This little incident made a strong impression on the new members of my party, and I did not think it necessary to tell them that it was only a mosquito bite to the crunching and grinding between the jaws of the heavier ice that was in store for us a little farther on. We were working in a northwesterly direction toward the Ellesmere Land side, and headed for Cape Sabine, of terrible memories. As we steamed on, the ice became thicker, and we had to turn south to get out of the way of it, worming our course among the loose floes. The Roosevelt avoided the heavier ice; but the lighter pack she shoved aside without much difficulty. South of Brevoort Island we were fortunate in finding a strip of open water, and steamed northward again, keeping close to the shore.

It must be remembered that from Etah to Cape Sheridan, for the greater part of the course, the shores on either side are clearly visible,—on the east the Greenland coast, on the west the coast of Ellesmere Land and Grant Land. At Cape Beechey, the narrowest and most dangerous part, the channel is only eleven miles wide, and when the air is clear it almost seems as if a rifle bullet might be fired from one side to the other. These waters, save in exceptional seasons, are filled with the heaviest kind of ice, which is constantly floating southward from the Polar Sea toward Baffin Bay.

Whether this channel was carved in the solid land by the force of pre-Adamite glaciers, or whether it is a Titanic cleft formed by the breaking off of Greenland from Grant Land, is a question still undetermined by geologists; but for difficulty and danger there is no place to compare with it in the whole arctic region.

It is hard for a layman to understand the character of the ice through which the Roosevelt fought her way. Most persons imagine that the ice of the arctic regions has been formed by direct freezing of the sea water; but in the summer time very little of the floating ice is of that character. It is composed of huge sheets broken off from the glacial fringe of North Grant Land broken up by contact with other floes and with the land, and driven south under the impetus of the violent flood tides. It is not unusual to see there ice between eighty and one hundred feet thick. As seven-eighths of these heavy floes are under water, one does not realize how thick they are until one sees where a huge mass, by the pressure of the pack behind it, has been driven upon the shore, and stands there high and dry, eighty or a hundred feet above the water, like a silver castle guarding the shore of this exaggerated and ice-clogged Rhine.

The navigation of the narrow and ice-encumbered channels between Etah and Cape Sheridan was long considered an utter impossibility, and only four ships besides the Roosevelt have succeeded in accomplishing any considerable portion of it. Of these four ships, one, the Polaris, was lost. Three, the Alert, the Discovery, and the Proteus, made the voyage up and back in safety; but one of those, the Proteus, was lost in an attempt to repeat the dash. The Roosevelt had on the expedition of 1905-6 made the voyage up and back, though she was badly smashed on the return.

Going north, the Roosevelt of necessity followed the coast a portion of the way, as only close to the shore could any water be found which would enable the ship to advance. With the shore ice on one side, and the moving central pack on the other, the changing tides were almost certain to give us an occasional opportunity to steam ahead.

This channel is the meeting place between the tides coming from Baffin Bay on the south and from Lincoln Sea on the north, the actual point of meeting being about Cape Frazer. South of that point the flood tide runs north, and north of it the flood tide runs south. One may judge of the force of these tides from the fact that on the shores of the Polar Sea the mean rise is only a little over a foot, while in the narrowest part of the channel the tide rises and falls twelve or fourteen feet.

As a rule, looking across the channel, there seems to be no water—nothing but uneven and tortured ice. When the tide is at the ebb, the ship follows the narrow crack of water between the shore and the moving pack of the center, driving ahead with all her force; then, when the flood tide begins to rush violently southward, the ship must hurry to shelter in some niche of the shore ice, or behind some point of rock, to save herself from destruction or being driven south again.

This method of navigation, however, is one of constant hazard, as it keeps the vessel between the immovable rocks and the heavy and rapidly drifting ice, with the ever-present possibility of being crushed between the two. My knowledge of the ice conditions of these channels and their navigation was absolutely my own, gained in former years of traveling along the shores and studying them for this very purpose. On my various expeditions I had walked every foot of the coast line, from Payer Harbor on the south to Cape Joseph Henry on the north, from three to eight times. I knew every indentation of that coast, every possible shelter for a ship, every place where icebergs usually grounded, and the places where the tide ran strongest, as accurately as a tugboat captain in New York harbor knows the piers of the North River water front. When Bartlett was in doubt as to making a risky run, with the chance of not finding shelter for the ship, I could usually say to him:

"At such and such a place, so far from here, is a little niche behind the delta of a stream, where we can drive the Roosevelt in, if necessary"; or:

"Here icebergs are almost invariably grounded, and we can find shelter behind them"; or:

"Here is a place absolutely to be shunned, for the floes pile up here at the slightest provocation, in a way that would destroy any ship afloat."

It was this detailed knowledge of every foot of the Ellesmere Land and Grant Land coasts, combined with Bartlett's energy and ice experience, that enabled us to pass four times between this arctic Scylla and Charybdis.

The fog lifted about nine o'clock the first night out, the sun peeped through the clouds, and as we passed Payer Harbor, on the Ellesmere Land side, we saw, sharply outlined against the snow, the house where I wintered in 1901-2. A flood of memories rushed over me at sight of the place. It was in Payer Harbor that Mrs. Peary and my little daughter had waited for me, on the Windward from September, 1900, to May, 1901, the ice being so heavy that year that the ship could neither reach Fort Conger, three hundred miles beyond, where I was, nor regain the open water to the south and return home. That was the spring when I had been obliged to turn back at Lincoln Bay, because the exhaustion of my Eskimos and dogs made a dash for the Pole impossible. It was at Payer Harbor that I had rejoined my family; it was at Payer Harbor that I had parted from them, determined to make one fight more to reach the goal.

"One fight more," I said in 1902; but I had only reached 84 deg. 17'.

"One fight more," I had said in 1905; but I had only reached 87 deg. 6'.

And now, at Payer Harbor again, on August 18, 1908, it was still "One fight more!" Only this time I knew it was the last, in truth, whatever the result.

At ten o'clock that night we were steaming past the desolate, wind-swept and ice-ground rocks of Cape Sabine, the spot that marks one of the most somber chapters in arctic history, where Greely's ill-fated party slowly starved to death in 1884—seven survivors only being rescued out of a party of twenty-four! The ruins of the rude stone hut built by these men for shelter during the last year of their lives can still be seen on the bleak northern shore of Cape Sabine, only two or three miles from the extreme point. It is doubtful if a more desolate and unsheltered location for a camp could be found anywhere in the arctic regions, fully exposed to the biting winds from the north, cut off by the rocks back of it from the rays of the southern sun, and besieged by the ice pack surging down from Kane Basin in the north.

I first saw the place in August, 1896, in a blinding snowstorm, so thick that it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. The impressions of that day will never be forgotten—the pity and the sickening sense of horror. The saddest part of the whole story for me was the knowledge that the catastrophe was unnecessary, that it might have been avoided. My men and I have been cold and have been near to starvation in the Arctic, when cold and hunger were inevitable; but the horrors of Cape Sabine were not inevitable. They are a blot upon the record of American arctic exploration.

From Cape Sabine north there was so much open water that we thought of setting the lug sail before the southerly wind; but a little later the appearance of ice to the north caused us to change our minds. About sixty miles north of Etah, we came to a dead stop in the ice pack off Victoria Head. There we lay for hours; but the time was not altogether wasted, for we filled our tanks with ice from a floe.

In the afternoon of the second day out, the wind came on strong from the south, and we slowly drifted northward with the ice. After some hours, the wind began to form pools of open water through the pack, and we steamed westward toward the land, with the spray flying clear across the decks. An Eskimo declared that this was the devil spitting at us. After a few miles, we ran into denser ice and stopped again.

Dr. Goodsell, MacMillan and Borup were busy storing food and medical supplies in the boats, to be ready for an emergency. Had the Roosevelt been crushed by the ice or sunk, we could have lowered the boats at a moment's notice, fitted and equipped for a voyage, and retreated to the Eskimo country—thence back to civilization on some whaler, or in a ship which would have been sent up with coal the following year by the Peary Arctic Club, though that, of course, would have meant the failure of the expedition.

