Survivor: The Autobiography (10 page)

I may here remark that, owing to our loss of flesh, the hardness of the floor, from which we were only protected by a blanket, produced soreness over the body, and especially those parts on which the weight rested in lying, yet to turn ourselves for relief was a matter of toil and difficulty. However, during this period, and indeed all along, after the acute pains of hunger, which lasted but three or four days, had subsided, we generally enjoyed the comfort of a few hours’ sleep. The dreams which for the most part, but not always, accompanied it, were usually (though not invariably) of a pleasant character, being very often about the enjoyments of feasting. In the day-time we fell into the practice of conversing on common and light subjects, although we sometimes discussed with seriousness and earnestness topics connected with religion. We generally avoided speaking directly of our present sufferings, or even of the prospect of relief. I observed, that in proportion as our strength decayed, our minds exhibited symptoms of weakness, evinced by a kind of unreasonable pettishness with each other. Each of us thought the other weaker in intellect than himself, and more in need of advice and assistance. So trifling a circumstance as a change of place, recommended by one as being warmer and more comfortable, and refused by the other from a dread of motion, frequently called forth fretful expressions which were no sooner uttered than atoned for, to be repeated perhaps in the course of a few minutes. The same thing often occurred when we endeavoured to assist each other in carrying wood to the fire; none of us were willing to receive assistance, although the task was disproportioned to our strength. On one of these occasions, Hepburn was so convinced of this waywardness that he exclaimed, ‘Dear me, if we are spared to return to England, I wonder if we shall recover our understandings.’

7 November
Adam had passed a restless night, being disquieted by gloomy apprehensions of approaching death, which we
tried
in vain to dispel. He was so low in the morning as to be scarcely able to speak. I remained in bed by his side, to cheer him as much as possible. The Doctor and Hepburn went to cut wood. They had hardly begun their labour when they were amazed at hearing the report of a musket. They could scarcely believe that there was really anyone near, until they heard a shout, and immediately espied three Indians close to the house. Adam and I heard the latter noise, and I was fearful that a part of the house had fallen upon one of my companions, a disaster which had in fact been thought not unlikely. My alarm was only momentary; Dr Richardson came in to communicate the joyful intelligence that relief had arrived.

Spring had come to Thule. The daily temperatures still sank below freezing, but the daily sunlight approached the twenty-four hour maximum. In the sunlit niches among the rocks, the snow was fast evaporating. Every day the open water was breaking in towards the land. The spring hunting was on. At the first opportunity, Mene, Sechmann and I had set out from North Star Bay for a hunting trip at Cape Parry.

When we arrived, we found other hunters already rendezvoused there, comfortably quartered in snow houses along the shore and well stocked with walrus and seal that they had killed. We stayed with them three days and then started back towards North Star Bay, hunting along the edge of the ice as we sledged southward towards Saunders Island in the mouth of Wolstenholme Sound.

Halfway between Beechwood Point and the northern point of Saunders Island, but well out to sea, we came upon a deep re-entrant of the open water, where a large herd of walrus were disporting themselves along the edge of a patch of hummocky old ice – an irresistible lure for Mene and Sechmann, who would not go on without a try at this game. By a stroke of good fortune all too infrequent in an Eskimo hunter’s experience, Mene sank his harpoon at the first cast deep into the flank of a big cow walrus that swam up to the low berg behind which he had stalked the herd.

In due time we ‘landed’ the huge carcass, cut it up on the ice and, after feeding the dogs all they could eat, set up our tent and made ready to turn in for a sleep, while the dogs settled the meal they had eaten. It was well after midnight. The sun had hardly set. In the soft night light, the pale moon swung high in the sky, almost invisible. Flocks of fulmars, guillemots and eiders, but lately returned to the north, winged their ways still farther northward. The sky was well-nigh cloudless, the water rippled calm and dark before our tent and the ice towards the land gleamed solid and white as far as we could see.

Yet Sechmann shook his head and seemed uneasy – the sky in the south did not please him. Mene and I could detect nothing dubious and made light of his fears. Tired as he was, Sechmann got into his sleeping-bag reluctantly and, while Mene and I made the most of the chance to rest, he kept restless vigil.

Early forenoon came. The sun had risen well into the sky when Sechmann called us urgently. We turned out at once. A grey glare hung in the sky over the open water seaward and gusts of eddying winds swirled the loose snow about. The dogs were stirring uneasily. Not a bird was in sight on the water or in the air.

But it was none of these signs that had alarmed Sechmann enough to call us; he directed our attention to a long, wraith-like horizontal pennant of cloud flung out like a weathervane from the tip of a lone monadnock rising high above the plateau back of North Star Bay. To the Polar Eskimo, this pennant of cloud is a dread warning of the approach of a violent southerly gale and storm that will carry the ice out to sea. The moment Mene, who knew full well its grave import, saw this, he excitedly yelled to us to waste not a single moment in getting away.

We untied our dogs and hitched them to the sledges in less time than it takes to tell. We left our tent, our sleeping-bags, our heap of walrus meat and, with our whips snapping in angry staccato, raced away as fast as our well fed dogs could carry us. We headed straight for North Star Bay, dodging the patches of rough ice as best we could, straining our eyes for the smoothest going ahead, running behind our sledges to lighten the loads for the dogs. The dogs sensed the alarm we felt. As the wind strengthened and the snow sifting before it rose higher and struck harder, they increased their speed rather than slowed down.

