Part 22 (2/2)

St. 4. Wind 1-3. Mag. E.

Noon 0....... = 22--02--05 96 === 4 0....... = 22--56--20 +-------- +----------- 60

384 2

44--58--25 +-------- +----------- 6-24 22--29--12 +2 +----------- 54 2

22--31--12 6 +----------- ------- 11--15--36 27 --9 324 ----------- +------- 11-- 6--36 60

351 90 +------- ----------- 5--51 78--53--24 9--21--50 9--27--41 ----------- ----------- 9--27--41 88--21-- 5

Shadow 30 ft. (of tent pole 6 ft. above snow.)

In the forced effort which followed we frequently became overheated. The temperature was steady at 44 below zero, Fahrenheit. Perspiration came with ease, and with a certain amount of pleasure. Later followed a train of suffering for many days. The delight of the birdskin s.h.i.+rt gave place to the chill of a wet blanket. Our coats and trousers hardened to icy suits of armor. It became quite impossible to dress after a sleep without softening the stiffened furs with the heat of our bare skin.

Mittens, boots and fur stockings became quite useless until dried out.

Fortunately, at this time the rays of the sun were warm enough to dry the furs in about three days, if lashed to the sunny side of a sled as we marched along, and strangely enough, the furs dried out without apparent thawing. In these last days we felt more keenly the pangs of perspiration than in all our earlier adventures. We persistently used the amber-colored goggles. They afforded protection to the eyes, but in spite of every precaution, our distorted, frozen, burned and withered faces lined a map in relief, of the hards.h.i.+ps endured en route.

We were curious looking savages. The perpetual glitter of the snows induced a squint of our eyes which distorted our faces in a remarkable manner. The strong light reflected from the crystal surface threw the muscles about the eyes into a state of chronic contraction. The iris was reduced to a mere pin-hole.

The strong winds and drifting snows necessitated the habit of peeping out of the corners of the eyes. Nature, in attempting to keep the ball from hardening, flushed it at all times with blood. To keep the seeing windows of the mind open required a constant exertion of will power. The effect was a set of expressions of hards.h.i.+p and wrinkles which might be called the boreal squint.

This boreal squint is a part of the russet-bronze physiognomy which falls to the lot of every Arctic explorer. The early winds, with a piercing temperature, start a flush of scarlet, while frequent frostbites leave figures in black. Later the burning sun browns the skin; subsequently, strong winds sap the moisture, harden the skin and leave open fissures on the face. The human face takes upon itself the texture and configuration of the desolate, wind-driven world upon which it looks.

Hard work and reduced nourishment contract the muscles, dispel the fat and leave the skin to shrivel in folds. The imprint of the goggles, the set expression of hard times, and the mental blank of the environment remove all spiritual animation. Our faces a.s.sumed the color and lines of old, withering, russet apples, and would easily pa.s.s for the mummied countenances of the prehistoric progenitors of man.

In enforced efforts to spread out our stiffened legs over the last reaches, there was left no longer sufficient energy at camping times to erect snow shelters. Our silk tent was pressed into use. Although the temperature was still very low, the congenial rays pierced the silk fabric and rested softly on our eye lids closed in heavy slumber. In strong winds it was still necessary to erect a sheltering wall, whereby to s.h.i.+eld the tent.

As we progressed over the last one hundred mile-step, my mind was divested of its lethargy. Unconsciously I braced myself. My senses became more keen. With a careful scrutiny I now observed the phenomena of the strange world into which fortune had pressed us--first of all men.

Step by step, I invaded a world untrodden and unknown. Dulled as I was by hards.h.i.+p, I thrilled with the sense of the explorer in new lands, with the thrill of discovery and conquest. ”Then,” as Keats says, ”felt I like some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken.”

In this land of ice I was master, I was sole invader. I strode forward with an undaunted glory in my soul.

Signs of land, which I encouraged my companions to believe were real, were still seen every day, but I knew, of course, they were deceptive.

It now seemed to me that something unusual must happen, that some line must cross our horizon to mark the important area into which we were pa.s.sing.

Through vapor-charged air of crystal, my eyes ran over plains moving in brilliant waves of running colors toward dancing horizons. Mirages turned things topsy-turvy. Inverted lands and queer objects ever rose and fell, shrouded in mystery. All of this was due to the atmospheric magic of the continued glory of midnight suns in throwing piercing beams of light through superimposed strata of air of varying temperature and density.

Daily, by careful measurements, I found that our night shadows shortened and became more uniform during the pa.s.sing hours of the day, as the shadow dial was marked.

With a lucky series of astronomical observations our position was fixed for each stage of progress.

Nearing the Pole, my imagination quickened. A restless, almost hysterical excitement came over all of us. My boys fancied they saw bears and seals. I had new lands under observation frequently, but with a change in the direction of light the horizon cleared. We became more and more eager to push further into the mystery. Climbing the long ladder of lat.i.tudes, there was always the feeling that each hour's work was bringing us nearer the Pole--the Pole which men had sought for three centuries, and which, fortune favoring, should be mine!

Yet, I was often so physically tired that my mind was, when the momentary intoxications pa.s.sed, in a sense, dulled. But the habit of seeing and of noting what I had seen, had been acquired. The habit, yes, of putting one foot in front of the other, mile after mile, through the wild dreariness of ice, the habit of observing, even though with aching, blurred eyes, and noting, methodically, however wearily, what the tired eyes had seen.

From the eighty-eighth to the eighty-ninth parallel the ice lay in large fields, the surface was less irregular than formerly. In other respects it was about the same as below the eighty-seventh. I observed here also, an increasing extension of the range of vision. I seemed to scan longer distances, and the ice along the horizon had a less angular outline. The color of the sky and the ice changed to deeper purple-blues. I had no way of checking these impressions by other observations; the eagerness to find something unusual may have fired my imagination, but since the earth is flattened at the Pole, perhaps a widened horizon would naturally be detected there.

At eight o'clock on the morning of April 19, we camped on a picturesque old field, with convenient hummocks, to the top of which we could easily rise for the frequent outlook which we now maintained. We pitched our tent, and silenced the dogs by blocks of pemmican. New enthusiasm was aroused by a liberal pot of pea-soup and a few chips of frozen meat.

Then we bathed in life-giving sunbeams, screened from the piercing air by the strands of the silk-walled tent.

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