In each of the six whale-boats were placed a case containing twelve six-pound tins of pemmican, the compressed meat food used on arctic expeditions; two twenty-five pound tins of biscuit; two five-pound tins of sugar, a few pounds of coffee and several cans of condensed milk; an oil stove and five one-gallon tins of oil; a rifle with one hundred rounds of ammunition and a shotgun with fifty rounds; matches, a hatchet, knives, a can opener, salt, needles and thread; and the following medical supplies: catgut and needles, bandages and cotton, quinine, astringent (tannic acid), gauze, plaster-surgical liniment, boracic acid, and dusting powder.

The boats were swung at the davits, with a full complement of oars, mast, sails, etc., and the emergency outfit above described would have fitted them for a voyage of a week or ten days. On leaving Etah the essential items of supplies, such as tea, coffee, sugar, oil, pemmican, and biscuit, had been stowed on deck, close to the rail on both sides, ready instantly to be thrown over the rail onto the ice, in case the ship should be crushed.

Every person on board, both the men of the ship and the Eskimos, was ready with a little bundle packed to get right over the side at a moment's notice, after lowering the boats and throwing onto the ice the essential supplies stowed near the ship's rail. Nobody thought of undressing regularly; and the bathtub in my cabin might as well have been a trunk, for all the time I dared to spend in it between Etah and Cape Sheridan.



CHAPTER XI

CLOSE QUARTERS WITH THE ICE

That no time should be lost on the upward voyage, and also that my Eskimos might not have too much leisure in which to consider the dangers which constantly threatened their floating home, I kept them all busy. The men were put to work making sledges and dog-harness, so that when we reached Cape Sheridan—if we reached it,—we might be ready for the fall hunting. I had on board the raw materials, and each Eskimo built a sledge for himself, putting his best work into it. This pride of the Eskimo in personal achievement has been of great service to me, and has been encouraged by special prizes and special praise.

The Eskimo women were put to work on our winter garments as soon as possible after leaving Etah, so that, in the event of our losing the ship, every man would have a comfortable outfit. In the North we wear practically the same clothing as the Eskimos, including the fur stockings with the fur on the inside. Otherwise we should have frozen feet often instead of only occasionally. A man who could not live without silk stockings would not be likely to attempt the North Pole. As we had altogether, including the Eskimos, sixty-nine persons on board the ship—men, women, and children—it will be seen that there was considerable sewing to be done. Old garments had to be overhauled and mended, and new ones made.

The worst of the ice fighting did not begin immediately, and the new members of the expedition, MacMillan, Borup, and Dr. Goodsell, were at first much interested in watching the Eskimo women at their sewing. They sit on anything that is convenient, a chair, a platform, or the floor. In their own quarters they remove their footgear, put up one foot, and hold one end of the fabric between their toes, sewing a seam over and over from them, instead of toward them, as our women do. The foot of an Eskimo woman is a sort of third hand, and the work is gripped between the great toe and the second toe.

The Eskimo women have great confidence in their own skill at garment-making, and they take suggestions from the inexperienced white men with a good-natured and superior tolerance. When one of the northern belles was shaping a garment for Bartlett to wear on the spring sledge journey, he anxiously urged her to give him plenty of room. Her reply was a mixed Eskimo and English equivalent for:

"You just trust me, Captain! When you get out on the road to the Nor Pol, you'll need a draw-string in your jacket, and not gussets." She had seen me and my men come back from previous sledge journeys, and she knew the effect of long continued fatigue and scanty rations in making a man's clothes fit him loosely.

The Eskimos had the run of the ship, but the port side of the forward deck house was given to them entirely. A wide platform three or four feet high, made of packing boxes, was placed around the wall of the deck house for them to sleep on. Each family had its own quarters, partitioned off by planks, and screened in front by a curtain. They cooked their own meat and whatever else they desired, though Percy, the ship's steward, provided them with tea and coffee. If they had baked beans, or hash, or anything of that kind from the ship's store, it was cooked for them by Percy; and he also furnished them with his famous bread, which for lightness and crispness is unsurpassed in the round world.

The Eskimos seemed always to be eating. There was no table for the crowd of them, as they do not incline to regular meal hours; but each family ate by itself, as appetite dictated. I gave them pots, pans, plates, cups, saucers, knives, forks, and oil stoves. They had access to the ship's galley, day and night; but Percy was always amiable, and the Eskimos at length learned not to wash their hands in the water in which he purposed to boil meat.

The third day out the weather was villainous. It rained steadily, and there was a strong southerly wind. The group of dogs on the main deck stood about with low, dejected heads and dripping tails. Only at feeding time did they take courage even to fight or snap at one another. Most of the time the ship was stationary, or drifting slowly with the ice toward the mouth of Dobbin Bay. When at last the ice loosened, we made about ten miles in open water—then the wheel rope broke, and we had to stop for repairs, unable to take advantage of the stretch of water still before us. The captain's remarks when the strands of that cable parted I will leave to the imagination of the reader. Had the accident occurred at a time when the ship was between two big floes, the fortress of the North Pole might still remain uncaptured. It was after midnight before we got under way, and half an hour later we were stopped again by the impassable ice.

On the fourth day we lay quiet all day long, with a slight breeze from Princess Marie Bay setting us slowly eastward; but, as the sun was shining, we utilized the time in drying our clothing, wet and soggy from the almost continuous rain and snow of the previous two days. As it was still summertime in the Arctic, we did not suffer from cold. The pools between the ice floes were slowly enlarging, and at nine in the evening we were on our way again, but at eleven we ran into a thick fog. All night we bored and twisted through the ice, which, though thick, was not heavy for the Roosevelt, and only once or twice we had to back her. An ordinary ship could have made no headway whatever.

Wardwell, the chief engineer, stood his eight-hour or twelve-hour watch the same as his assistants, and during the passage of these dangerous channels he was nearly always in the engine-room, watching the machinery to see that no part of it got out of order at a crucial moment—which would have meant the loss of the ship. When we were between two big floes, forcing our way through, I would call down the tube leading from the bridge to the engine-room:

"Chief, you've got to keep her moving until I give you word, no matter what happens."

Sometimes the ship would get stuck between the corners of two floes which were slowly coming together. At such a time a minute is an eternity. I would call down the tube to Wardwell, "You've got to jump her now, the length of fifty yards," or whatever it might be. And I could feel the ship shaking under me as she seemed to take the flying leap, under the impulse of live steam poured directly from the boilers into the fifty-two-inch low-pressure cylinder.

The engines of the Roosevelt have what is called a by-pass, by which the live steam can be turned into the big cylinder, more than doubling the power of the engines for a few minutes. This simple bit of mechanism has saved us from being crushed flat by the ice on more than one occasion.

The destruction of a ship between two ice floes is not sudden, like her destruction by a submarine mine, for instance. It is a slow and gradually increasing pressure from both sides, sometimes till the ice meets in the vitals of the ship. A vessel might stay thus, suspended between two floes, for twenty-four hours—or until the movement of the tides relaxed the pressure, when she would sink. The ice might open at first just sufficiently to let the hull go down, and the ends of the yards might catch on the ice and break, with the weight of the water-filled hull, as was the case with the ill-fated Jeannette. One ship, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, was caught in the ice and dragged over the rocks like a nutmeg over a nutmeg grater. The bottom was sliced off as one would slice a cucumber with a knife, so that the iron blubber tanks in the hold dropped out of her. The ship became nothing but the sides and ends of a box. She remained some twenty-four hours, gripped between the floes, and then went down.

On the 22d of August, the fifth day, our lucky stars must have been working overtime; for we made a phenomenal run—more than a hundred miles, right up the middle of Kennedy Channel, uninterrupted by ice or fog! At midnight the sun burst gloriously through the clouds, just over Cape Lieber. It seemed a happy omen.

Could such good fortune continue? Though my hopes were high, the experience of former journeys reminded me that the brightest coin has always a reverse side. In a day we had run the whole length of Kennedy Channel, and immediately before us there was only scattered ice. But beyond lay Robeson Channel, only some thirty miles away, and the navigator who knows Robeson Channel will never be sanguine that it has anything good in store for him.

Soon we encountered both ice and fog, and, while working slowly along in search of an opening, we were forced clear across to the Greenland coast at Thank God Harbor, the winter quarters of the Polaris in 1871-72. I have mentioned the lane of water which often lies at ebb tide between the land and the moving central pack; but the reader must not fancy that this is an unobstructed lane. On the contrary, its passage means constant butting of the smaller ice, and constant dodging of larger pieces.

