Part 18 (2/2)
We expected a hurricane, and had not to wait to taste its fury. Before we were at rest in our bags the wind lashed the snows with a force inconceivable. With rus.h.i.+ng drift, the air thickened. Dogs and sleds in a few minutes were buried under banks of snow and great drifts encircled the igloo. The cemented blocks of our dome withstood the sweep of the blast well. Yet, now and then, small holes were burrowed through the snow wall by the sharp wind. Drift entered and covered us. I lay awake for hours. I felt the terrible oppression of that raging, life-sucking vampire force sweeping over the desolate world. Disembodied things--the souls of those, perhaps, who had perished here--seemed frenziedly calling me in the wind. I felt under me the surge of the sweeping, awful sea. I felt the desolation of this stormy world within my shuddering soul; but, withal, I throbbed with a determination to a.s.sert the supremacy of living man over these blind, insensate forces; to prove that the living brain and palpitating muscle of a finite though conscious creature could vanquish a hostile Nature which creates to kill. I burned to justify those who had died here; to fulfill by proxy their hopes; to set their calling souls at rest. The storm waked in me an angry, challenging determination.
Early in the morning of the 25th the storm ceased as suddenly as it had come. A stillness followed which was appalling. It seemed as if the storm had heard my thoughts and paused to contemplate some more dreadful onslaught. The dogs began to howl desperately, as if attacked by a bear. We rushed out of our igloo, seeking guns. There was no approaching creature. It was, however, a signal of serious distress that we had heard. The dogs were in acute misery. The storm-driven snows had buried and bound them in unyielding ice. They had partly uncovered themselves.
United by trace and harness, they were imprisoned in frozen ma.s.ses. Few of them could even rise and stretch. They were in severe torment.
We hurriedly freed their traces and beat the cemented snows from their furs with sticks. Released, they leaped about gladly, their cries, curling tails and pointed noses telling of grat.i.tude. While we danced about, stretching our limbs and rubbing our hands to get up circulation, the sun rose over the northern blue, flus.h.i.+ng the newly driven snows with warm tones. The temperature during the storm had risen to only 26 below, but soon the thermometer sank rapidly below 40. The west was still smoky and the weather did not seem quite settled. As it was still too early to start, we again slipped into the bags and sought quiet slumber.
As yet the dreadful insomnia which was to rob me of rest on my journey had not come, and I slept with the blissful soundness of a child. I must have been asleep several hours, when, of a sudden, I opened my eyes.
Terror gripped my heart. Loud explosive noises reverberated under my head. It seemed as though bombs were torn asunder in the depths of the cold sea beneath me. I lay still, wondering if I were dreaming. The sounds echoingly died away. Looking about the igloo, I detected nothing unusual. I saw Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook staring at me with wide-open frightened eyes. I arose and peeped through the eye port. The fields of ice without reflected the warm light of the rising sun in running waves of tawny color. The ice was undisturbed. An unearthly quiet prevailed.
Concluding that the ice was merely cracking under the sudden change of temperature, in quite the usual harmless manner, I turned over again, rea.s.suring my companions, and promptly fell asleep.
Out of the blankness of sleep I suddenly wakened again. Half-dazed, I heard beneath me a series of echoing, thundering noises. I felt the ice floor on which I lay quivering. I experienced the sudden giddiness one feels on a tossing s.h.i.+p at sea. In the flash of a second I saw Ah-we-lah leap to his feet. In the same dizzy instant I saw the dome of the snowhouse open above me; I caught a vision of the gold-streaked sky. My instinct at the moment was to leap. I think I tried to rise, when suddenly everything seemed lifted from under me; I experienced the suffocating sense of falling, and next, with a spasm of indescribable horror, felt about my body a terrific tightening pressure like that of a chilled and closing sh.e.l.l of steel, driving the life and breath from me.
In an instant it was clear what had happened. A creva.s.se had suddenly opened through our igloo, directly under the spot whereon I slept; and I, a helpless creature in a sleeping bag, with tumbling snow blocks and ice and snow cras.h.i.+ng about and crus.h.i.+ng me, with the temperature 48 below zero, was floundering in the opening sea!
