Part 14 (1/2)
Soon the dyes changed to blue, and eventually the sky was fired by flames of red. Then, slowly, the great blazing globe sank into seas of fire-flushed ice. The snowy mountains about glowed with warm cheer. The ice cooled again to purple, and again to blue, and then a winter blackness closed the eye to color and the soul to joy.
IN GAME TRAILS TO LAND'S END
SVERDRUP'S NEW WONDERLAND--FEASTING ON GAME EN ROUTE TO SVARTEVOEG--FIRST SHADOW OBSERVATIONS--FIGHTS WITH WOLVES AND BEARS--THE JOYS OF ZERO'S LOWEST--THRESHOLD OF THE UNKNOWN
XII
Sh.o.r.eS OF THE CIRc.u.mPOLAR SEA
March 2 was bright and clear and still. The ice was smooth, with just snow enough to prevent the dogs cutting their feet. The heavy sledges bounded along easily, but the dogs were too full of meat to step a lively pace. The temperature was -79 F. We found it comfortable to walk along behind the upstanders of the sledges. Some fresh bear tracks were crossed. These denoted that bears had advanced along the coast on an exploring tour, much as we aimed to do. Scenting these tracks, the dogs forgot their distended stomachs, and braced into the harness with full pulling force. We were still able to keep pace by running. Hard exercise brought no perspiration.
After pa.s.sing the last land point, we noted four herds of musk oxen. The natives were eager to embark for the chase. I tried to dissuade them, but, had we not crossed the bear trail, no word of mine would have kept them from another chase of the musk ox.
Long after sunset, as we were about to camp, a bear was sighted advancing on us behind a line of hummocks. The light was already feeble.
It was the work of but a minute to throw our things on the ice and start the teams on the scent of the bear. But this bear was thin and hungry.
He gave us a lively chase. His advance was checked, however, as our rush began, and he spread his huge paws into a step which outdistanced our dogs. The chase was continued on the ice for about three miles. Then bruin, with sublime intelligence, took to the land and the steep slopes, leading us over hilly, bare ground, rocks, and soft snows. He gained the top of the tall cliffs while we were still groping in the darkness among the rocks at the base, a thousand feet below.
The sledges were now left, and the dogs freed. They flew up a gully in which the bear tracks guided an easy path. In a short time their satisfying howls told of the bear's captivity. He had taken a position on a table-rock, which was difficult for the dogs to climb. At an easy distance from this rock were steep slopes of snow. One after another, the dogs came tumbling down these slopes. With but a slight cuff of his paw, the bear could toss the attacking dogs over dizzy heights. His position was impregnable to the dogs, but, thus perched, he was a splendid mark for E-tuk-i-shook. That doughty huntsman raised his gun, and, following a shot, the bear rolled down the same slopes on which he had hurled the dogs. To his carca.s.s a span of strong dogs were soon hitched, and it was hauled down to the sea level. Quickly dressed and distributed, the bear was only a teasing mouthful to the ever-hungry dogs.
It was nearly midnight before we returned to our sledge packs. The work of building the houses was rendered difficult by the failing moon and the very low temperature. The lowest temperature of the season, -83, was reached this night.
The sun rose in the morning of March 3 with warm colors, painting the crystal world surrounding us with gorgeous tints of rose and old gold.
It was odd that in the glare of this enrapturing glory we should note the coldest day of the year.
With the returning sun in the Arctic comes the most frigid season. The light is strongly purple, and one is tempted to ascribe to the genial rays a heating influence which is as yet absent, owing to their slant.
The night-darkened surfaces prevent the new sunbeams from disseminating any considerable heat, and the steadily falling temperature indicates that the crust of the earth, as a result of its long desertion by the sun in winter, is still unchecked in its cooling. Because of the persistence of terrestrial radiation, we have the coldest weather of the year with the ascending sun.
It is a fortunate provision of nature that these icy days of the ascending sun are usually accompanied by a breathless stillness. When wind and storms come, the temperature quickly rises. It is doubtful if any form of life could withstand a storm at -80 F. A quiet charm comes with this eye-opening period. The spirits rise with indescribable gladness, and, although the mercury is frozen, the body, when properly dressed, is perfectly comfortable. The soft light of purple and gold, or of lilac and rose, on the snowy slopes, dispels the chronic gloom of the long night, while the tonic of a brightening air of frost returns the flush to the pale cheeks. The stillness adds a charm, with which the imagination plays. It is not the music of silence, nor the gold solitude of summer, nor the deathlike stillness of the winter blackness. It is the stillness of zero's lowest, which has a beauty of its own.
The ice pinnacles are lined with h.o.a.r frost, on which there is a play of rainbow colors. The tread of one's feet is m.u.f.fled by feathery beds of snow. The mountains, raised by the new glow of light or outlined by colored shadows, stand against the brightened heavens in sculptured magnificence.
The bear admires his shadow, the fox peeps from behind his bushy tail, devising a new cult, for his art of night will soon be a thing of the past. The hare sits, with forelegs bent reverently, as if offering prayers of grat.i.tude. The musk ox stands in the brightest sun, with his beautiful coat of black and blue, and absorbs the first heaven-given sun bath, and man soars high in dreams of happiness.
Shadows always attract the eye of primitive people and children. In a world such as the one we were invading, with little to rest the eye from perpetual glitter, they were to become doubly interesting. When we first began observing our shadows, on March 3, I did not dream that a thing so simple could rise to the dignity of a proof of the Polar conquest. But, since then, I have come to the conclusion that, if a proof of this much-discussed problem is at all possible, it is in the corroborative evidence of just such little things as shadows.
Accordingly, I have examined every note and impression bearing on natural phenomena en route.
To us, in our daily marches from Bay Fiord, the shadow became a thing of considerable interest and importance. The Eskimo soul is something apart from the body. The native believes it follows in the shadow. For this reason, stormy, sunless days are gloomy times to the natives, for the presence of the soul is then not in evidence. The night has the same effect, although the moon often throws a clear-cut shadow. The native believes the soul at times wanders from the body. When it does this, the many rival spirits, which in their system of beliefs tenant the body, get into all sorts of trouble.
Every person, and every animal, has not only a soul which guards its destiny, but every part of the body has an individual spirit--the arm, the leg, the nose, the eye, the ear, and every other conceivable part of the anatomy, with a peculiar individuality, throbs with a separate life.
The separate, wandering soul in the shadow is the guiding influence.
Furthermore, there is no such conception as an absolutely inanimate thing. The land, the sea, the air, ice, and snow, have great individual spirits that ever engage in battle with each other. Even mountains, valleys, rocks, icebergs, wood, iron, fire--all have spirits. All of this gives them a keen interest in shadows in an otherwise desert of gloom and death.
Their entire religious creed would require a long time to work out. Even that part of it which is represented by the shadow is quite beyond me.
As I observed in our following marches toward Svartevoeg, their keen eyes detect in shadows incidents and messages of life, histories that would fill volumes. The shadow is long or short, clear-cut or vague, dark or light, blue or purple, violet or black. Each phase of it has a special significance. It presages luck or ill-luck on the chase, sickness and death in the future, the presence or unrest of the souls of parted friends. Even the souls of the living sometimes get mixed. Then there is love or intrigue. All the pa.s.sions of wild life can be read from the shadows. The most pathetic shadows had been the vague, ghastly streaks of black that followed the body about a week before sunset in October. At that time all the Arctic world is sad, and tears come easily.