Of course the steam is up at all times, ready, like ourselves, for anything at a moment's notice. When the ice is not so heavy as to be utterly impenetrable, the ship under full steam moves back and forth continually, butting and charging the floes. Sometimes a charge will send the ship forward half her length, sometimes her whole length—sometimes not an inch. When, with all the steam of the boilers, we can make no headway whatever, we wait for the ice to loosen up, and economize our coal. We do not mind using the ship as a battering ram—that is what she was made for; but beyond Etah coal is precious, and every ounce of it must yield its full return of northward steaming. The coal at present in our bunkers was all that we should have until our return the following year, when the Peary Arctic Club would send a ship to meet us at Etah.



It must be remembered that during all this time we were in the region of constant daylight, in the season of the midnight sun. Sometimes the weather was foggy, sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny; but there was no darkness. The periods of day and night were measured only by our watches—not, during the passage of these channels, by sleeping and waking, for we slept only in those brief intervals when there was nothing else to do. Unresting vigilance was the price we paid for our passage.

Bartlett's judgment was reliable, but the cabin had no attraction for me when the ship and the fortunes of the expedition were swaying in the balance. Then, too, when the ship was butting the ice, the shock of the impact would have made Morpheus himself sit up and rub his eyes every few minutes.



Owing to the stupendous and resistless character of the heavier ice, a ship would be utterly helpless if she were ever caught fairly and squarely between two giant floes. In such a case there would be no escape for any structure which man could design or build. More than once a brief nip between two big blue floes has set the whole one hundred and eighty-four-foot length of the Roosevelt vibrating like a violin string. At other times, under the pressure on the cylinders of the by-pass before described, the vessel would rear herself upon the ice like a steeplechaser taking a fence. It was a glorious battle—this charging of the ship against man's coldest enemy and possibly his oldest, for there is no calculating the age of this glacial ice. Sometimes, as the steel-shod stem of the Roosevelt split a floe squarely in two, the riven ice would emit a savage snarl that seemed to have behind it all the rage of the invaded immemorial Arctic struggling with the self-willed intruder, man. Sometimes, when the ship was in special peril, the Eskimos on board would set up their strange barbaric chant—calling on the souls of their ancestors to come from the invisible realm and help us.

Often on this last expedition of the Roosevelt, as on the former one, have I seen a fireman come up from the bowels of the ship, panting for a breath of air, take one look at the sheet of ice before us, and mutter savagely:

"By God, she's got to go through!"

Then he would drop again into the stoke hole, and a moment later an extra puff of black smoke would rise from the stack, and I knew the steam pressure was going up.

During the worst parts of the journey, Bartlett spent most of his time in the crow's nest, the barrel lookout at the top of the main mast. I would climb up into the rigging just below the crow's nest, where I could see ahead and talk to Bartlett, backing up his opinion with my own, when necessary, to relieve him, in the more dangerous places, of too great a weight of responsibility.

Clinging with Bartlett, high up in the vibrating rigging, peering far ahead for a streak of open water, studying the movement of the floes which pressed against us, I would hear him shouting to the ship below us as if coaxing her, encouraging her, commanding her to hammer a way for us through the adamantine floes:

"Rip 'em, Teddy! Bite 'em in two! Go it! That's fine, my beauty! Now—again! Once more!"

At such a time the long generations of ice and ocean fighters behind this brave, indomitable young Newfoundland captain seemed to be re-living in him the strenuous days that carried the flag of England 'round the world.



CHAPTER XII

THE ICE FIGHT GOES ON

To recount all the incidents of this upward journey of the Roosevelt would require a volume. When we were not fighting the ice, we were dodging it, or—worse still—waiting in some niche of the shore for an opportunity to do more fighting. On Sunday, the sixth day out from Etah, the water continued fairly open, and we made good progress until one o'clock in the afternoon, when we were held up by the ice pack as we were nearing Lincoln Bay. A cable was run out, and the ship secured to a great floe, which extended some two miles to the north and several to the east. The tide, which was running north at the time, had carried the smaller ice with it, leaving the Roosevelt in a sort of lake. While we were resting there, some of the men observed a black object far out on the great ice floe to which we were attached, and Dr. Goodsell and Borup, with two Eskimos, started out to investigate. This walking across the floes is dangerous, as the ice is full of cracks, some of them quite wide, and on the day in question the cracks were for the most part concealed by a recent snowfall. In jumping across a lead, the men had a narrow escape from drowning, and when they got within shooting distance of the black object they were seeking, it proved to be only a block of stone.

Before the return of Borup and the doctor the ice had already begun to close in around the ship and, as soon as the men were safe on board, the cable was hauled in and the Roosevelt drifted south with the pack. So close was the ice that night, that we had to swing the boats inward on the davits to protect them from the great floes, which at times crowded the rail. Finally, the captain worked the ship into another small lake to the southeast of our former position by the great floe, and there we remained several hours, steaming back and forth in order to keep the pool open.

About eleven o'clock that night, for all our efforts, the ice closed in again around the Roosevelt; but I observed a small lead to the southeast, which led into another body of open water, and gave orders to ram the vessel through, if possible. By working the nose of the ship into the small opening, and then by butting the ice on alternate sides, we succeeded in widening the lead sufficiently to allow of our passing through to the pool of open water beyond.

At four o'clock the next morning we were again under way, working northward through slack ice to a point a little beyond Shelter River, where we were again stopped by ice about nine o'clock in the forenoon. The Roosevelt moved in near the shore and her head was shoved against a big floe, to avoid her being jammed or carried southward by the now swiftly running tide and the ice pack.

After supper that night, MacMillan, Borup, and Dr. Goodsell, with two Eskimos, started for the shore over the jammed ice, with the intention of getting some game; but before they reached the shore there was so much movement in the adjacent floes that I considered their journey too hazardous for inexperienced men. A recall was sounded with the ship's whistle, and they started back over the now moving floes. Their movements were impeded by their guns, but fortunately they carried boat hooks, without which they could never have made their way back.

Using the boat hooks as vaulting poles, they leaped from one floe to another, when the leads were not too wide. When the open water was impassable in that way, they crossed it on small floating pieces of ice, using their hooks to push and pull themselves along. First the doctor slipped on the edge of a floe, and went into the icy water to the waist, but he was quickly hauled up by Borup. Then Borup slipped and went in to the waist, but he was out again as quickly.

Meanwhile the ice had separated about the Roosevelt, leaving a wide lane of water between her and the men; but by running the ship against one of the larger floes, we enabled them to clamber aboard. They lost no time in exchanging their wet garments for dry ones, and in a few minutes they were all laughing and recounting their exploits to an interested—and possibly amused—group of listeners.

A man who could not laugh at a wetting or take as a matter of course a dangerous passage over moving ice, would not be a man for a serious arctic expedition. It was with a feeling of intense satisfaction that I watched these three men, MacMillan, Borup, and Dr. Goodsell, my arctic "tenderfeet," as I called them, proving the mettle of which they were made.

I had selected these three men from among a host of applicants for membership in the expedition, because of the special fitness of each one. Dr. Goodsell was a solid, sturdy, self-made physician of Pennsylvania stock. His specialism in microscopy I trusted might give valuable results in a field not hitherto investigated in the North. He was to make microscopic studies of the germ diseases of the Eskimos.

MacMillan, a trained athlete and physical instructor, I had known, and known about, for years. I chose him because of his intense interest in the work, his intense desire to be of the party, and his evident mental and physical fitness for the rigorous demands of the Arctic.

Borup, the youngest member of the party, impressed me with his enthusiasm and physical abilities. He had a record as a Yale runner, and I took him on general principles, because I liked him, satisfied that he was of the right stuff for arctic work. It was a fortunate selection, as the photographs brought back by the expedition are due in a large measure to his expert knowledge of film developing.

I have been asked how the members of my party amused themselves during the long waits, when the ship was held up by the ice. The principal amusement of the new members was in trying to acquire from the Eskimos on board a smattering of their language. As interpreter, they had Matt Henson. Sometimes, looking down from the bridge of the ship onto the main deck, I would see one of these new men surrounded by a group of Eskimos, gesticulating and laughing, and I knew that a language lesson was in progress. The women were delighted at the opportunity to teach Borup the Eskimo words for jacket, hood, boots, sky, water, food, et cetera, as they seemed to be of the opinion that he was a fine boy.

