Part 2 (1/2)
So far as the needs of my own personal expedition were concerned, I had with me on the yacht plenty of hard hickory wood for the making of sledges, instruments, clothing and other apparatus gathered with much economy during my former years of exploration, and about one thousand pounds of pemmican. These supplies, necessary to offset the danger of s.h.i.+pwreck and detention by ice, were also all that would be required for a Polar trip. When, later, I finally decided on a Polar campaign, extra s.h.i.+p supplies, contributed from the boat, were stored at Annoatok.
There, also, my supply of pemmican was amplified by the stores of walrus meat and fat prepared during the long winter by myself, Rudolph Francke and the Eskimos.
As the yacht slowly soared toward the ocean, and night descended over the fis.h.i.+ng village with its home lights glimmering cheerfully as the stars one by one flecked the firmament with dots of fire, I felt that at last I had embarked upon my destiny. Whether I should be able to follow my heart's desire I did not know; I did not dare hazard a guess. But I was leaving my country, now on the eve of celebrating its freedom, behind me; I had elected to live in a world of ice and cold, of hunger and death, which lay before me--thousands of miles to the North.
Day by day pa.s.sed monotonously; we only occasionally saw writhing curves of land to the west of us; about us was the illimitable sea. That I had started on a journey which might result in my starting for the Pole, that my final chance had come, vaguely thrilled me. Yet the full purport of my hope seemed beyond me. On the journey to Sydney my mind was full.
I thought of the early days of my childhood, of the strange ambition which grew upon me, of my struggles, and the chance which favored me in the present expedition.
In the early days of my childhood, of which I now had only indistinct glimmerings, I remembered a restless surge in my little bosom, a yearning for something that was vague and undefined. This was, I suppose, that nebulous desire which sometimes manifests itself in early youth and later is a.s.serted in strivings toward some splendid, sometimes spectacular aim. My boyhood was not happy. As a tiny child I was discontented, and from the earliest days of consciousness I felt the burden of two things which accompanied me through later life--an innate and abnormal desire for exploration, then the manifestation of my yearning, and the constant struggle to make ends meet, that sting of poverty, which, while it tantalizes one with its horrid grind, sometimes drives men by reason of the strength developed in overcoming its concomitant obstacles to some extraordinary accomplishment.
As a very small boy, I remember being fascinated by the lure of a forbidden swimming pool. One day, when but little over five, I, impelled to test the depth, plunged to the center, where the water was above my head, and nearly lost my life. I shall never forget that struggle, and though I nearly gave out, in that short time I learned to swim. It seems to me now I have been swimming and struggling ever since.
Abject poverty and hard work marked my school days. When quite a boy, after the death of my father, I came to New York. I sold fruit at one of the markets. I saved my money. I enjoyed no luxuries. These days vividly occur in my mind. Later I engaged in a dairy business in Brooklyn, and on the meager profits undertook to study medicine.
At that time the ambition which beset me was undirected; it was only later that I found, almost by accident, what became its focusing point.
I graduated from the University of New York in 1890. I felt (as what young man does not?) that I possessed unusual qualifications and exceptional ability. An office was fitted up, and my anxiety over the disappearing pennies was eased by the conviction that I had but to hang out my s.h.i.+ngle and the place would be thronged with patients. Six months pa.s.sed. There had been about three patients.
I recall sitting alone one gloomy winter day. Opening a paper, I read that Peary was preparing his 1891 expedition to the Arctic. I cannot explain my sensations. It was as if a door to a prison cell had opened.
I felt the first indomitable, commanding call of the Northland. To invade the Unknown, to a.s.sail the fastness of the white, frozen North--all that was latent in me, the impetus of that ambition born in childhood, perhaps before birth, and which had been stifled and starved, surged up tumultuously within me.
I volunteered, and accompanied Peary, on this, the expedition of 1891-92, as surgeon. Whatever merit my work possessed has been cited by others.
