dry socks--a practice of recognized necessity in arctic travel to prevent the feet from freezing at night.

As he was groaning and complaining of much pain, Egerton set to work to relieve him. Finding that both the hands and the feet were severely frost-bitten, the man was made to strip off all his clothing, damp with the sweat of travel, and put on dry undergarments. While Rawson was busy making tea, Egerton set himself to the labor of thawing out the frost and of restoring circulation by chafing the hardened limbs with his bare hands--a long and difficult task. The sick man took a little hot tea, which his stomach would not retain, but a dose of _sal volatile_ (ammonia) with hot rum and water gave temporary relief. A high wind arose and the cold became most bitter, the temperature in the tent falling to fifty-two degrees below the freezing-point. With a cold that would nearly solidify mercury added to their mental troubles, the sufferings of the party were extreme. The hands, face, and feet of the invalid suffered repeated frost-bites, which the devoted officers were hardly able to remove.

Exhausted as they were by the hard and unusual labors of the day, sleeping only by snatches, they took watch and watch to care as best they might for their sick comrade. Suffering extremely themselves from the cold, they spared no efforts to give such personal services as might comfort and benefit him. Again and again they restored circulation to the frozen parts by chafing alternately with their naked hands and by the application of flannel wraps heated by their own bodies. Such a night seemed endless with its cares, its privations, and its anxieties, and unfortunately the continuing gale made it impossible to move when dawn came.

It was with great relief that they learned from the Dane that his cramps had nearly disappeared, after he had taken his breakfast of hot cocoa and soaked biscuit. This gave way to renewed anxiety when a few hours later Petersen was attacked by violent and recurring fits of ague, which they hoped to dispel by wrapping him up closely in all the available robes and flannels.

Egerton no longer thought of going on to the _Discovery_, as it was now a question whether or not the Dane would perish before he could be got back to the _Alert_, less than twenty miles distant. While knowing that travel in such a gale would be fatal to one if not to all, it was certain that death would come to the Dane if they remained in the tent with a cold of fifty-six degrees below freezing.

Rawson and Egerton agreed that the only chance of prolonging life lay in building a snow house. Casting about they found conditions unfavorable for a regular hut, and so decided to burrow a refuge hole in a great snow-drift not far from their tent. First they sank a shaft six feet deep to a solid foundation, and thence under-cut a tunnel inward for some distance. At the end of it they hollowed out a space eight feet square and four feet high. This work was intermittently done, as from time to time they had to return to the terrible duty of thawing out and restoring circulation to the limbs of the freezing man. Within six hours, however, they had the shelter done and the Dane removed to it. Both tent and sledge were drawn over the passageways so as to keep the cold air out and the warmth from their bodies within. The cold being still intense, they ran the risk of asphyxiation to insure Petersen's comfort. Closing every crevice through which could come a breath of air, they lighted their cooking-lamp and thus raised the temperature to seven degrees above zero. Fortunately such transpiration of fresh air took place through the snow as saved them from harm.

The day passed in this manner, small quantities of food being taken from time to time by the sick man only to be rejected later. Indeed, the only improvement in his condition seemed to come from those strong and dangerous, though effective, restoratives, rum and ammonia, and these were almost always followed by physical relapses. Answering repeatedly, to inquiries, that he was warm and comfortable, in making him ready for the night they found that his feet were perfectly gelid from the toes to the ankles and that his hands were nearly as benumbed.

Realizing that he was nearly in extremities, Egerton and Rawson renewed their devoted efforts. Each officer took a foot, stripped it naked, and set to work to warm it by rubbing it with their bare hands. When circulation was somewhat restored they applied flannels warmed against their bodies, and replaced them as the used pieces became too cold for service. The hands were similarly restored to warmth after two hours of steady work. When the limbs were wrapped up in thick, dry, and warm coverings they thought that the crisis was over.

During the night Egerton was awakened to find the Dane worse than ever. Quite delirious, he had crawled from his sleeping-bag, began to eat snow, and exposed his uncovered body to the cold. Ague fits attacked him, his breath came in short convulsive gasps, and circulation was almost entirely suspended, even in his body. Then followed the same awful and tedious labor of thawing the man out and of guarding against a repetition of such irrational conduct.