The Roosevelt lay quietly in open water all night on the 24th of August, but in the forenoon of the 25th steamed northward nearly to Cape Union. Beyond there the ice was densely packed. I climbed up into the rigging to take a look but, finding no suitable shelter, decided to turn back to Lincoln Bay, where we made the ship fast between two grounded ice floes. The day before had been calm and sunny, but the 25th was snowy and disagreeable, with a raw northerly wind. The snow was driving in horizontal sheets across the decks, the water was black as ink, the ice a spectral white, and the coast near us looked like the shores of the land of ghosts. One of our berg pieces was carried away by the flood tide, and we were obliged to shift our position to the inner side of the other one; but there were other grounded bergs outside us to take the impact of the larger floes.

On general principles, I landed a cache of supplies at this point on the following day. The possibility of losing the ship was always present; but if everything went well the cache could be made use of in the hunting season. The supplies, in their wooden boxes, were simply piled upon the shore. Wandering arctic hares, reindeer, and musk-oxen never attempt to regale themselves on tin cans or wooden boxes.

I went ashore and walked over to Shelter River, living over again the experiences there in 1906, when, during my absence at Cape Thomas Hubbard, Captain Bartlett—for he was then, as now, the master of the Roosevelt—had tried to drive the ship south from her exposed position at Cape Sheridan to a more sheltered place in Lincoln Bay, where I was to rejoin them.

At Shelter River, the Roosevelt had been caught between the moving pack and the vertical face of the ice-foot, receiving almost a fatal blow. She had been lifted bodily out of the water, the stern-post and rudder smashed into kindling wood, and a blade ripped off the propeller. Everything was landed from the vessel in the expectation that when the ice slacked off and she settled into the water, she would be leaking so badly it would be impossible to keep her afloat.

Bartlett and his men worked manfully in stopping the leaks, as far as possible; and when the pressure from the ice was partially released, the ship was floated. But she lay there nearly a month, and twice during that time even the rigging of the ship was landed, when it seemed impossible that she could survive.

Here at Shelter River I had found the Roosevelt on my return from "farthest west." A new rudder was improvised, and the crippled and almost helpless ship floated around into Lincoln Bay, whence she finally limped home to New York.

After an hour of retrospection at this place I walked back to the ship. Borup and MacMillan had also gone ashore, in the hope of obtaining game but had not found any. It was a dull, raw, overcast day and MacMillan, Borup, the doctor, and Gushue, the mate, amused themselves by target-shooting with their Winchesters.

The next day was seemingly endless, and still we lay there at Lincoln Bay, with a strong, raw, northeast wind blowing steadily and with increasing violence. The edge of the moving pack was only a few yards from the ship, but we were fairly well protected by large pieces which had grounded outside of us. Every little while a big floe came rushing past, crowding everything out of its way and giving our protectors a shove that set them and us nearer the shore. From the crow's nest we could see a little open water near the east coast of the channel, but there was none in our vicinity—only ice, ice, ice, of every imaginable shape and thickness.

Still another day, and the Roosevelt was in the same position, with the ice crowding against her; but at the crest of the high tide the grounded floe-berg to which we were attached by cable went adrift, and we all hurried on deck. The lines were hastily detached from the berg. As the ice went south, it left a stretch of open water before us about a mile long, and we steamed northward along the shore, pushing our way behind the grounded bergs, trying to find another niche where we might be secure from the now rapidly approaching pack.

It was well for us that the wind was blowing violently off shore, as it eased the pressure of the pack against us. One place seemed secure, and we were making ready to attach the cables, when an ice-floe, about an acre in extent with a sharp, projecting point like the ram of a battleship, came surging along toward the Roosevelt, and we were obliged to shift our position. Before the ship was secured, she was again threatened by the same floe, which seemed to be endowed with malign intelligence and to follow us like a bloodhound. We retired to still another position, and secured the vessel and finally the threatening floe passed onwards to the south.

There was no sleep for any one that sunlit night. About ten o'clock the berg fragment to which we were attached drifted loose under the pressure of the furious wind and the rising tide. In contracted space, with the ice whirling and eddying about us, we hastily got our lines in and shifted to another place, only to be driven out of it. We sought still another place of shelter, and in turn were also driven out of that. A third attempt to find safety was successful, but before it was accomplished the Roosevelt had twice been aground forward, her heel had been caught by a berg's spur, and her after rail smashed by the onslaught of another berg.

Saturday, the 29th, was another day of delay but I found some comfort in thinking of my little son in the far-away home. It was his fifth birthday, and Percy, Matt, and I, his three chums, drank a bottle of champagne in his honor. Robert E. Peary, Junior! What were they doing at home? I wondered.

I think that none of the members of the expedition will ever forget the following day, the 30th of August. The Roosevelt was kicked about by the floes as if she had been a football. The game began about four o'clock in the morning. I was in my cabin trying to get a little sleep—with my clothes on, for I had not dared to remove them for a week. My rest was cut short by a shock so violent that, before I realized that anything had happened, I found myself on deck—a deck that inclined to starboard some twelve or fifteen degrees. I ran, or rather climbed the deck, to the port side and saw what had happened. A big floe, rushing past with the current, had picked up the grounded berg to which we were attached by the hawsers, as if that thousand-ton berg had been a toy, and dashed it against the Roosevelt and clear along her port side, smashing a big hole in the bulwarks at Marvin's room. The berg brought up against another one just aft of us, and the Roosevelt slipped from between the two like a greased pig.

As soon as the pressure was relaxed and the ship regained an even keel, we discovered that the cable which had been attached to the floe-berg at the stern had become entangled with the propeller. It was a time for lightning thought and action; but by attaching a heavier cable to the parted one and taking a hitch round the steam capstan, we finally disentangled it.

This excitement was no sooner over than a great berg that was passing near us split in two of its own accord, a cube some twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter dropping toward the ship, and missing our quarter by only a foot or two. "Bergs to the right of them, bergs to the left of them, bergs on top of them," I heard somebody say, as we caught our breath at this miraculous escape.

The ship was now quite at the mercy of the drifting ice, and with the pressure from the outer pack the Roosevelt again careened to starboard. I knew that if she were driven any higher upon the shore, we should have to discharge a large part of the coal in order to lighten her sufficiently to get her off again. So I decided to dynamite the ice.

I told Bartlett to get out his batteries and dynamite, and to smash the ice between the Roosevelt and the heavy floes outside, making a soft cushion for the ship to rest on. The batteries were brought up from the lazaret, one of the dynamite boxes lifted out with caution, and Bartlett and I looked for the best places in the ice for the charges.

Several sticks of dynamite were wrapped in pieces of old bagging and fastened on the end of long spruce poles, which we had brought along specially for this purpose. A wire from the battery had, of course, been connected with one of the primers buried in the dynamite. Pole, wire, and dynamite were thrust down through cracks in the ice at several places in the adjacent floes. The other end of each wire was then connected with the battery, every one retreated to a respectful distance on the far side of the deck, and a quick, sharp push on the plunger of the battery sent the electric current along the wires.

Rip! Bang! Boom! The ship quivered like a smitten violin string, and a column of water and pieces of ice went flying a hundred feet into the air, geyser fashion.

The pressure of the ice against the ship being thus removed, she righted herself and lay quietly on her cushion of crushed ice—waiting for whatever might happen next. As the tide lowered, the Roosevelt was bodily aground from amidships forward, heeling first to one side and then to the other with the varying pressure of the ice. It was a new variation of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"—one that sent Eskimo babies, the dogs, the boxes, and even ourselves, tumbling about the decks.

When the tide rose, efforts were made to dislodge the ship from her stranded position. From the port side of the bow a line was made fast to a stationary floe-berg, and the captain called for full steam, first ahead, then astern. For some time there was no perceptible movement of the ship. Finally, the pull on the port bow from the cable, with full speed astern, had the desired effect and the vessel slid off and floated free; but the ice was so heavily packed behind us that we could not move her away. It was far from a pleasant spot.



