Part 27 (1/2)
As we crossed the eighty-third parallel we found ourselves to the west of a large lead, extending slightly west of south. Immense quant.i.ties of broken and pulverized ice lined the sh.o.r.es to a width of several miles.
The irregularities of this surface and the uncemented break offered difficulties over which no force of man or beast could move a sledge or boat. Compelled to follow the line of least resistance, a southerly course was set along the ice division. The wind now changed and came from the east, but there was no relief from the heavy banks of fog that surrounded us.
The following days were days of desperation. The food for man and dog was reduced, and the difficulties of ice travel increased dishearteningly. We traveled twenty days, not knowing our position. A gray mystery enshrouded us. Terror followed in our wake. Beneath us the sea moved--whither it was carrying us I did not know. That we were ourselves journeying toward an illimitable, hopeless sea, where we should die of slow, lingering starvation, I knew was a dreadful probability. Every minute drew its pangs of despair and fear.
The gray world of mist was silent. My companions gazed at me with faces shriveled, thinned and hardened as those of mummies. Their anguish was unspeakable. My own vocal powers seemed to have left me. Our dogs were still; with bowed heads, tails drooping, they pulled the sledges dispiritedly. We seemed like souls in torment, traveling in a world of the dead, condemned to some Dantesque torture that should never cease.
After the mental torment of threatened starvation, which prevented, despite the awful languor of my tortured limbs, any sleep; after heart-breaking marches and bitter hunger and unquenched thirst, the baffling mist that had shut us from all knowledge at last cleared away one morning. Our hearts bounded. I felt such relief as a man buried alive must feel when, after struggling in the stifling darkness, his grave is suddenly opened. Land loomed to the west and south of us.
Yet we found we had been hardly dealt with by fate. Since leaving the eighty-fourth parallel, without noticeable movement, we had been carried astray by the ocean drift. We had moved with the entire ma.s.s that covered the Polar waters. I took observations. They gave lat.i.tude 79 32', and longitude 101 22'. At last I had discovered our whereabouts, and found that we were far from where we ought to be. But our situation was indeed nearly hopeless. The mere gaining a knowledge of where we actually were, however, fanned again the inextinguishable embers of hope.
We were in Crown Prince Gustav Sea. To the east were the low mountains and high valleys of Axel Heiberg Land, along the farther side of which was our prearranged line of retreat, with liberal caches of good things and with big game everywhere. But we were effectually barred from all this.
Between us and the land lay fifty miles of small crushed ice and impa.s.sable lines of open water. In hard-fought efforts to cross these we were repulsed many times. I knew that if by chance we should succeed in crossing, there would still remain an unknown course of eighty miles to the nearest cache, on the eastern coast of Axel Heiberg Land.
We had no good reason to expect any kind of subsistence along the west coast of Axel Heiberg Land. We had been on three-fourths rations for three weeks, and there remained only half rations for another ten days.
Entirely aside from the natural barriers in the way of returning eastward and northward, we were now utterly unequal to the task, for we had not the food to support us.
The land to the south was nearer. Due south there was a wide gap which we took to be Ha.s.sel Sound. On each side there was a low ice-sheeted island, beyond the larger islands which Sverdrup had named Ellef Ringnes Land and Amund Ringnes Land. The ice southward was tolerably good and the drift was south-south-east.
In the hope that some young seals might be seen we moved into Ha.s.sel Sound toward the eastern island. To satisfy our immediate pangs of hunger was our most important mission.
The march on June 14 was easy, with a bright warm sun and a temperature but little under the freezing point. In a known position, on good ice, and with land rising before us, we were for a brief period happy and strong, even with empty stomachs. The horizon was eagerly sought for some color or form or movement to indicate life. We were far enough south to expect bears and seals, and expecting the usual luck of the hungry savage, we sought diligently. Our souls reached forth through our far-searching eyes. Our eyes pained with the intense fixity of gazing, yet no animate thing appeared. The world was vacant and dead. Our beating hearts, indeed, seemed to be the only palpitating things there.
In the piercing rays of a high sun the tent was erected, and in it, after eating only four ounces of pemmican and drinking two cups of icy water, we sought rest. The dogs, after a similar ration, but without water, fell into an easy sleep. I regarded the poor creatures with tenderness and pity. For more than a fortnight they had not uttered a sound to disturb the frigid silence. When a sled dog is silent and refuses to fight with his neighbor, his spirit is very low. Finally I fell asleep.