With the coming morn the weather was found to be nearly calm, and to their great surprise the condition of Petersen was somewhat improved.

As it was certain death to remain where they were, Egerton decided to start on the journey to the _Alert_, seventeen miles distant. Though exceedingly feeble, Petersen thought that he could make the journey, Egerton promptly abandoned everything except tent, sleeping-gear, and food for a single day. Over the first part of the trail--most dangerous for a sledge and very rough--Petersen managed to walk under the stimulation of rum and ammonia. When he fell, prostrate and unconscious, on the icy road and could go no farther, he was put into a sleeping-bag, wrapped in warm robes, and lashed securely to the sledge.

The terrible conditions of the homeward journey must be imagined for they cannot well be described. Once the sledge was precipitated down a crevasse twenty-five feet deep, the sledge turning over and over three times in its descent, hurling the dogs in all directions. With beating hearts the officers scrambled down in haste to Petersen, expecting to find him badly injured, but almost miraculously he had escaped with a few bruises. At another point Egerton, who was driving, stopped the team to clear the harness, a frequent duty, as the antics of the dogs tie up in a sadly tangled knot the seal-thong traces by which the sledge is hauled. With one of its occasional fits of uncontrol, the team started on the jump, and dragged the spirited Egerton, who held fast to the traces, a hundred yards through rough ice-masses before he could gain control.

Whenever a stop was made to clear harness or to pick a way through bad ice, the officers went through the slow and painful duty of thawing out Petersen's limbs. Save a brief stop for hot tea to give warmth to and quench the thirst of the invalid, they travelled ten hours, and when in the last stages of physical exhaustion had the inexpressible happiness of bringing their crippled comrade alive to the _Alert_.

With a generosity in keeping with his heroic conduct toward Petersen, Egerton ascribed his final success to Rawson's labors, for in his official report he says that high praise is due Lieutenant Rawson "for the great aid derived from his advice and help; without his unremitting exertions and cheerful spirit, my own efforts would have been unavailing to return to the ship with my patient alive."

In these hours of splendid devotion to their disabled comrade these young officers, absolutely disregarding personal considerations, displayed that contempt for external good which Emerson indicates as the true measure of every heroic act.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] In my own expedition we shod our dogs for travel in very cold weather with neatly fitting, thin, oil-tanned seal-skin shoes. Though a shoe was occasionally lost, as they had to be tied on loosely, the feet of the dogs were well protected.

[17] The upstanders are stout poles rising from the extreme rear of the sledge by which the driver is able to steer or direct the course of the sledge itself.

[18] The rubbing of frozen places with snow, so often recommended, is most injurious in the extreme north. In my own expedition it was once suggested to a man whose nose was freezing, as a matter of joke. Taken seriously, the unfortunate man rubbed his nose freely. The sharp, sand-like particles of snow acted like a file and scraped off the skin so that it was a week or more before the man's face was healed.

LIFE ON AN EAST GREENLAND ICE-PACK

"And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald."
--COLERIDGE.

The second German north polar expedition sailed under Captain Karl Koldewey in 1869, with the intention of landing on the coast of East Greenland, near Sabine Island, whence by winter sledging the explorations of the northern coasts of Greenland and of the north polar basin were to be undertaken. The two ships of the expedition, the _Germania_ and the _Hansa_, reached by the middle of July the edge of the great ice-pack, which in enormous and generally impenetrable ice-masses streams southward from the Arctic Ocean between Greenland and Spitzbergen. As an accompaniment to this vast ice-field come from the glacier fiords of East Greenland most of the enormous icebergs which are sighted and encountered by transatlantic steamships off the banks of Newfoundland. The ships separating through misunderstanding of a signal, the _Germania_, a steam-ship, succeeded in working her way through the ice-stream to Sabine Island, where her crew carried out its programme. The _Hansa_, without steam-power, and so dependent on sails, became entangled in the pack in early August and was never able to escape therefrom. The fate of the _Hansa_ and the experiences of her crew form the subject-matter of this sketch.

* * * * *

Until the _Hansa_ was fast frozen in the pack, on September 9, Captain Hegemann was prepared for any emergency, whether the ship was crushed or if opening lanes of water should permit escape to Sabine Island from which they were only forty miles distant. Completely equipped and victualled boats were kept on deck so that they could be lowered to the ice at any moment.