Unless one has been in the Arctic, I suppose it is impossible to understand its fascination--a fascination which makes men risk their lives and endure inconceivable hards.h.i.+ps for, as I view it now, no profitable personal purpose of any kind. The spell was upon me then. It was upon me as I recalled those early days on the _Bradley_ going Northward. With a feeling of sadness I realize that the glamor is all gone now.
On the Peary and all my subsequent expeditions I served without pay.
On my return from that trip I managed to make ends meet by meager earnings from medicine. I was nearly always desperately hard pressed for money. I tried to organize several cooperative expeditions to the Arctic. These failed. I then tried to arouse interest in Antarctic exploration, but without success. Then came the opportunity to join the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, again without pay.
On my return I dreamed of a plan to attain the South Pole, and for a long time worked on a contrivance for that end--an automobile arranged to travel over ice. Financial failure again confronted me.
Disappointment only added to my ambition; it scourged me to a determination, a conviction that--I want you to remember this, to bear in mind the mental conviction which buoyed me--I must and should succeed. It is always this innate conviction which encourages men to exceptional feats, to tremendous failures or splendid, single-handed success.
A summer in the Arctic followed my Antarctic trip, and I returned to invade the Alaskan wilds. I succeeded in scaling Mt. McKinley. After my Alaskan expeditions, the routine of my Brooklyn office work seemed like the confinement of prison. I fretted and chafed at the thought. Let me have a chance, and I would succeed. This thought always filled my mind.
I convinced myself that in some way the attainment of one of the Poles--the effort on which I had spent sixteen years--would become possible.
I had no money. My work in exploration had netted me nothing, and all my professional income was soon spent. Unless you have felt the goading, devilish grind of poverty hindering you, d.o.g.g.i.ng you, you cannot know the mental fury into which I was lashed.
I waited, and fortune favored me in that I met Mr. John R. Bradley. We planned the Arctic expedition on which I was now embarked. Mr. Bradley's interest in the trip was that of a great sportsman, eager to seek big game in the Arctic. My immediate purpose was to return again to the frozen North. The least the journey would give me was an opportunity to complete the study of the Eskimos which I had started in 1891.
Mr. Bradley and I had talked, of course, of the Pole; but it was not an important incentive to the journey. Back in my brain, barely above the subconscious realm, was the feeling that this, however, might offer opportunity in the preparation for a final future determination. I, therefore, without any conscious purpose, and with my last penny, paid out of my purse for extra supplies for a personal expedition should I leave the s.h.i.+p.[1]
Aboard the _Bradley_, going northward, my plans were not at all definite. Even had I known before leaving New York that I should try for the Pole, I should not have sought any geographical license from some vague and unknown authority. Though much has since been made by critics of our quiet departure, I always felt the quest of the Pole a personal ambition[2], a crazy hunger I had to satisfy.
Fair weather followed us to Sydney, Cape Breton.
From this point we sailed over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then entered the Straits of Belle Isle at a lively speed. On a cold, cheerless day in the middle of July we arrived at Battle Harbor, a little town at the southeastern point of Labrador, where Mr. Bradley joined us. He had preceded us north, by rail and coasting vessels, after watching a part of the work of outfitting the schooner.
On the morning of July 16 we left the rockbound coast of North America and steered straight for Greenland. In this region a dense and heavy fog almost always lies upon the sea. Then nothing is visible but slow-swaying gray ma.s.ses, which veil all objects in a shroud of ghostly dreariness. Through the fog can be heard the sound of fisher-boat horns, often the very voices of the fishermen themselves, while their crafts are absolutely hidden from view. On this trip, however, from time to time, great fragments of fog slowly lifted, and we saw, emerging out of the gray mistiness, islands, bleak and black and weathertorn, and patches of ocean dotted with scores of Newfoundland boats, which invade this region to fish for cod. We entered the Arctic current, and breasting its stream, a fancy came that perhaps this current, flowing down from out of the mysterious unknown, came from the very Pole itself.
Continuing, we entered Davis Straits, where we encountered headwinds that piled up the water in great waves. It was a good test of the sailing qualities of the _Bradley_, and well did the small craft respond.
Long before the actual coast line of Greenland could be seen we had a first glimpse of the beauties that these northern regions can show.