Part 14 (1/2)
(and it must be remembered that ”day” and ”night” in those regions are very equivocal terms). There are, besides, a cooking-apparatus, of which the fire is made in spirit or tallow lamps, one or two guns, a pick and shovel, instruments for observation, pannikins, spoons, and a little magazine of such necessaries, with the extra clothing of the party. Then the provision, the supply of which measures the length of the expedition, consists of about a pound of bread and a pound of pemmican per man per day, six ounces of pork, and a little preserved potato, rum, lime-juice, tea, chocolate, sugar, tobacco, or other such creature comforts. The sled is fitted with two drag-ropes, at which the men haul.
The officer goes ahead to find the best way among hummocks of ice or ma.s.ses of snow. Sometimes on a smooth floe, before the wind, the floor-cloth is set for a sail, and she runs off merrily, perhaps with several of the crew on board, and the rest running to keep up. But sometimes over broken ice it is a constant task to get her on at all.
You hear, ”One, two, three, _haul_,” all day long, as she is worked out of one ice ”cradle-hole” over a hummock into another. Different parties select different hours for travelling. Captain Kellett finally considered that the best division of time, when, as usual, they had constant daylight, was to start at four in the afternoon, travel till ten P. M., _breakfast_ then, tent and rest four hours; travel four more, tent, dine, and sleep nine hours. This secured sleep, when the sun was the highest and most trying to the eyes. The distances accomplished with this equipment are truly surprising.
Each man, of course, is dressed as warmly as flannel, woollen cloth, leather, and seal-skin will dress him. For such long journeying, the study of boots becomes a science, and our authorities are full of discussions as to canvas or woollen, or carpet or leather boots, of strings and of buckles. When the time ”to tent” comes, the pikes are fitted for tent-poles, and the tent set up, its door to leeward, on the ice or snow. The floor-cloth is laid for the carpet. At an hour fixed, all talking must stop. There is just room enough for the party to lie side by side on the floor-cloth. Each man gets into a long felt bag, made of heavy felting literally nearly half an inch thick. He brings this up wholly over his head, and b.u.t.tons himself in. He has a little hole in it to breathe through. Over the felt is sometimes a brown holland bag, meant to keep out moisture. The officer lies farthest in the tent,--as being next the wind, the point of hards.h.i.+p and so of honor. The cook for the day lies next the doorway, as being first to be called. Side by side the others lie between. Over them all Mackintosh blankets with the buffalo-robes are drawn, by what power this deponent sayeth not, not knowing. No watch is kept, for there is little danger of intrusion. Once a whole party was startled by a white bear smelling at them, who waked one of their dogs, and a droll time they had of it, springing to their arms while enveloped in their sacks. But we remember no other instance where a sentinel was needed. And occasionally in the journals the officer notes that he overslept in the morning, and did not ”call the cook” early enough. What a pa.s.sion is sleep, to be sure, that one should oversleep with such comforts round him!
Some thirty or forty parties, thus equipped, set out from the ”Resolute”
while she was under Captain Kellett's charge, on various expeditions. As the journey of Lieutenant Pim to the ”Investigator” at Banks Land was that on which turned the great victory of her voyage, we will let that stand as a specimen of all. None of the others, however, were undertaken at so early a period of the year, and, on the other hand, several others were much longer,--some of them, as has been said, occupying three months and more.
Lieutenant Pim had been appointed in the autumn to the ”Banks Land search,” and had carried out his depots of provisions when the other officers took theirs. Captain McClure's chart and despatch made it no longer necessary to have that coast surveyed, but made it all the more necessary to have some one go and see if he was still there. The chances were against this, as a whole summer had intervened since he was heard from. Lieutenant Pim proposed, however, to travel all round Banks Land, which is an island about the size and shape of Ireland, in search of him, Collinson, Franklin, or anybody. Captain Kellett, however, told him not to attempt this with his force, but to return to the s.h.i.+p by the route he went. First he was to go to the Bay of Mercy; if the ”Investigator” was gone, he was to follow any traces of her, and, if possible, communicate with her or her consort, the ”Enterprise.”
