Part 3 (1/2)
The wind ominously died away. The air thickened rapidly. A general feeling of anxiety came over us, although my familiarity with storms in the North made it possible for me to explain that heavy seas are seldom felt within the zone of a large ice-pack, for the reason that the icebergs, the flat ice ma.s.ses, and even the small floating fragments, ordinarily hold down the swells. Even when the pack begins to break, the lanes of water between the fragments thicken under the lower temperature like an oiled surface, and offer an easy sea. Furthermore, a really severe wind would be sure to release the schooner, and it would then be possible to trust it to its staunch qualities in free water.
Hardly had we finished dinner when we heard the sound of a brisk wind rus.h.i.+ng through the rigging. Hurrying to the deck, we saw coils of what looked like smoky vapor rising in the south as if belched from some great volcano. The gloom on the horizon was rapidly growing deeper. The sound of the wind changed to a threatening, sinister hiss. In the piercing steel-gray light we saw the ice heave awesomely, like moving hills, above the blackening water. The bergs swayed and rocked, and the ma.s.sed ice gave forth strange, troublous sounds.
Suddenly a channel began to open through the ice in front of us. The trisail was quickly set, the other sails being left tightly furled, and with the engine helping to push us in the desired direction, we drew deep breaths of relief as we moved out into the free water to the westward.
We felt a sense of safety now, although, clear of the ice, the sea rose about us with a sickening suddenness. Black as night, the water seemed far more dangerous because the waves were everywhere das.h.i.+ng angrily against walls of ice. Already strong, the wind veered slightly and increased to a fierce, persistent gale. Like rubber b.a.l.l.s, the bergs bounded and rolled in the sea. The sound of the storm was now a thunder suggestive of constantly exploding cannons. But, fortunately, we were snug aboard, and, keeping the westerly course, soon escaped the dangers of ensnaring ice.
We were still in a heavy storm, and had we not had full confidence in the s.h.i.+p, built as she was to withstand the storms of the Grand Banks, we should still have felt anxiety, for the schooner rolled and pitched and the masts dipped from side to side until they almost touched the water.
Icy water swept the deck. A rain began to fall, and quickly sheathed the masts and ropes in ice. Snow followed, giving a surface as of sandpaper to the slippery, icy decks. The temperature was not low, but the cutting wind pierced one to the very marrow. Our men were drenched with spray and heavily coated with ice. Although suffering severely, the sailors maintained their courage and appeared even abnormally happy. Gradually we progressed into the open sea. In the course of four hours the storm began to abate, and, under a double-reefed foresail, at last we gleefully rode out the finish of the storm in safety.
THE DRIVING SPUR OF THE POLAR QUEST
ON THE FRIGID PATHWAY OF THREE CENTURIES OF HEROIC MARTYRS--MEETING THE STRANGE PEOPLE OF THE FARTHEST NORTH--THE LIFE OF THE STONE AGE--ON THE CHASE WITH THE ESKIMOS--MANEE AND SPARTAN ESKIMO COURAGE
III
STRANGE TRAITS OF NORTHERNMOST MAN
I have often wondered of late about the dazzling white, eerie glamor with which the Northland weaves its spell about the heart of a man. I know of nothing on earth so strange, so wonderful, withal so sad.
Pursuing our course through Melville Bay, I felt the fatal magic of it enthralling my very soul. For hours I stood on deck alone, the midnight sun, like some monstrous perpetual light to some implacable frozen-hearted deity, burning blindingly upon the horizon and setting the sea aflame. The golden colors suffused my mind, and I swam in a sea of molten glitter.
I was consumed for hours by but one yearning--a yearning that filled and intoxicated me--to go on, and on, and ever onward, where no man had ever been. Perhaps it is the human desire to excel others, to prove, because of the innate egotism of the human unit, that one possesses qualities of brain and muscle which no other possesses, that has crazed men to perform this, the most difficult physical test in the world. The lure of the thing is unexplainable.
During those dizzy hours on deck I thought of those who had preceded me; of heroic men who for three centuries had braved suffering, cold and famine, who had sacrificed the comforts of civilization, their families and friends, who had given their own lives in the pursuit of this mysterious, yea, fruitless quest. I remembered reading the thrilling tales of those who returned--tales which had flushed me with excitement and inspired me with the same mad ambition. I thought of the n.o.ble, indefatigable efforts of these men, of the heart-sickening failures, in which I too had shared. And I felt the indomitable, swift surge of their awful, goading determination within me--to subdue the forces of nature, to cover as Icarus did the air those icy s.p.a.ces, to reach the silver-s.h.i.+ning vacantness which men called the North Pole.