At about six o'clock we were awakened by a strange sound. Our surprised eyes turned from side to side. Not a word was uttered. Another sound came--a series of soft, silvery notes--the song of a creature that might have come from heaven. I listened with rapture. I believed I was dreaming. The enchanting song continued--I lay entranced. I could not believe this divine thing was of our real world until the pole of our tent gently quivered. Then, above us, I heard the flutter of wings. It was a bird--a snow bunting trilling its ethereal song--the first sound of life heard for many months.
We were back to life! Tears of joy rolled down our emaciated faces. If I could tell you of the resurrection of the soul which came with that first bird note, and the new interest which it gave in our subsequent life, I should feel myself capable of something superhuman in powers of expression.
With the song of that marvelous bird a choking sense of homesickness came to all of us. We spoke no word. The longing for home gripped our hearts.
We were hungry, but no thought of killing this little feathered creature came to us. It seemed as divine as the bird that came of old to Noah in the ark. Taking a few of our last bread crumbs, we went out to give it food. The little chirping thing danced joyously on the crisp snows, evidently as glad to see us as we were to behold it. I watched it with fascination. At last we were back to life! We felt renewed vigor. And when the little bird finally rose into the air and flew homeward, our spirits rose, our eyes followed it, and, as though it were a token sent to us, we followed its winged course landward with eager, bounding hearts.
We were now on immovable ice attached to the land. We directed our course uninterruptedly landward, for there was no thought of further rest or sleep after the visit of the bird had so uplifted our hearts.
Our chances of getting meat would have been bettered by following close to the open water, but the ice there was such that no progress could be made. Furthermore, the temptation quickly to set foot on land was too great to resist. At the end of a hard march--the last few hours of which were through deep snows--we mounted the ice edge, and finally reached a little island--a bare spot of real land. When my foot touched it, my heart sank. We sat down, and the joy of the child in digging the sand of the seash.o.r.e was ours.
I wonder if ever such a bleak spot, in a desert of death, had so impressed men before as a perfect paradise. In this barren heap of sand and clay, we were at last free of the danger, the desolation, the sterility of that soul-withering environment of a monotonously moving world of ice and eternal frost.
We fastened the dogs to a rock, and pitched the tent on earth-soiled snows. In my joy I did not forget that the Pole was ours, but, at that time, I was ready to offer freely to others the future pleasures of its crystal environment and all its glory. Our cup had been filled too often with its bitters and too seldom with its sweets for us to entertain further thirst for boreal conquest.
And we also resolved to keep henceforth from the wastes of the terrible Polar sea. In the future the position of lands must govern our movements. For, along a line of rocks, although we might suffer from hunger, we should no longer be helpless chips on the ocean drift, and if no other life should be seen, at least occasional shrimps would gladden the heart.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”WITH EAGER EYES WE SEARCHED THE DUSKY PLAINS OF CRYSTAL, BUT THERE WAS NO LAND, NO LIFE, TO RELIEVE THE PURPLE RUN OF DEATH”]
[Ill.u.s.tration: RECORD LEFT IN BRa.s.s TUBE AT NORTH POLE]
We stepped about on the solid ground with a new sense of security. But the land about was low, barren, and shapeless. Its formation was tria.s.sic, similar to that of most of Heiberg land, but in our immediate surroundings, erosion by frost, the grind of ice sheets, and the power of winds, had leveled projecting rocks and cliffs. Part of its interior was blanketed with ice. Its sh.o.r.e line had neither the relief of a colored cliff nor a picturesque headland; there was not even a wall of ice; there were only dull, uninteresting slopes of sand and snow separating the frozen sea from the land-ice. The most careful scrutiny gave no indication of a living creature. The rocks were uncovered even with black lichens. A less inviting spot of earth could not be conceived, yet it aroused in us a deep sense of enthusiasm. A strip of tropical splendor could not have done more. The spring of man's pa.s.sion is sprung by contrast, not by degrees of glory.
In camp, the joy of coming back to earth was chilled by the agonizing call of the stomach. The effervescent happiness could not dispel the pangs of hunger. A disabled dog which had been unsuccessfully nursed for several days was sacrificed on the altar of hard luck, and the other dogs were thereupon given a liberal feed, in which we shared. To our palates the flesh of the dog was not distasteful, yet the dog had been our companion for many months, and at the same time that our conscienceless stomachs were calling for more hot, blood-wet meat, a s.h.i.+vering sense of guilt came over me. We had killed and were eating a living creature which had been faithful to us.