CHAPTER XIII

CAPE SHERIDAN AT LAST

To put it mildly, the position in which we now found ourselves was dangerous—even with the assistance of so experienced and steady an ice fighter as Bartlett. As day followed day and still we hung there at Lincoln Bay, we should doubtless have been extremely anxious had the Roosevelt not had a similar experience on the preceding voyage. But we believed that sooner or later the movement of the ice would enable us to steam the few remaining miles to Cape Sheridan, and possibly beyond there; for our objective point was some twenty-five miles to the northwest of our former winter quarters in 1905-06. We tried to possess our souls in patience, and if sometimes the delay got on our nerves, there was nothing to be gained by talking about it.

On the first of September the ice did not seem to be moving quite so rapidly. The evening before MacMillan had been sent ashore to the bluffs beyond Shelter River, and he had reported that there was considerable open water along the shore. Bartlett then went forward to reconnoiter. On his return he also reported open water, but with corners of big floes barring it in every direction.

That the fall hunting might get under way, Ootah, Aletah, Ooblooyah, and Ooqueah started off for the Lake Hazen region, with a sledge and eight dogs, after musk-oxen and reindeer. It had been planned that they should hunt there until joined by other Eskimos from the ship, after she reached Cape Sheridan or Porter Bay. But in the absence of snow, the going was too rough for even a light sledge, and the Eskimos returned.

At last, a little before midnight on the 2d, we got out of the impasse at Lincoln Bay, where we had been held up for ten days. The cables were taken in, and the Roosevelt, steaming first forward and then astern, extricated herself from the shore pack. We felt as men must feel who are released from prison. There was a narrow lane of open water following the shore, and along that course we steamed, rounding Cape Union about half an hour before midnight.

But we were soon held up again by the ice, a little below Black Cape, a dark cone-shaped mountain standing alone, on the eastern side washed by the waters of the sea, on the west separated by deep valleys from the adjacent mountains. It was a scene of indescribable grandeur, for the coast was lined for miles with bergs, forced shoreward, broken and tilted at right angles. At Black Cape we had made half the distance between our former position at Lincoln Bay and the longed-for shelter at Cape Sheridan.

As we made fast against the land ice, a sixty-foot thick fragment of a floe was driven with frightful force up on the shore a little to the north of us. Had we been in the way of it—but a navigator of these channels must not dwell too much on such contingencies.

As an extra precaution, I had the Eskimos with axes bevel off the edge of the ice-foot abreast of the ship, to facilitate her rising if she should be squeezed by the heavy floes outside. It was snowing lightly all day long; but I went ashore, walking along the ice-foot to the next river, and up to the summit of Black Cape. An occasional walk on land was a relief from the stench and disorder of the ship, for the dogs kept the Roosevelt in a very unclean condition. Many persons have asked how we could endure the presence of nearly two hundred and fifty dogs on the deck of a small ship; but every achievement has its drawbacks, and it must not be forgotten that without the dogs we could not have reached the Pole.

At this point we landed another cache, similar to the one at Lincoln Bay, to be ready for anything that might happen.

On the 4th, the wind came strong from the south, and as there seemed to be a little open water ahead, at eight in the morning we started to get out of our berth. It took an hour to break up the "slob" ice which had cemented about the ship. We were happy to be under way again; but at the delta just ahead of us the ice refused to open, the drift ice from the south was coming up rapidly before the wind, and we were compelled to hurry back to our former berth below Black Cape. We did not get in again without some trouble as the strong wind made the Roosevelt hard to manage. The starboard quarter boat was badly smashed against the corner of a big berg piece, and the starboard corner of the forward deck house was almost ripped from the decking.

But all hands were stimulated by the thought that we were now only a few miles from Cape Sheridan—so near our goal that we were restless to be off again. That evening, with the ebb tide, the ice slackened, and the order was given to steam ahead. After one or two narrow escapes between the rapidly running floes, we reached the delta of Black Cape River, a few miles beyond our former place. But when the tide turned we were obliged to hurry back about a quarter of a mile to the shelter of a grounded berg.

When the hawsers were made fast I went ashore and up to the delta to look at the ice beyond. Not a crack or hole was visible to the north, and the path by which we had retreated to our present position was now a sea of solid ice. Should we ever be able to make the few remaining miles?

The wind continued to blow violently from the south, the ice began to slack off a little behind us, and at three o'clock in the morning of the 5th of September there was a gradually widening lead to the north. I felt that it was now or never, and the order went down for every pound of steam and full speed. Thus we rounded Cape Rawson, and Cape Sheridan was in view. At last! That sloping headland looked more beautiful than the gates of paradise to our vigil-wearied eyes.

We rounded the cape at a quarter past seven, fifteen minutes later than the time of our arrival in 1905. Since the 23d of August, thirteen days before, neither Bartlett nor I had had our clothes off.

Should we stop here? There was still open water beyond. I gave orders to steam ahead, hoping that we might reach Porter Bay. But after two miles we came to another impassable barrier of ice, and it was decided that it was Cape Sheridan again for this year's winter quarters. Back we went, and the work of getting the Roosevelt inside the tide crack was begun.

My heart was light. Those two miles beyond Cape Sheridan had given us the record of "farthest north" which any vessel had ever reached under her own steam, 82 deg. 30'. One vessel only, Nansen's Fram, had been farther north, but she had drifted there stern foremost, a plaything of the ice. Again the little black, strenuous Roosevelt had proven herself the champion.

There are some feelings which a man cannot express in words. Such were mine as the mooring lines went out onto the ice foot at Cape Sheridan. We had kept the scheduled time of our program and had negotiated the first part of the difficult proposition—that of driving a ship from New York to a point within striking distance of the Pole. All the uncertainties of ice navigation—the possible loss of the Roosevelt and a large quantity of our supplies—were at an end. Another source of gratification was the realization that this last voyage had further accentuated the value of detailed experience in this arduous work. Notwithstanding the delays which had sometimes seemed endless, we had made the voyage with only a small percentage of the anxieties and injury to the ship which we had experienced on the former upward journey in 1905.

Lying there, with the northern bounds of all known lands—except those close to us—lying far to the south, we were in a position properly to attack the second part of our problem, the projection of a sledge party from the ship to the Pole itself. This rounding of Cape Sheridan was not the ultimate achievement probable.

So great was our relief at having driven the Roosevelt through the ice of Robeson Channel, that as soon as the mooring lines were out at Cape Sheridan we set to work unloading the ship with light-hearted eagerness. The Roosevelt was grounded inside the tide crack, and the first things we got ashore were the two hundred and forty-six dogs, which had made the ship a noisy and ill-smelling inferno for the last eighteen days. They were simply dropped over the rail onto the ice, and in a few minutes the shore in all directions was dotted with them, as they ran, leaped and barked in the snow. The decks were washed down with hose, and the work of unloading began. First the sledges came down from the bridge deck, where they had been built during the upward voyage, a fine fleet of twenty-three.



We wanted to get the ship well inside the ice barrier where she would be really safe, so we lightened her that she might float with the high tide. We made chutes from planks, and down these we slid the oil cases from the main deck and the hold. It was necessary to work carefully, as the ice was thin at that season. Later two or three sledge loads of supplies broke through, and the Eskimos with them; but as the water was only five or six feet deep, and the supplies were packed in tins, no serious damage was done.

While the oil was being unloaded, a party of men went out with ice chisels, poles, saws, and so forth, chopping away the ice so that we could warp the Roosevelt in, broadside to the shore. Bartlett and I were determined to get the ship beyond the floe-berg barrier and into the shallow water of the ice-foot. We were not looking forward to another winter of such torment as we had lived through on the last previous expedition, with the ship just on the edge of the ice-foot and subject to every movement of the hostile pack outside.



After the oil cases came the tons of whale meat from the quarter-deck, some of it in chunks as large as a Saratoga trunk. It was thrown over the side onto the ice, sledged ashore by the Eskimos, some hundred yards over the ice-foot, and heaped in great piles, protected by the bags of coal which had also been taken from the quarter-deck. Then came the whale-boats, which were lowered from the davits and run ashore like sledges. They were later turned bottom side up for the winter and weighted down, so that the wind could not move them.



The work of landing the supplies and equipment consumed several days. This is the very first work of every well-managed arctic expedition on reaching winter quarters. With the supplies ashore, the loss of the ship by fire or by crushing in the ice, would mean simply that the party might have to walk home. It would not interfere with the sledge work, nor seriously cripple the expedition. Had we lost the Roosevelt at Cape Sheridan, we should have spent the winter in the box houses which we constructed and in the spring should have made the dash for the Pole just the same. We should then have walked the three hundred and fifty miles to Cape Sabine, crossed the Smith Sound ice to Etah, and waited for a ship.