Lieutenant Pim started with a sledge and seven men, and a dog-sledge with two under Dr. Domville, the surgeon, who was to bring back the earliest news from the Bay of Mercy to the captain. There was a relief sledge to go part way and return. For the intense cold of this early season they had even more careful arrangements than those we have described. Their tent was doubled. They had extra Mackintoshes, and whatever else could be devised. They had bad luck at starting,--broke down one sledge and had to send back for another; had bad weather, and must encamp, once for three days. ”Fortunately,” says the lieutenant of this encampment, ”the temperature arose from fifty-one below zero to thirty-six below, and there remained,” while the drift acc.u.mulated to such a degree around the tents, that within them the thermometer was only twenty below, and, when they cooked, rose to zero. A pleasant time of it they must have had there on the ice, for those three days, in their bags smoking and sleeping! No wonder that on the fourth day they found they moved slowly, so cramped and benumbed were they. This morning a new sledge came to them from the s.h.i.+p; they got out of their bags, packed, and got under way again. They were still running along sh.o.r.e, but soon sent back the relief party which had brought the new sled, and in a few days more set out to cross the strait, some twenty-five to thirty miles wide, which, when it is open, as no man has ever seen it, is one of the Northwest Pa.s.sages discovered by these expeditions.
Horrible work it was! Foggy and dark, so they could not choose the road, and, as it happened, lit on the very worst ma.s.s of broken ice in the channel. Just as they entered on it, one black raven must needs appear.
”Bad luck,” said the men. And when Mr. Pim shot a musk-ox, their first, and the wounded creature got away, ”So much for the raven,” they croaked again. Only three miles the first day, four miles the second day, two and a half the third, and half a mile the fourth; this was all they gained by most laborious hauling over the broken ice, dragging one sledge at a time, and sometimes carrying forward the stores separately and going back for the sledges. Two days more gave them eight miles more, but on the seventh day on this narrow strait, the dragging being a little better, the great sledge slipped off a smooth hummock, broke one runner to smash, and ”there they were.”
If the two officers had a little bit of a ”tiff” out there on the ice, with the thermometer at eighteen below, only a little dog-sledge to get them anywhere, their s.h.i.+p a hundred miles off, fourteen days' travel as they had come, n.o.body ever knew it; they kept their secret from us, it is n.o.body's business, and it is not to be wondered at. Certainly they did not agree. The Doctor, whose sled, the ”James Fitzjames,” was still sound, thought they had best leave the stores and all go back; but the Lieutenant, who had the command, did not like to give it up, so he took the dogs and the ”James Fitzjames” and its two men and went on, leaving the Doctor on the floe, but giving him directions to go back to land with the wounded sledge and wait for him to return. And the Doctor did it, like a spirited fellow, travelling back and forth for what he could not take in one journey, as the man did in the story who had a peck of corn, a goose, and a wolf to get across the river. Over ice, over hummock, the Lieutenant went on his way with his dogs, not a bear nor a seal nor a hare nor a wolf to feed them with; preserved meats, which had been put up with dainty care for men and women, all he had for the ravenous, tasteless creatures, who would have been more pleased with blubber, came to Banks Land at last, but no game there; awful drifts; shut up in the tent for a whole day, and he himself so sick he could scarcely stand! There were but three of them in all; and the captain of the sledge not unnaturally asked poor Pim, when he was at the worst, ”What shall I do, sir, if you die?” Not a very comforting question!
He did not die. He got a few hours' sleep, felt better and started again, but had the discouragement of finding such tokens of an open strait the last year that he felt sure that the s.h.i.+p he was going to look for would be gone. One morning, he had been off for game for the dogs unsuccessfully, and, when he came back to his men, learned that they had seen seventeen deer. After them goes Pim; finds them to be _three hares_, magnified by fog and mirage, and their long ears answering for horns. This same day they got upon the Bay of Mercy. No s.h.i.+p in sight! Right across it goes the Lieutenant to look for records; when, at two in the afternoon, Robert Hoile sees something black up the bay. Through the gla.s.s the Lieutenant makes it out to be a s.h.i.+p. They change their direction at once. Over the ice towards her! He leaves the sledge at three and goes on. How far it seems! At four he can see people walking about, and a pile of stones and flag-staff on the beach. Keep on, Pim: shall one never get there? At five he is within a hundred yards of her, and no one has seen him. But just then the very persons see him who ought to! Pim beckons, waves his arms as the Esquimaux do in sign of friends.h.i.+p. Captain McClure and his lieutenant Haswell are ”taking their exercise,” the chief business of those winters, and at last see him! Pim is black as Erebus from the smoke of cooking in the little tent. McClure owns, not to surprise only, but to a twinge of dismay. ”I paused in my advance,” says he, ”doubting who or what it could be, a denizen of this or the other world.” But this only lasts a moment. Pim speaks. Brave man that he can. How his voice must have choked, as if he were in a dream. ”I am Lieutenant Pim, late of 'Herald.' Captain Kellett is at Melville Island.” Well-chosen words, Pim, to be sent in advance over the hundred yards of floe! Nothing about the ”Resolute,”--that would have confused them. But ”Pim,” ”Herald,” and ”Kellett” were among the last signs of England they had seen,--all this was intelligible. An excellent little speech, which the brave man had been getting ready, perhaps, as one does a telegraphic despatch, for the hours that he had been walking over the floe to her. Then such shaking hands, such a greeting. Poor McClure could not speak at first. One of the men at work got the news on board; and up through the hatches poured everybody, sick and well, to see the black stranger, and to hear his news from England. It was nearly three years since they had seen any civilized man but themselves.