When the ship was frozen in the captain faced resourcefully the serious question of wintering in the pack. It was known to him that no ship had ever escaped from such wintering in the drifting ice-pack of the Greenland Sea, and indeed the violent and frequently recurring pressures of the ice-field pointed to the early loss of their ship. Life might be possible, but health and comfort could not be had in boats covered with canvas. Cramped quarters, severe cold, damp bedding, and absence of facilities for cooking forbade such an attempt. While others suggested the snow houses of the Eskimo, one fertile mind urged that a living-house be built of coal, which was done.

Fortunately the coal supply was in the form of briquets, coal tiles nine inches broad, quite like ordinary bricks in shape. Thus went up the most remarkable construction in the annals of polar history, a house of coal on a foundation of ice. The _Hansa_ was moored to one of the so-called paleocrystic floe-bergs several square miles in extent, nearly fifty feet thick, with fresh-water ponds and an uplifted central mass thirty-nine feet high, near which hill the coal house was built to insure its safety. With water from the pools to pour on the finely powdered snow, the arctic masons had a cement that quickly bound together the tiles as they were laid in courses. The ship's spars were laid crossways for the main rafters, and other wood was used for the completion of the roof-frame, over which were stretched reed mattings and sail-cloth. Coal tiles made a level and convenient floor, whence in case of necessity they might draw for fuel in the late winter. With a double door and provision caches in the house they awaited the action of the pack, still comfortable in the ship's cabins.

With joy the hunters learned that the ice-field was not wholly desolate, but that it was the hunting-field of the polar bear, who was followed by the arctic fox, who deftly snapped up under bruin's very nose any outlying bit of seal that was within reach.

In the early days, before the pack had become an unbroken ice-mass, a hunter espied on an adjacent floe a large she bear with her cub. A boat was quickly put off to cross the narrow water-lane, when to the surprise of every one the old bear, followed by the cub, rushed forward to meet them at the edge of the floe, gnashing her teeth and licking her chops, clearly unfamiliar with man and his weapons and anxious for a meal. As they fired the bear fell dead on the snow, but the cub instead of running remained by her side licking and caressing her mother in the most affectionate manner. She paid no attention at first to the advancing hunters, save to alertly elude the many efforts to cast a noose over her head. Finally the cub became alarmed, and with piteous howlings ran away, escaping over the rugged pack despite a shot which wounded her.

In the middle of October came a series of violent blizzards which foretold the coming fate of the ship. The groaning, grinding ice-field was breaking up under enormous pressures that came from the colliding floe-bergs, which were revolving under various forces of wind and sea currents. Though trembling violently, with her masts swaying to and fro, the _Hansa_ was spared, great fissures in the floe near by showing how close was her escape. All of the crew were busy preparing for the worst, fuel, food, and clothing being carried in quantities to the house.

The end came on October 19 within four miles of the East Greenland coast, when a gale sprang up and the collision of the fast ice of the shore and the moving sea-pack had already increased the ice-pressures with fearful results. Mighty blocks of granite-like ice shoving under the bow of the ship raised it seventeen feet above its former position in the ice, while the after part of the _Hansa_ was frozen in so tightly or jammed so badly that it could not rise, under which conditions it was certain that the stern would be racked and strained beyond service.

The dangerous situation was dramatic in the extreme. With the dying wind the sky cleared, the stars shone with keen brilliancy, the cold increased sharply to forty-five degrees below the freezing-point, while, as if in mockery of man's sorrows, the merry dancers flashed upward in dagger-shaped gleams wavering an instant and then vanishing, only to come again in new forms with ever-changing colors. To a mere observer it would have been a perfect picture of adverse arctic conditions, wonderful in its aspects and surpassingly beautiful to an artistic eye.