For an hour or more we raced along, hardly calling a word to one another – Mene, with the biggest and best dogs, in the lead; Sechmann, with poorer dogs but a better driver, close behind Mene’s sledge; and I close behind Sechmann, merely because my dogs would not let the others get away.

And then came the crisis.

Spread black and threatening before us, a dark lead of new, thin ice stretched across the whole sound. How wide it was, we could not see in the haze of wind-driven snow. How thin it was, we could readily see, as our killing-irons broke through it of their own weight. How far it extended, we could only guess, but probably it reached from shore to shore.

During our absence the ice had parted under the urge of the ebbing spring tide and had drifted seaward. The water had frozen again over the lead, but only a thin film of ice had formed – so recently that no frost had yet whitened it. There it lay, barring our way, a dark, treacherous band that we had to cross. We could not tarry a moment, for not far behind us the storm was rolling in, a dark mass of tumbling cloud and wind-tossed snow.

As Sechmann drew his dogs back from the lead for a good running start, Mene moved along the lead a half hundred yards and drew back a little farther than Sechmann had done and I took my position still farther along the lead and still farther back; for, as Sechmann explained, we must not strike the ice at the same time or near together.

As Mene and I held our dogs back to give Sechmann a chance to get started, we waved to each other but neither spoke a word – our feelings were too tense. As Sechmann’s dogs struck out across the thin ice, they spread wide apart in the line; low and swift, with feet wide-spread, they ran; astride and well back on his sledge, Sechmann cracked his whip fast and furiously, encouraging but not striking his dogs. It was easy to see that they realized as well as he the danger they faced. Beneath the runners of his sledge, the yielding ice bent down; it rose in a wave-like fold before and behind.

Almost before Sechmann’s dogs had got well out on the thin ice, Mene’s team was on its way towards the edge. As his sledge struck the dark band, I saw, as I had not seen with Sechmann’s sledge, that, while the rounded front part of the runners was holding up on the ice as the dogs sped along, the sharp, square corners at the back were cutting through and little jets of water were spraying up on either side of the runner. The runners were actually cutting two narrow lanes through the ice.

My own dogs had already dashed forward and, as my sledge neared the black, thin ice, I dared hardly hope that it would hold me, for I weighed at least fifty pounds more than either Mene or Sechmann. But my runners were shod a quarter-inch wider and, though the ice bent deep under the sledge, this extra width carried my greater weight. My dogs were doing their best to keep pace with Mene’s and Sechmann’s, so I had no need of using my whip.

With my heart in my mouth, scarcely daring to breathe, I sat rigid, watching the water spraying out from the sides of both runners; at times half the runners were cutting through. If a dog had stumbled, or bumped into another, to slow the sledge a moment, we should have dropped through. But not a dog faltered; every one knew as well as I what would happen if he did. Never had my team made such speed. The first moments were the most perilous. The young ice was thin, but it was also smooth as glass and we gathered momentum as we raced on; yet, even so, the minutes seemed hours. The lead proved to be over half a mile wide and it seemed an age before we got across.

As he struck the solid ice, Sechmann gave a wild yell of relief; Mene gave another as he achieved it a moment later; but, until I had taken a breath or two, I could not even whisper. To them, particularly to Sechmann, who came from the hazardous ice of the Disko region, it was an old, oft-repeated adventure; to me – well, I vowed it was my last hazard over such thin ice.

We could not take time to greet each other and congratulate ourselves on the safe outcome of our decision. The storm still raged and there might be other such leads ahead. We could lose no time. We drove relentlessly on through the gathering blizzard and finally made shore just within Cape Abernathy. There we built a snow shelter and stayed till the storm swept by.

Night, 15 January
It is wonderful to think that two long marches would land us at the Pole. We left our depot today with nine days’ provisions, so that it ought to be a certain thing now, and the only appalling possibility the sight of the Norwegian flag forestalling ours. Little Bowers continues his indefatigable efforts to get good sights, and it is wonderful how he works them up in his sleeping-bag in our congested tent. (Minimum for night –27.5°.) Only 27 miles from the Pole. We
ought
to do it now.

Tuesday, 16 January
Camp 68. Height 9,760. T –23.5°. The worst has happened, or nearly the worst. We marched well in the morning and covered 7½ miles. Noon sight showed us in Lat. 89° 42’ S, and we started off in high spirits in the afternoon, feeling that tomorrow would see us at our destination. About the second hour of the march Bowers’ sharp eyes detected what he thought was a cairn; he was uneasy about it, but argued that it must be a sastrugus. Half an hour later he detected a black speck ahead. Soon we knew that this could not be a natural snow feature. We marched on, found that it was a black flag tied to a sledge bearer; near by the remains of a camp; sledge tracks and ski tracks going and coming and the clear trace of dogs’ paws – many dogs. This told us the whole story. The Norwegians have forestalled us and are first at the Pole. It is a terrible disappointment, and I am very sorry for my loyal companions. Many thoughts come and much discussion have we had. Tomorrow we must march on to the Pole and then hasten home with all the speed we can compass. All the day-dreams must go; it will be a wearisome return. Certainly we are descending in altitude – certainly also the Norwegians found an easy way up.