The adjacent shore for a quarter of a mile was lined with boxes, each item of provisions having a pile to itself. This packing-box village was christened Hubbardville, in honor of General Thomas H. Hubbard, president of the Peary Arctic Club. When the boxes which had served as a bed platform in the Eskimo quarters of the Roosevelt's forward deck were removed, the place was swept and scrubbed; then a bed platform was built of boards, divided into sections for the various families and screened in front by curtains. Under the bed platform was an open space, where the Eskimos could keep their cooking utensils and other personal belongings. The fastidious reader who is shocked at the idea of keeping frying-pans under the bed should see an Eskimo family in one of their native houses of stone and earth, eight feet across, where meat and drink, men, women, and children are crowded indiscriminately for month upon month in winter.

We next landed about eighty tons of coal, so that, in case we should have to live in the box houses, there would be plenty of fuel. At that time of the year it was not very cold. On the 8th of September the thermometer stood at 12 above zero, the next day at 4.

The heavier cases, containing the tins of bacon, pemmican (the condensed meat food used in the Arctic), flour, et cetera, were utilized ashore like so many blocks of granite in constructing three houses, about fifteen feet by thirty. All the supplies were especially packed for this purpose, in boxes of specified dimensions—one of the innumerable details which made for the success of the expedition. In building the houses the tops of the boxes were placed inside, the covers removed, and the contents taken out as needed, as from a shelf, the whole house being one large grocery.

The roofs were made of sails thrown over boat booms or spars, and later the walls and roof were banked in solidly with snow. Stoves were set up, so that, if everything went well, the houses could be used as workshops during the winter.

So here we were, safely bestowed at Cape Sheridan, and the prize seemed already in our grasp. The contingencies which had blocked our way in 1906 were all provided for on this last expedition. We knew just what we had to do, and just how to do it. Only a few months of waiting, the fall hunting, and the long, dark winter were all that lay between me and the final start. I had the dogs, the men, the experience, a fixed determination (the same impulse which drove the ships of Columbus across the trackless western sea)—and the end lay with that Destiny which favors the man who follows his faith and his dream to the last breath.



CHAPTER XIV

IN WINTER QUARTERS

When the removal of supplies had lightened the Roosevelt so much that Bartlett got her considerably farther in shore, she lay with her nose pointing almost true north. It cheered us, for this was her constant habit. It seemed almost like the purpose of a living creature. Whenever on the upward voyage—either this time or on her first trip in 1905—the ship was beset in the ice so that we lost control of her, she always swung around of her own accord and pointed north. When twisting through the ice, if we got caught when the ship was headed east or west, it was only a little while before the pressure would swing her round till once more she looked northward. Even on the return journey, in 1906, it was the same—as if the ship realized she had not accomplished her purpose and wanted to go back. The sailors noticed it, and used to talk about it. They said the Roosevelt was not satisfied, that she knew she had not done her work.

When we got the vessel as near the shore as possible, the ship's people began to make her ready for the winter. The engine-room force was busy blowing down the boilers, putting the machinery out of commission, removing every drop of water from the pipes and elbows so the cold of winter should not burst them; and the crew was busy taking down the sails, slacking off the rigging, so the contraction from the intense cold of winter should not cause damage, with a thousand and one details of like character.

Before the sails were taken down, they were all set, that they might be thoroughly dried out by sun and wind. The ship was a beautiful sight, held fast in the embrace of the ice and with her cables out, but with every sail filled with wind like a yacht in a race.

While this work was going on small hunting parties of Eskimos were sent to the Lake Hazen region, but they met with little success. A few hares were secured, but musk-oxen seemed to have vanished. This troubled me, for it raised a fear that the hunting of the former expedition had killed off the game, or driven it away. The Eskimo women set their fox traps all along the shore for five miles or so each way, and they were more successful than the men, obtaining some thirty or forty foxes in the course of the fall and winter. The women also went on fishing trips to the ponds of the neighborhood, and brought in many mottled beauties.

The Eskimo method of fishing is interesting. The fish in that region will not rise to bait but are captured by cutting a hole in the ice and dropping in a piece of ivory carved in the shape of a small fish. When the fish rises to examine this visitor, it is secured with a spear. The Eskimo fish spear has a central shaft with a sharp piece of steel, usually an old nail, set in the end. On each side is a piece of deer antler pointing downward, lashed onto the shaft with a fine line, and sharp nails, pointing inward, are set in the two fragments of antler. When this spear is thrust down on the fish, the antlers spread as they strike the fish's back; he is impaled by the sharp point above him, and the sharp barbs on either side keep him from getting away.

The char (?) of North Grant Land is a beautiful mottled fish, weighing sometimes as much as eleven or twelve pounds. I believe that the pink fiber of these fish—taken from water never warmer than 35 deg. or 40 deg. above zero—is the firmest and sweetest fish fiber in the world. During my early expeditions in this region, I would spear one of these beauties and throw him on the ice to freeze, then pick him up and fling him down so as to shatter the flesh under the skin, lay him on the sledge, and as I walked away pick out morsels of the pink flesh and eat them as one would eat strawberries.

In September of 1900 with these fish a party of six men and twenty-three dogs were supported for some ten days, until we found musk-oxen. We speared the fish in the way the Eskimos taught us, using the regular native spear.

The new members of the expedition were naturally anxious to go sight-seeing. MacMillan had an attack of the grip, but Borup and Dr. Goodsell scoured the surrounding country. Hubbardville could not boast its Westminster Abbey nor its Arc de Triomphe, but there were Petersen's grave and the Alert and Roosevelt cairns, both in the neighborhood, and visible from the ship.

About a mile and a half southwest from our winter quarters was the memorial headboard of Petersen, the Danish interpreter of the English expedition of 1875-76. He died as the result of exposure on a sledge trip, and was buried there abreast of the Alert's winter quarters. The grave is covered with a large flat slab, and at the head is a board covered with a copper sheet from the boiler room of the Alert, with the inscription punched in it. There may be a lonelier grave somewhere on earth, but if so I have no knowledge of it. No explorer, not even the youngest and most thoughtless, could stand before that "mute reminder of heroic bones" without a feeling of reverence and awe. There is something menacing in that dark silhouette against the white snow, as if the mysterious Arctic were reminding the intruder that he might be chosen next to remain with her forever.

Not far away is the Alert's cairn, from which I took the British record in 1905, a copy of it being replaced by Ross Marvin, according to the custom of explorers. In view of his tragic end, in the spring of 1909, the farthest north of all deaths known to man, this visit of Marvin's to the neighborhood of Petersen's grave has a peculiar pathos.

The Roosevelt cairn, erected by Marvin in 1906, is directly abreast of the ship's location at Cape Sheridan in 1905-06 and about one mile inland. It is on a high point of land, about four hundred feet above the water. The record is in a prune can, at the bottom of the pile of stones, and was written by Marvin himself in lead-pencil. The cairn is surmounted by a cross, made of the oak plank from our sledge runners. It faces north, and at the intersection of the upright and the crosspiece there is a large "R" cut in the wood. When I went up to see it, soon after our arrival this last time, the cross was leaning toward the north, as if from the intentness of its three years' northward gazing.

On the 12th of September we had a holiday, it being the fifteenth birthday of my daughter, Marie Ahnighito, who was born at Anniversary Lodge, Greenland—the most northerly born of all white children. Ten years before, we had celebrated her fifth birthday on the Windward. Many icebergs had drifted down the channels since then, and I was still following the same ideal which had given my daughter so cold and strange a birthplace.

There was a driving snowstorm that day, but Bartlett dressed the ship in all the flags, the full international code, and the bright colors of the bunting made a striking contrast to the gray-white sky. Percy, the steward, had baked a special birthday cake, and we had it, surmounted with fifteen blazing candles, on our supper table. Just after breakfast the Eskimos came in with a polar bear, a female yearling six feet long, and I determined to have it mounted for Marie's birthday bear. It should be standing and advancing, one paw extended as if to shake, the head on one side and a bearish smile on the face. The bear provided us with juicy steaks, and we had a special tablecloth, our best cups and saucers, new spoons, et cetera.