The 28th of July, three years before, Commander McClure had sent his last despatch to the Admiralty. He had then prophesied just what in three years he had almost accomplished. In the winter of 1850 he had discovered the Northwest Pa.s.sage. He had come round into one branch of it, Banks Straits, in the next summer; had gladly taken refuge on the Bay of Mercy in a gale; and his s.h.i.+p had never left it since. Let it be said, in pa.s.sing, that most likely she is there now. In his last despatches he had told the Admiralty not to be anxious about him if he did not arrive home before the autumn of 1854. As it proved, that autumn he did come with all his men, except those whom he had sent home before, and those who had died. When Pim found them, all the crew but thirty were under orders for marching, some to Baffin's Bay, some to the Mackenzie River, on their return to England. McClure was going to stay with the rest, and come home with the s.h.i.+p, if they could; if not, by sledges to Port Leopold, and so by a steam-launch which he had seen left there for Franklin in 1849. But the arrival of Mr. Pim put an end to all these plans. We have his long despatch to the Admiralty explaining them, finished only the day before Pim arrived. It gives the history of his three years' exile from the world,--an exile crowded full of effective work,--in a record which gives a n.o.ble picture of the man. The Queen has made him Sir Robert Le Mesurier McClure since, in honor of his great discovery.
Banks Land, or Baring Island, the two names belong to the same island, on the sh.o.r.es of which McClure and his men had spent most of these two years or more, is an island on which they were first of civilized men to land. For people who are not very particular, the measurement of it which we gave before, namely, that it is about the size and shape of Ireland, is precise enough. There is high land in the interior probably, as the winds from in sh.o.r.e are cold. The crew found coal and dwarf willow which they could burn; lemmings, ptarmigan, hares, reindeer, and musk-oxen, which they could eat.
”Farewell to the land where I often have wended My way o'er its mountains and valleys of snow; Farewell to the rocks and the hills I've ascended, The bleak arctic homes of the buck and the doe; Farewell to the deep glens where oft has resounded The snow-bunting's song, as she carolled her lay To hillside and plain, by the green sorrel bounded, Till struck by the blast of a cold winter's day.”
There is a bit of description of Banks Land, from the anthology of that country, which, so far as we know, consists of two poems by a seaman named Nelson, one of Captain McClure's crew. The highest temperature ever observed on this ”gem of the sea” was 53 in midsummer. The lowest was 65 below zero in January, 1853; that day the thermometer did not rise to 60 below, that month was never warmer than 16 below, and the average of the month was 43 below. A pleasant climate to spend three years in!
One day for talk was all that could be allowed, after Mr. Pim's amazing appearance. On the 8th of April, he and his dogs, and Captain McClure and a party, were ready to return to our friend the ”Resolute.” They picked up Dr. Domville on the way; he had got the broken sledge mended, and killed five musk-oxen, against they came along. He went on in the dog-sledge to tell the news, but McClure and his men kept pace with them; and he and Dr. Domville had the telling of the news together.
It was decided that the ”Investigator” should be abandoned, and the ”Intrepid” and ”Resolute” made room for her men. Glad greeting they gave them too, as British seamen can give. More than half the crews were away when the ”Investigator's” parties came in, but by July everybody had returned. They had found islands where the charts had guessed there was sea, and sea where they had guessed there was land; had changed peninsulas into islands and islands into peninsulas. Away off beyond the seventy-eighth parallel, Mr. McClintock had christened the farthest dot of land ”Ireland's Eye,” as if his native island were peering off into the unknown there;--a great island, which will be our farthest now, for years to come, had been named ”Prince Patrick's Land,” in honor of the baby prince who was the youngest when they left home. Will he not be tempted, when he is a man, to take a crew, like another Madoc, and, as younger sons of queens should, go and settle upon this tempting G.o.d-child? They had heard from Sir Edward Belcher's part of the squadron; they had heard from England; had heard of everything but Sir John Franklin. They had even found an ale-bottle of Captain Collinson's expedition,--but not a stick nor straw to show where Franklin or his men had lived or died. Two officers of the ”Investigator” were sent home to England this summer by a s.h.i.+p from Beechey Island, the head-quarters; and thus we heard, in October, 1853, of the discovery of the Northwest Pa.s.sage.
