Part 20 (1/2)

XVII

TWO HUNDRED MILES FROM THE POLE

A curtain of mist was drawn over the new land in the afternoon of March 31, and, although we gazed westward longingly, we saw no more of it. Day after day we now pushed onward in desperate northward efforts. Strong winds and fractured, irregular ice, increased our difficulties. Although progress was slow for several days we managed to gain a fair march between storms during each twenty-four hours. During occasional spells of icy stillness mirages spread screens of fantasy out for our entertainment. Curious cliffs, odd-shaped mountains and inverted ice walls were displayed in attractive colors.

Discoveries of new land seemed often made. But with a clearing horizon the deception was detected.

The boys believed most of these signs to be indications of real land--a belief I persistently encouraged, because it relieved them of the panic of the terror of the unknown.

On April 3, the barometer remained steady and the thermometer sank. The weather became settled and fairly clear, the horizon was freed of its smoky vapors, the pack a.s.sumed a more permanent aspect of glittering color. At noon there was now a dazzling light, while at night the sun kissed the frozen seas behind screens of mouse-colored cloud and haze.

At the same moment the upper skies flushed with the glow of color of the coming double-days of joy.

As we advanced north of Bradley Land the pack disturbance of land-divided and land-jammed ice disappeared. The fields became larger and less troublesome, the weather improved, the temperature ranged from 20 to 50 below zero, the barometer rose and remained steady, the day sky cleared with increasing color, but a low haze blotted out much of the night glory which attended the dip of the nocturnal sun. With dogs barking and rus.h.i.+ng before speeding sleds, we made swift progress. But the steady drag and monotony of the never changing work and scene reduced interest in life.

The blankness of the mental desert which moved about us as we ran along was appalling. Nothing changed materially. The horizon moved. Our footing was seemingly a solid stable ice crust, which was, however, constantly s.h.i.+fting eastward. All the world on which we traveled was in motion. We moved, but we took our landscape with us.

At the end of the day's march we were often too tired to build snow houses, and in sheer exhaustion we bivouacked in the lee of hummocks.

Here the overworked body called for sleep, but my mind refused to close the eyes. My boys had the advantage of sleep. I envied them. Anyone who has suffered from insomnia may be able in a small degree to gauge my condition when sleep became impossible. To reach the end of my journey became the haunting, ever-present goading thought of my wakeful existence.

As I lay painfully trying to coax slumber, my mind worked like the wheels of a machine. Dizzily the journey behind repeated itself; I again crossed the Big Lead, again floundered in an ice-cold open sea. Dangers of all sorts took form to hara.s.s me. Instead of sleep, a delirium of anxiety and longing possessed me.

Beyond the eighty-fourth parallel we had pa.s.sed the bounds of visible life. Lying wakeful in that barren world, with my companions asleep, I felt what few men of cities, perhaps, ever feel--the tragic isolation of the human soul--a thing which, dwelt upon, must mean madness. I think I realized the aching vastness of the world after creation, before man was made.

For many days we had not seen a suggestion of animated nature. There were no longer animal trails to indicate life; no breath spouts of seal escaped from the frosted bosom of the sea. Not even the microscopic life of the deep was longer detected under us. We were alone--alone in a lifeless world. We had come to this blank s.p.a.ce of the earth by slow but progressive stages. Sailing from the bleak land of the fisher folk along the out-posts of civilization, the complex luxury of metropolitan life was lost. Beyond, in the half savage wilderness of Danish Greenland, we partook of a new life of primitive simplicity. Still farther along, in the Ultima Thule of the aborigines, we reverted to a prehistoric plane of living. Advancing beyond the haunts of men, we reached the noonday deadliness of a world without life.

As we pushed beyond into the sterile wastes, with eager eyes we constantly searched the dusky plains of frost, but there was no speck of life to grace the purple run of death.[14]

During these desolate marches, my legs working mechanically, my mind with anguish sought some object upon which to fasten itself. My eyes scrutinized the horizon. I saw, every day, every sleeping hour, hills of ice, vast plains of ice, now a deadly white, now a dull gray, now a misty purple, sometimes shot with gold or gleaming with lakes of ultramarine, moving towards and by me, an ever-changing yet ever-monotonous panorama which wearied me as does the s.h.i.+fting of unchanging scenery seen from a train window. As I paced the weary marches, I fortunately became unconscious of the painful movement of my legs. Although I walked I had a sensation of being lifted involuntarily onward.

The sense of covering distance gave me a dull, pleasurable satisfaction.

Only some catastrophe, some sudden and overwhelming obstacle would have aroused me to an intense mental emotion, to a pa.s.sionate despair, to the anguish of possible defeat.

I was now becoming the unconscious instrument of my ambition; almost without volition my body was being carried forward by a subconscious force which had fastened itself upon a distant goal. Sometimes the wagging of a dog's tail held my attention for long minutes; it afforded a curious play for my morbidly obsessed imagination. In an hour I would forget what I had been thinking. To-day I cannot remember the vague, fanciful illusions about curiously insignificant things which occupied my faculties in this dead world. The sun, however, did relieve the monotony, and created in the death-chilled world skies filled with elysian flowers and mirages of beauty undreamed of by Aladdin.

My senses at the time, as I have said, were vaguely benumbed. While we traveled I heard the sound of the moving sledges. Their sharp steel runners cut the ice and divided the snow like a cleaving knife. I became used to the first shudder of the rasping sound. In the dead lulls between wind storms I would listen with curious attention to the soft patter of our dogs' feet. At times I could hear their tiny toe nails grasping at forward ice ridges in order to draw themselves forward, and, strangely--so were all my thoughts interwoven with my ambition--this clenching, crunching, gritty sound gave me a delighted sense of progress, a sense of ever covering distance and nearing, ever nearing the Pole.

In this mid-Polar basin the ice does not readily separate. It is probably in motion at all times of the year. In this readjustment of fields following motion and expansion, open s.p.a.ces of water appear.

These, during most months, are quickly sheeted with new ice.

In these troubled areas I had frequent opportunities to measure ice-thickness. From my observation I had come to the conclusion that ice does not freeze to a depth of more than twelve or fifteen feet during a single year. Occasionally we crossed fields fifty feet thick. These invariably showed signs of many years of surface upbuilding.

It is very difficult to estimate the amount of submerged freezing after the first year's ice, but the very uniform thickness of Antarctic sea ice suggests that a limit is reached the second year, when the ice, with its cover of snow, is so thick that very little is added afterward from below.

Increase in size after that is probably the result mostly of addition to the superstructure. Frequent falls of snow, combined with alternate melting and freezing in summer, and a process similar to the upbuilding of glacial ice, are mainly responsible for the growth in thickness of the ice on the Polar sea.

The very heavy, undulating fields, which give character to the mid-Polar ice and escape along the east and west coasts of Greenland, are, therefore, mostly augmented from the surface.

Continuing north, at no time was the horizon perfectly clear. But the weather was good enough to permit frequent nautical observations. Our course was lined on uninteresting blank sheets. There were elusive signs of land frequent enough to maintain an exploring enthusiasm, which helped me also in satisfying my companions. For thus they were encouraged to believe in a nearness to terrestrial solidity. At every breathing spell, when we got together for a little chat, Ah-we-lah's hand, with pointed finger, was directed to some spot on the horizon or some low-lying cloud, with the shout of ”_Noona?_” (land), to which I always replied in the affirmative; but, for me, the field-gla.s.ses and later positions dispelled the illusion.