LAND DISCOVERED
FIGHTING PROGRESS THROUGH CUTTING COLD AND TERRIFIC STORMS--LIFE BECOMES A MONOTONOUS ROUTINE OF HARDs.h.i.+P--THE POLE INSPIRES WITH ITS RESISTLESS LURE--NEW LAND DISCOVERED BEYOND THE EIGHTY-FOURTH PARALLEL--MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED MILES FROM SVARTEVOEG--THE FIRST SIX HUNDRED MILES COVERED
XVI
THREE HUNDRED MILES TO THE APEX OF THE WORLD
I think I was about to swoon when I felt hands beneath my armpits and heard laughter in my ears. With an adroitness such as only these natives possess, my two companions were dragging me from the water. And while I lay panting on the ice, recovering from my fright, I saw them expeditiously rescue our possessions.
It seemed that all this happened so quickly that I had really been in the water only a few moments. My two companions saw the humor of the episode and laughed heartily. Although I had been in the water only a brief time, a sheet of ice surrounded my sleeping bag. Fortunately, however, the reindeer skin was found to be quite dry when the ice was beaten off. The experience, while momentarily terrifying, was instructive, for it taught us the danger of spreading ice, especially in calms following storms.
Grat.i.tude filled my heart. I fully realized how narrow had been the escape of all of us. Had we slept a few seconds longer we should all have disappeared in the opening creva.s.se. The hungry Northland would again have claimed its human sacrifice.
The ice about was much disturbed. Numerous black lines of water opened on every side; from these oozed jets of frosty, smoke-colored vapor. The difference between the temperature of the sea and that of the air was 76. With this contrast, the open spots of ice-water appeared to be boiling.
Anxious to move along, away from the troubled angle of ice, our usual breakfast was simplified. Melting some snow, we drank the icy liquid as an eye-opener, and began our ration of a half-pound boulder of pemmican.
But with cold fingers, blue lips and no possible shelter, the stuff was unusually hard. To warm up, we prepared the sleds. Under our lashes the dogs jumped into harness with a bound. The pemmican, which we really found too hard to eat, had to be first broken into pieces with an axe.
We ground it slowly with our molars as we trudged along. Our teeth chattered while the stomach was thus being fired with durable fuel.
As we advanced the ice improved to some extent. With a little search safe crossings were found over new crevices. A strong westerly wind blew piercingly cold.
Good progress was made, but we did not forget at any time that we were invading the forbidden domains of a new polar environment.
Henceforth, one day was to be much like another. Beyond the eighty-third parallel life is devoid of any pleasure. The intense objective impressions of cold and hunger a.s.sailing the body rob even the mind of inspiration and exhilaration. Even the best day of sun and gentle wind offers no balm.
One awakes realizing the wind has abated and sees the cheerless sun veering about the side of the ice shelter. One kicks the victim upon whom, that morning, duty has fixed the misfortune to be up first--for we tried to be equals in sharing the burdens of life. And upon him to whose lot falls this hards.h.i.+p there is a loss of two hours' repose. He chops ice, fills the kettles, lights the fire, and probably freezes his fingers in doing so. Then he wiggles back into his bag, warms his icy hands on the bare skin of his own stomach; or, if he is in a two-man bag, and the other fellow is awake, Arctic courtesy permits the icy hands on the stomach of his bedfellow.
In due time the blood runs to the hand and he sets about tidying up the camp. First, the hood of his own bag. It is loaded with icicles and frost, the result of the freezing of his breath while asleep. He brushes off the ice and snow. The ice has settled in the kettles in the meantime. More ice must be chopped and put into the kettle. The chances are that he now breaks a commandment and steals what to us is a great luxury--a long drink of water to ease his parched throat. Because of the need of fuel economy, limit is placed on drinks.
Then the fire needs attention; the flame is imperfect and the gas hole needs cleaning. He thoughtlessly grips the little bit of metal to the end of which the priming needle is attached. That metal is so cold that it burns, and he leaves a piece of his skin on it. Then the breakfast ration of pemmican must be divided. It is not frozen, for it contains no water. But it is hard. The stuff looks like granite. Heat would melt it--but there is no fuel to spare. The two slumberers are given a thump, and their eyes open to the stone-like pemmican. Between yawns the teeth are set to grind the pemmican. The water boils, the tea is tossed in it and the kettle is removed.
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