After their crews were on board again, and the ”Investigator's” sixty stowed away also, the ”Resolute” and ”Intrepid” had a dreary summer of it. The ice would not break up. They had hunting-parties on sh.o.r.e and races on the floe; but the captain could not send the ”Investigators”
home as he wanted to, in his steam tender. All his plans were made, and made on a manly scale,--if only the ice would open. He built a storehouse on the island for Collinson's people, or for you, reader, and us, if we should happen there, and stored it well, and left this record:--
”This is a house which I have named the 'Sailor's Home,' under the especial patronage of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.
”_Here_ royal sailors and marines are fed, clothed, and receive double pay for inhabiting it.”
In that house is a little of everything, and a good deal of victuals and drink; but n.o.body has been there since the last of the ”Resolute's” men came away.
At last, the 17th of August, a day of foot-racing and jumping in bags and wrestling, all hands present, as at a sort of ”Isthmian games,”
ended with a gale, a cracking up of ice, and the ”Investigators” thought they were on their way home, and Kellett thought he was to have a month of summer yet. But no; ”there is nothing certain in this navigation from one hour to the next.” The ”Resolute” and ”Intrepid” were never really free of ice all that autumn; drove and drifted to and fro in Barrow's Straits till the 12th of November; and then froze up, without anchoring, off Cape c.o.c.kburn, perhaps one hundred and forty miles from their harbor of the last winter. The log-book of that winter is a curious record; the ingenuity of the officer in charge was well tasked to make one day differ from another. Each day has the first entry for ”s.h.i.+p's position”
thus: ”In the floe off Cape c.o.c.kburn.” And the blank for the second entry, thus: ”In the same position.” Lectures, theatricals, schools, &c., whiled away the time; but there could be no autumn travelling parties, and not much hope for discovery in the summer.
Spring came. The captain went over ice in his little dog-sled to Beechey Island, and received his directions to abandon his s.h.i.+ps. It appears that he would rather have sent most of his men forward, and with a small crew brought the ”Resolute” home that autumn or the next. But Sir Edward Belcher considered his orders peremptory ”that the safety of the crews must preclude any idea of extricating the s.h.i.+ps.” Both s.h.i.+ps were to be abandoned. Two distant travelling parties were away, one at the ”Investigator,” one looking for traces of Collinson, which they found. Word was left for them, at a proper point, not to seek the s.h.i.+p again, but to come on to Beechey Island. And at last, having fitted the ”Intrepid's” engines so that she could be under steam in two hours, having stored both s.h.i.+ps with equal proportions of provisions, and made both vessels ”ready for occupation,” the captain calked down the hatches, and with all the crew he had not sent on before,--forty-two persons in all,--left her Monday, the 15th of May, 1854, and started with the sledges for Beechey Island.
Poor old ”Resolute”! All this gay company is gone who have made her sides split with their laughter. Here is Harlequin's dress, lying in one of the wardrooms, but there is n.o.body to dance Harlequin's dances. ”Here is a lovely clear day,--surely to-day they will come on deck and take a meridian!” No, n.o.body comes. The sun grows hot on the decks; but it is all one, n.o.body looks at the thermometer! ”And so the poor s.h.i.+p was left all alone.” Such gay times she has had with all these brave young men on board! Such merry winters, such a lightsome summer! So much fun, so much nonsense! So much science and wisdom, and now it is all so still! Is the poor ”Resolute” conscious of the change? Does she miss the races on the ice, the scientific lecture every Tuesday, the occasional racket and bustle of the theatre, and the wors.h.i.+p of every Sunday? Has not she shared the hope of Captain Kellett, of McClure, and of the crew, that she may _break out well!_ She sees the last sledge leave her. The captain drives off his six dogs,--vanishes over the ice, and they are all gone. ”Will they not come back again?” says the poor s.h.i.+p. And she looks wistfully across the ice to her little friend the steam tender ”Intrepid,” and she sees there is no one there. ”Intrepid! Intrepid!