A day or two later we began to get the dogs made fast, in preparation for the first sledge parties. There was now sufficient snow to begin the transportation of supplies toward Cape Columbia, and Black Cliffs Bay was frozen over. The Eskimos tied the dogs, in teams of five or six, to stakes driven into the shore or holes cut in the ice. They made a fine picture, looking shoreward from the ship—nearly two hundred and fifty of them—and their barking could be heard at all hours.

It must be remembered that day and night were still determined only by the clock, as the ever-circling sun had not yet set. By reason of the industry of all hands on the upward voyage, everything was now ready for the fall work. The Eskimos had built the sledges and made the dog harnesses, and Matt Henson had finished the "kitchen boxes," which enclosed our oil stoves in the field, while the busy needles of the Eskimo women had provided every man with a fur outfit.

In the North we wear the regular Eskimo garments, with certain modifications. First of all, there is the kooletah, a fur jacket with no buttons, which goes on over the head. For summer wear the Eskimos make it of sealskin, but for winter it is made of fox or deerskin.

For our own use, we had jackets made of Michigan sheepskin. We took the skins up with us, and the women made the garments, but when it was very cold we wore the deerskin or foxskin jacket of the Eskimos. Attached to this jacket is a hood, and around the face is a thick roll made of fox-tails.

The ahteah is a shirt, usually of fawn skin, with the hair inside, and the Eskimos wear it even in summer. In some of the photographs of natives, the skilful piecing together of the skins in the shirt can be traced. The Eskimo women are more adept at this work than are any of the furriers of civilization. They sew the skins with the sinew taken from the back of the deer—the jumping muscle. It is absolutely unbreakable, and moisture does not rot it. For the coarser work of sewing boots, canoes, and tents, they use the sinew from the tail of the narwhal. The sewing is now done with the steel needles I have given them; but in former years they used a punch made of bone, passing the sinew through the hole, as a shoemaker uses a "waxed end." They do not cut the skins with shears, as that would injure the fur; but with a "woman's knife," similar to an old-fashioned mincemeat chopper.

The shaggy fur trousers are invariably made from the skins of the polar bear. Then there are stockings of hareskin, and the kamiks, or boots, of sealskin, soled with the heavier skin of the square-flipper seal. On the ship, on sledge journeys, and in all the field work of the winter, the regular footgear of the Eskimos was worn. Add the warm fur mittens, and the winter wardrobe is complete.

It may reasonably be inquired whether the close housing for so long a time of such a considerable number of human beings did not result in personal friction, due to the inevitable accumulation of a thousand and one petty irritations. To some extent it did. But the principal members of the expedition were men of such character that they were able to exercise an admirable self-restraint that prevented any unpleasant results of consequence. Practically the only trouble of a personal sort that was of any importance occurred between one of the sailors and an Eskimo whom we called Harrigan.

Harrigan acquired this sobriquet on account of his ear for music. The crew used to be fond of singing that energetic Irish air which was popular for some years along Broadway and which concludes ungrammatically with the words "Harrigan—that's me." The Eskimo in question seemed fascinated by this song and in time learned those three words and practised them with so much assiduity that he was ultimately able to sing them in a manner not wholly uncouth.

In addition to his musical leanings, Harrigan was a practical joker, and on one occasion he was exercising his humorous talents in the forecastle to the considerable discomfort of one of the crew. Ultimately the sailor, unable to rid himself of his persecutor in any other way, resorted to the use of his fists. The Eskimos, while good wrestlers, are far from adepts at the "manly art of self-defense," and the result was that Harrigan emerged from the forecastle with a well-blackened eye and a keen sense of having been ill used. He complained bitterly of his treatment, but I gave him a new shirt and told him to keep away from the forecastle where the sailors were, and in a few hours he had forgotten it like a school boy, so that the affair passed off without leaving any permanent ill feeling, and soon Harrigan was again cheerfully croaking his "Harrigan—that's me."



CHAPTER XV

THE AUTUMN WORK

The main purpose of the autumn sledge parties was the transportation to Cape Columbia of supplies for the spring sledge journey toward the Pole. Cape Columbia, ninety miles northwest from the ship, had been chosen because it was the most northerly point of Grant Land, and because it was far enough west to be out of the ice current setting down Robeson Channel. From there we could strike straight north over the ice of the Polar Sea.



The moving of thousands of pounds of supplies for men and dogs for a distance of ninety miles, under the rigorous conditions of the Arctic, presented problems for calculation. The plan was to establish stations along the route, instead of sending each party through to Cape Columbia and back. The first party was to go to Cape Belknap, about twelve miles from the ship, deposit their supplies, and return the same day. The second party was to go to Cape Richardson, about twenty miles away, deposit their supplies, return part way and pick up the supplies at Cape Belknap, taking them forward to Cape Richardson. The next station was at Porter Bay, the next at Sail Harbor, the next at Cape Colan, and the final station at Cape Columbia itself. Parties would thus be going back and forth the whole time, the trail would constantly be kept open, and hunting could be done along the way. The tractive force was, of course, the Eskimo dogs, and sledges were the means of transportation. The sledges were of two types: the Peary sledge, which had never been used before this expedition, and the regular Eskimo sledge, increased somewhat in length for special work. The Peary type of sledge is from twelve to thirteen feet in length, two feet in width, and seven inches in height; the Eskimo type of sledge is nine feet in length, two feet in width, and seven inches in height. Another difference is that the Eskimo sledge is simply two oak runners an inch or an inch and a quarter thick and seven inches wide, shaped at the front to give the easiest curve for passage over the ice, and shod with steel, while the Peary sledge has oak sides rounded, both in front and behind, with two-inch wide bent ash runners attached, the runners being shod with two-inch wide steel shoes. The sides of both are solid, and they are lashed together with sealskin thongs.

The Peary sledge is the evolution of twenty-three years of experience in arctic work and is believed to be the strongest and easiest running sledge yet used for arctic traveling. On a level surface this sledge will support ten or twelve hundred pounds.

The Eskimos have used their own type of sledge from time immemorial. When they had no wood, before the advent of the white man, they made their sledges of bone—the shoulder-blades of the walrus, and the ribs of the whale, with deer antlers for up-standers.

For dog harnesses, I have adopted the Eskimo pattern, but have used different material. The Eskimo harness is made of sealskin—two loops joined by a cross strip at the back of the neck and under the throat. The dog's forelegs pass through the loops, and the ends are joined over the small of the back, where the trace is attached. This harness is very simple and flexible, and it allows the dog to exert his whole strength. The objection to sealskin as a harness material is a gastronomic one. When the dogs are on short rations they eat their harnesses at night in camp. To obviate this difficulty, I use for the harnesses a special webbing or belting, about two or two and a half inches in width, and replace the customary rawhide traces of the Eskimos by a braided linen sash cord.

The dogs are hitched to the sledge fanwise. The standard team is eight dogs; but for rapid traveling with a heavy load, ten or twelve are sometimes used. They are guided by the whip and the voice. The Eskimo whip has a lash sometimes twelve, sometimes eighteen, feet long, and so skilful are the Eskimos in its manipulation that they can send the lash flying through the air and reach any part of any particular dog they wish. A white man can learn to use an Eskimo whip, but it takes time. It takes time also to acquire the exact Eskimo accent to the words "How-eh, how-eh, how-eh," meaning to the right; "Ash-oo, ash-oo, ash-oo," to the left; as well as the standard, "Huk, huk, huk," which is equivalent to "go on." Sometimes, when the dogs do not obey, the usual "How-eh, how-eh, how-eh," will reverse its accent, and the driver will yell, "How-ooooooo," with an accompaniment of other words in Eskimo and English which shall be left to the imagination of the reader. The temperature of a new man trying to drive a team of Eskimo dogs is apt to be pretty high. One is almost inclined to believe with the Eskimos that demons take possession of these animals. Sometimes they seem to be quite crazy. A favorite trick of theirs is to leap over and under and around each other, getting their traces in a snarl beside which the Gordian knot would be as nothing. Then, in a temperature anywhere between zero and 60 deg. below, the driver has to remove his heavy mittens and disentangle the traces with his bare hands, while the dogs leap and snap and bark and seem to mock him. And this brings me to an incident which practically always happens when a new man starts out to drive Eskimo dogs.