As we cut the s.h.i.+mmering waters, I felt, as it were, the wierd, unseen presence of those who had died there--died horribly--men whose bodies had withered, with slow suffering, in frigid blasts and famine, who possibly had prolonged their suffering by feeding upon their own doomed companions--and of others who had perished swiftly in the sudden yawning of the leprous white mouth of the hungry frozen sea. It is said by some that souls live only after death by the energy of great emotions, great loves, or great ambitions generated throughout life. It seemed to me, in those hours of intoxication, that I could feel the implacable, unsatisfied desire of these disembodied things, who had vibrated with one aim and still yearned in the spirit for what now they were physically unable to attain. It seemed that my brain was fired with the intensity of all these dead men's ambition, that my heart in sympathy beat more turbulently with the throb of their dead hearts; I felt growing within me, irresistibly, what I did not dare, for fear it might not be possible, to confide to Bradley--a determination, even in the face of peril, to essay the Pole!
From this time onward, and until I turned my back upon the fruitless silver-s.h.i.+ning place of desolation at the apex of the world, I felt the intoxication, the intangible lure of the thing exhilarating, buoying me gladsomely, beating in my heart with a singing rhythm. I recall it now with marveling, and am filled with the pathos of it. Yet, despite all that I have suffered since because of it, I regret not those enraptured hours of perpetual glitter of midnight suns.
One morning we reached the northern sh.o.r.e of Melville Bay, and the bold cliffs of Cape York were dimly outlined through a gray mist. Strong southern winds had carried such great ma.s.ses of ice against the coast that it was impossible to make a near approach, and as a strong wind continued, there was such a heavy sea along the bobbing line of outer ice as to make it quite impossible to land and thence proceed toward the sh.o.r.e.
We were desirous of meeting the natives of Cape York, but these ice conditions forced us to proceed without touching here, and so we set our course for the next of the northernmost villages, at North Star Bay. By noon the mist had vanished, and we saw clearly the steep slopes and warm color of crimson cliffs rising precipitously out of the water. The coast line is about two thousand feet high, evidently the remains of an old tableland which extends a considerable distance northward. Here and there were short glaciers which had worn the cliffs away in their ceaseless effort to reach the sea. The air was full of countless gulls, guillemots, little auks and eider-ducks.
As the eye followed the long and lofty line of crimson cliffs, there came into sight a towering, conical rock, a well-known guidepost for the navigator. Continuing, we caught sight of the long ice wall of Petowik Glacier, and behind this, extending far to the eastward, the scintillating, white expanse of the overland-ice which blankets the interior of all Greenland.
The small and widely scattered villages of the Eskimos of this region are hemmed in by the ice walls of Melville Bay on the southward, the stupendous cliffs of Humboldt Glacier on the north, an arm of the sea to the westward, and the hopelessly desolate Greenland interior toward the east.
There is really no reason why many Eskimos should not live here, for there is abundant food in both sea and air, and even considerable game on land. Blue and white foxes are everywhere to be seen. There is the seal, the walrus, the narwhal, and the white whale. There is the white bear, monarch of the Polar wilds, who roams in every direction over his kingdom. The princ.i.p.al reason why the population remains so small lies in the hazardous conditions of life. Children are highly prized, and a marriageable woman or girl who has one or more of them is much more valuable as a match than one who is childless.
The coast line here is paradoxically curious, for although the coast exceeds but barely more than two hundred miles of lat.i.tude it presents in reality a sea line of about four thousand miles when the great indentations of Wolstenholm Sound, Inglefield Gulf, and other bays, sounds and fiords are measured.
We sailed cautiously now about Cape Atholl, which we were to circle; a fog lay upon the waters, almost entirely hiding the innumerable icebergs, and making it difficult to pick our course among the dangerous rocks in this vicinity.
Rounding Cape Atholl, we sailed into Wolstenholm Sound and turned our prow toward the Eskimo village on North Star Bay.
North Star Bay is guarded by a promontory expressively named Table Mountain, ”Oomanaq.” As we neared this headland, many natives came out in kayaks to meet us. Inasmuch as I knew most of them personally, I felt a singular thrill of pleasure in seeing them. Years before, I learned their simple-hearted faithfulness. Knud Rasmussen, a Danish writer, living as a native among the Eskimos, apparently for the sake of getting local color, was in one of the canoes and came aboard the s.h.i.+p.
As it was necessary to make slight repairs to the schooner, we here had to follow the primitive method of docking by preliminary beaching her.