With relaxing pressures the great ice-ridges slowly decreasing in height fell apart, and the ship was again on her usual level, but rent fatally and making water fast. In vain did the whole crew strain at the pumps, while the outpouring water from the spouts froze on the deck as it fell--the water gained steadily and orders to save the cargo were given. The worn-out men worked frantically, dragging out bedding, food, clothing, medicines, guns, ammunition, sledges, boat furniture, and everything that could be of service for life on the floe. Best of all, for their comfort and amusement, they hoisted over the rail of the ship's galley heating-stoves, games, and books; they felled the masts for fuel and stripped the sails for house use. Fortunately the energetic seamen were able to strip the ship of all useful articles before she sank on October 22, 1869, in 70 deg. 52' north latitude, a few miles from the Greenland coast.

They now faced a situation of extraordinary if not of imminent peril. It was barely possible that they might reach the coast, six miles distant, but that was to face starvation, as everything must be abandoned for a cross-floe march. If the shore was reached it was well known to be ice-clad and desolate, as there were to be found neither natives nor land game along the narrow strips of rocky, ice-free beach which stretches from sea-glacier to sea-glacier on this seemingly accursed coast.

The only chances of life were in the shifting and uncertain forces of nature--a cold winter to keep the ice-field intact, a stormless season to save their floe from breaking up under pressures, and the usual Greenland current to set them to the south. With good fortune they might hope to get into open water seven months hence, when by their boats they could possibly reach the Danish settlements of West Greenland. But could they live seven months through a winter barely begun? At least they would do their best. They were fourteen men, all good and true, in health, skilled to the sea, inured to hardships and privations, accustomed to discipline, and inspired by a spirit of comradeship.

Their floe had been wasted at its edges by the enormous pressure, as well as by the action of the sea, so that they were thankful for Hegemann's foresight in placing the coal house remote from the ocean. All that sailor ingenuity could plan was now done to make life healthy and comfortable in their ark of safety. Outer snow walls were erected so that there was a free walk around the main house, giving also a place for the protection of stores against storms and shelter for daily exercise. From their flag-staff was displayed on fine days a flag, emblem of their love for their country, of their faith in themselves, and of aspiration and uplifting courage in hours of danger.

The hunt engaged their activities whenever signs of game were noted. Once a bear and her cub came from the land, and the mother was slain and added to their larder. An effort was made to keep the cub as a kind of pet. After a while she escaped and was caught swimming across a narrow lane of water. To keep her secure they fastened her to an ice-anchor, where she was at first very much frightened, but later she ate with avidity such meat as was thrown to her. To add to her comfort a snow house was built, with the floor strewed with shavings for her bed, but the record runs: "The young bear, as a genuine inhabitant of the arctic seas, despised the hut and bed, preferring to camp in the snow." Some days later she disappeared, and with the heavy chain doubtless sank to the bottom of the sea.

Nor were these castaways unmindful of the charms of arctic nature. Their narratives tell us of the common beauties around them--the snow-crystals glittering in the few hours of sunlight like millions of tiny diamonds. Night scenes were even more impressive, through wondrous views of the starry constellations and the recurring and evanescent gleams of the mystical aurora. Under the weird auroral light the white snow took at times a peculiar greenish tint, and with it, says an officer, "One could read the finest writing without trouble. One night it shone so intensely that the starlight waned and objects on our field cast shadows." But in its main aspects life on the ice-pack was full of dread in which nervous anxiety largely entered.

The barren peaks and rounded snow-capped land masses of the Greenland coast were usually in sight, and once they were astonished as they walked to see thousands of tiny leaves, possibly of the arctic willow, flying about them, signs of a snow-free fiord not far distant. Again the newly fallen snow for a considerable distance was covered with a reddish matter which Dr. Laube thought must be of volcanic origin carried through the air from Iceland two hundred miles away.

Of interest to the party were the visits of foxes, who came from the near-by land. Of the first it is said: "With tails high in air they shot over the ice-field like small craft sailing before the wind. For the first moment it seemed as if the wind had caught up a couple of large semicircles of whitish yellow paper and was wafting them along." One was shot as a specimen, but the later visitor in the middle of December was better treated. We are told that "the fox, white with a black-tipped tail, was particularly confiding, even bold. He scratched up the bear flesh buried in the snow, and carried it off to eat as we approached. He then quite unconcernedly took a walk on the roof of our house, and through the small window convinced himself as to what we were doing. Should we shoot it? No! It was a long time since we had seen such a fearless creature. At times we placed nets with a meat bait to tease him, but he always managed to get clear of them."

