Part 15 (2/2)

The ocean current which sweeps past this cape, and opens the way to the other side of Baffin Bay, is wonderful. It is the great Polar current which comes rus.h.i.+ng down through Spitzbergen Sea, along the eastern coast of Greenland, laden with ice, and taking the waters of its rivers with their freight of drift-wood as it pa.s.ses. Leaving most of the wood along its sh.o.r.e, a welcome gift to the people, it sweeps around Cape Farewell, courses near the western sh.o.r.e in its run north until it has pa.s.sed Melville Bay. When it has crossed over to the American sh.o.r.e near Jones Strait, it joins the current from the Arctic Sea, turns south, and makes the long journey until it reaches our own coast, dropping its ice freight as it goes, and sending its cooling air through the heat-oppressed atmosphere of our summer.

As our explorers approached the sh.o.r.e of Cape York they looked carefully for the natives. Soon a company of Esquimo were seen making their wild gesticulations to attract attention. A boat was lowered, and Dr. Hayes and Professor Sontag went ash.o.r.e, and as they approached the landing-place one of the Esquimo called them by name. It was our old friend Hans, of the Kane voyage, who, the reader will recollect, left his white friends for an Esquimo wife. The group consisted, besides Hans, of his wife and baby, his wife's mother, an old woman having marked talking ability, and her son, a bright-eyed boy of twelve years.

Hans had found his self-imposed banishment among the savages of this extreme north rather tedious. He had removed his family to this lookout for the whale s.h.i.+ps, and had watched and waited. It was the dreariest of places, and his hut, pitched on a bleak spot the better to command a view of the sea, was the most miserable of abodes. It had plainly cost him dear to break his faith with his confiding commander and the friends of his early Christian home.

Dr. Hayes asked Hans if he would go with the expedition. He answered promptly, ”Yes.”

”Would you take your wife and baby?”

”Yes.”

”Would you go without them?”

”Yes.”

He was taken on board with his wife and baby. The mother and her boy cried to go, but the schooner was already overcrowded.

Leaving Cape York, the vessel spread her sails before a ”ten-knot”

breeze, and dodging the icebergs with something of a reckless daring, seemed bent on reaching the Polar Sea before winter set in. At one time what appeared to be two icebergs a short distance apart lay in the course of the vessel. The helmsman was ordered to steer between them, for to go round involved quite a circuit. On dashed the brave little craft for the narrow pa.s.sage. When she was almost abreast of them the officer on the lookout shuddered to see that the seeming bergs were but one, and that the connecting ice appeared to be only a few feet below the surface. It was too late to stop the headway of the vessel, or to turn her to the right or left. She rushed onward, but the water of the opening proved to be deeper than it appeared, and her keel but touched once or twice, just to show how narrow was the escape.

Hans was delighted with his return to s.h.i.+p life. His wife seemed pleased and half bewildered by the strange surroundings. The baby crowed, laughed, and cried, and ate and slept--like other babies.

The sailors put the new comers through a soap-and-water ordeal, to which was added the use of scissors and combs. Esquimo do not bathe, nor practice the arts of the barber, and consequently they keep numerous boarders on their persons. When this necessary cleansing and cropping was done, they donned red s.h.i.+rts and other luxuries of civilization.

With the new dresses they were delighted, and they were never tired of strutting about in them. But the soap and water was not so agreeable. At first it was taken as a rough joke, but the wife soon began to cry. She inquired of her husband if it was a religious ceremony of the white men.

The vessel made good time until she came within three miles of Cape Alexander. It was now August twenty-eighth, and so it was time these Arctic regions should begin to show their peculiar temper. A storm came down upon them, pouring the vials of its wrath upon the s.h.i.+vering vessel for about three days. During a lull in the storm the schooner was hauled under the shelter of the highlands of Cape Alexander and anch.o.r.ed. She rocked and plunged fearfully. At one time when these gymnastics were going on, the old Swedish cook came to the commander in the cabin with refreshments, but he was hardly able to keep his ”sea legs.” He remarks as he comes in, ”I falls down once, but de commander sees I keeps de coffee. It's good an' hot, and very strong, and go right down into de boots.”

”Bad night on deck, cook,” remarks the captain.

”O, it's awful, sar! I never see it blow so hard in all my life, an' I's followed de sea morn'n forty years. An' den it's so cold! My galley is full of ice, and de water, it freeze on my stove.”

”Here, cook, is a guernsey for you. It will keep you warm.”

”Tank you, sar!” says the cook, starting off with his prize. But encouraged by the kind bearing of his captain, he stops and asks, ”Would the commander be so kind as to tell me where we is? De gentlemen fool me.”

”Certainly, cook. The land over there is Greenland; the big cape is Cape Alexander; beyond that is Smith's Sound, and we are only about eight hundred miles from the North Pole.”

”De Nort Pole! vere's dat?”

The commander explains as well as he can.

”Tank you, sar. Vat for we come--to fish?”

”No, not to fish, cook; for science.”

”O, dat it! Dey tell me we come to fish. Tank you, sar.”

<script>