Meanwhile their coal house with the floe was drifting south slowly, with the coast of Greenland in plain sight, distant from five to fifteen miles. Their safety, always the subject of daily talk, seemed assured until the coming spring, for they were on an immense floe-berg whose area of about four square miles was dotted with hills and vales, while sweet-water lakes gave abundant water for drinking and cooking, a great boon. It was known that surrounding floes were daily grinding huge pieces of ice from the edge of their own, and that the ice-pressures were steadily turning it around, so that one week they saw the rising sun from their single window and the week following noted the setting sun therefrom. At first this floe rotation was completed in twelve days, but later, with reduced size, stronger currents, and high winds, the floe-berg made a full rotation in four days.

At times there were welcome additions to their slim larder of fresh meat. One day a seaman rushed in breathless to say that he was sure there was a walrus near by. All were instantly astir, and soon a walrus was located, a black spot on the clear white of an adjoining floe. With great celerity and caution the whale-boat was launched in the intervening lane of open water, and with notable skill the steersman, Hildebrant, manoeuvred the boat within rifle range without disturbing the rest of the sleeping animal. The first shot wounded the walrus so badly that he could move away but slowly. On the approach of the hunters he struggled with great fury, breaking through the young ice and attempting to strike down the hunters as they approached to give him his death wound.

Covered with hide an inch thick, the walrus was so colossal that it took the united strength of ten men, using a powerful pulley, to raise the carcass from the water to the main ice. Under the outer hide was a layer of fat three inches thick, which was almost as acceptable for fuel as was the meat for food to men who had for so long a time been confined to salt and canned meats as their principal diet.

The odor of the burning walrus fat seemed to attract bears from long distances. One inquisitive bruin, sniffing at the meat in one of the boats, fell through the tightly stretched canvas covering, and scrambling out growled at the night light by the outer door of the house and passed on safely. A second animal was wounded but escaped. The third, whose acute hunger brought him one dark night to the house in search of the odorous walrus fat, was received with a volley and was found dead the next morning.

The quiet Christmas holidays, celebrated with German earnestness, had brought to their hearts an unusual sense of confidence, peace, and hope, based on their providential preservation, excellent health, and physical comfort. This confidence was soon rudely dispelled, giving way to deep anxiety at the devastation wrought by a frightful blizzard that burst on them with the opening new year.

Then the crew realized that there was a possible danger of perishing in the pack, since at any time their immense floe-berg might break into countless pieces in the very midst of the polar cold and the winter darkness. With the violent wind arose an awful groaning of the ice-pack, due to the tremendous pressures of the surging ocean beneath and of the crowding floes around. So violent were the movements of the floe itself, and so great the noise of crashing bergs, that they feared to longer remain in the coal house, and in terror of their lives they sought refuge in the open. Although the snow-filled air made it impossible for any one to see a dozen yards, yet at least there was a chance to escape if the floe split under their feet, which was felt to be possible at any moment. They made ready for the worst, though escape from death seemed quite hopeless. Rolling up their fur sleeping-bags and clothing, they filled their knapsacks with food. Forming a human chain they ran safety lines from the house to the several boats, well knowing that in the blinding blizzard one could not otherwise find his way to the boat to which each one had been told off for the final emergency. They then set a watch of two men to note events, and, intrusting their souls to God, the rest of the party crawled into their sleeping-bags for such needed rest and for such possible sleep as might come to the most stolid.

When the gale broke two days later they found that they had escaped death as by miracle. Three-fourths of this seemingly stable floe had disappeared, broken into huge, shapeless masses. Barely a square mile of the floe remained intact, with the coal house perilously near the edge instead of in the centre.

Scarcely had order and comfort been restored, when ten days later an even more furious blizzard burst upon them, actually bringing them face to face with death. In the middle of the night the watch cried out loudly, "All hands turn out!" With their furs and knapsacks now kept ready for instant action, they rushed out and stood in place, each by his allotted boat. The hurricane wind made movement most difficult, snow filled the air, their floe was quivering from awful pressures, while the howling gale and groaning ice-pack made a deafening tumult. Nothing could be done but to stand and wait!