A member of the expedition—I, who have also suffered, will not give his name away—started out with his dog team. Some hours later shouts and hilarious laughter were heard from the Eskimos. It was not necessary to inquire what had happened. The dog team had returned to the ship—without the sledge. The new dog driver, in attempting to unsnarl the traces of his dogs, had let them get away from him. Another hour or two went by, and the man himself returned, crestfallen and angry clear through. He was greeted by the derisive shouts of the Eskimos, whose respect for the white man is based primarily on the white man's skill in the Eskimo's own field. The man gathered up his dogs again and went back for the sledge.

The gradual breaking in of the new men is one of the purposes of the short trips of the fall. They have to become inured to such minor discomforts as frosted toes and ears and noses, as well as the loss of their dogs. They have to learn to keep the heavy sledges right side up when the going is rough and sometimes, before a man gets hardened, this seems almost to rip the muscles from the shoulder blades. Moreover, they have to learn how to wear their fur clothing.

On the 16th of September the first train of supplies was sent to Cape Belknap: Marvin, Dr. Goodsell, and Borup, with thirteen Eskimos, sixteen sledges, and about two hundred dogs. They were an imposing procession as they started northwest along the ice-foot, the sledges going one behind the other. It was a beautiful day—clear, calm, and sunny,—and we could hear, when they were a long distance away, the shouts of the Eskimo drivers, "Huk, huk, huk," "Ash-oo," "How-eh," the cracking of the whips, and the crisp rustle and creaking of the sledges over the snow.

It is often asked how we keep warm when riding on the sledges. We do not ride, save in rare instances. We walk, and when the going is hard we have to help the dogs by lifting the sledges over rough places.

The first party returned the same day with the empty sledges, and the next day two Eskimo hunting parties came in with three deer, six hares, and two eider ducks. Neither party had seen any tracks of musk-oxen. On the 18th, the second sledge party was sent out to carry fifty-six cases of crew pemmican to Cape Richardson, where they were to camp, bring up the biscuit from Cape Belknap to Cape Richardson the following day, and then return to the ship. That gave them one night in the field.

A man's first night in a canvas tent in the Arctic is likely to be rather wakeful. The ice makes mysterious noises; the dogs bark and fight outside the tent where they are tethered; and as three Eskimos and one white man usually occupy a small tent, and the oil-stove is left burning all night, the air, notwithstanding the cold, is not over-pure; and sometimes the Eskimos begin chanting to the spirits of their ancestors in the middle of the night, which is, to say the least, trying. Sometimes, too, the new man's nerves are tried by hearing wolves howl in the distance.

The tents are specially made. They are of light-weight canvas, and the floor of the tent is sewed directly into it. The fly is sewed up, a circular opening cut in it, just large enough to admit a man, and that opening fitted with a circular flap which is closed by a draw-string, making the tent absolutely snow-proof. An ordinary tent, when the snow is flying, would be filled in no time.

The tent is pyramidal, with one pole in the center, and the edges are usually held down by the sledge runners or by snowshoes used as tent pegs. The men sleep on the floor in their clothes, with a musk-ox skin under, and a light deerskin over them. I have not used sleeping bags since my arctic trip of 1891-92.

The "kitchen box" for our sledge journeys is simply a wooden box containing two double-burner oil-stoves, with four-inch wicks. The two cooking pots are the bottoms of five-gallon coal-oil tins, fitted with covers. When packed they are turned bottom side up over each stove, and the hinged cover of the wooden box is closed. On reaching camp, whether tent or snow igloo, the kitchen box is set down inside, the top of the box is turned up and keeps the heat of the stove from melting the wall of the igloo or burning the tent; the hinged front of the box is turned down and forms a table. The two cooking pots are filled with pounded ice and put on the stoves; when the ice melts one pot is used for tea, and the other may be used to warm beans, or to boil meat if there is any.

Each man has a quart cup for tea, and a hunting knife which serves many purposes. He does not carry anything so polite as a fork, and one teaspoon is considered quite enough for a party of four. Each man helps himself from the pot—sticks in his knife and fishes out a piece of meat.

The theory of field work is that there shall be two meals a day, one in the morning and one at night. As the days grow short, the meals are taken before light and after dark, leaving the period of light entirely for work. Sometimes it is necessary to travel for twenty-four hours without stopping for food.

The Cape Richardson party returned on the evening of the 19th, and was sent out again on the 21st, nineteen Eskimos and twenty-two sledges, to take 6,600 pounds of dog pemmican to Porter Bay. MacMillan, being still under the weather with the grip, missed this preliminary training; but I felt certain that he would overtake the experience of the others as soon as he was able to travel. When the third party returned, on the 24th, they brought back the meat and skins of fourteen deer.



On the 28th there was a general exodus from the ship: Henson, Ootah, Alletah, and Inighito were to hunt on the north side of Lake Hazen; Marvin, Poodloonah, Seegloo, and Arco on the east end and the south side of Lake Hazen; and Bartlett, with Panikpah, Inighito, Ooqueah, Dr. Goodsell, with Inighito, Keshungwah, Kyutah, and Borup, with Karko, Tawchingwah, and Ahwatingwah, were to go straight through to Cape Columbia.

I had planned from the beginning to leave most of the hunting and other field work to the younger members of the expedition. Twenty odd years of arctic experience had dulled for me the excitement of everything but a polar-bear chase; the young men were eager for the work; there was much to do on board ship in planning for the spring, and I wished to conserve my energies for the supreme effort.

There was no systematic training, because I do not believe in it. My body has always been able thus far to follow my will no matter what the demands might be, and my winter's work was largely a matter of refinement of equipment, and of mathematical calculations of pounds of supplies and miles of distance. It was the lack of food which had forced us to turn back at 87 deg. 6'. Hunger, not cold, is the dragon which guards the Rhinegold of the Arctic.

I did allow myself one break in the monotony of ship life—a trip to Clements Markham Inlet, in October. Ever since April, 1902, when I had looked around the angle of Cape Hecla into the unexplored depths of this great fiord, I had had a longing to penetrate it. On the previous expedition I had started twice with that purpose, but had been prevented from carrying it out, partly on account of bad weather, partly by reason of my anxiety for the Roosevelt, which I had left in a precarious position. But now the Roosevelt was safe; and though the sun was circling near the horizon and the winter night would soon be upon us, I decided to make the trip.

On the 1st of October I left the ship with three Eskimos, Egingwah, Ooblooyah, and Koolatoonah, three sledges with teams of ten dogs each, and supplies for two weeks only. With the sledges thus lightly loaded, and the trail broken for us by the parties which had preceded us, we made rapid progress, reaching Porter Bay, thirty-five miles from the ship, for our first camp in a few hours.

Here we found two Eskimos, Onwagipsoo and Wesharkoopsi, who had been sent out a day or two before. Onwagipsoo went back to the ship, but Wesharkoopsi we took along with us to carry a load of supplies to Sail Harbor, which we expected to reach on the next march; from there he also would return to the ship.

Our camp at Porter Bay was in the permanent tent which had been erected there by the first of the autumn parties, the canvas tent with the sewed-in floor which has already been described. It was not very cold that night, and we slept comfortably after a hearty supper of beans and tea. Beans and tea! Perhaps it does not sound like a Lucullan feast, but after a day in the field in Grant Land it tastes like one.



CHAPTER XVI

THE BIGGEST GAME IN THE ARCTIC

We slept splendidly on that banquet, and, breaking out early the next morning, we passed up the ice of Porter Bay to its head, then, taking to the land, crossed the five-mile-wide isthmus which separates Porter Bay from the head of James Ross Bay. Every foot of this route was familiar to me and rich with memories. Reaching the other side, we descended to the ice again and made rapid progress along the western shore. The dogs were lively and well-fed, trotting along with tails and ears erect; the weather was good, and the sun, now low on the horizon, cast long, fantastic shadows on the ice from every man and dog.

Suddenly the quick eyes of Egingwah spied a moving speck on the slope of the mountain to our left. "Tooktoo," he cried, and the party came to an instant standstill. Knowing that the successful pursuit of a single buck reindeer might mean a long run, I made no attempt to go after him myself; but I told Egingwah and Ooblooyah, my two stalwart, long-legged youngsters, to take the 40-82 Winchesters and be off. At the word they were flying across country, eager as dogs loosed from the traces, crouching low and running quickly. They took a course which would intercept the deer a little farther along the slope of the mountain.

I watched them through my glasses. The deer, when he caught sight of them, started off leisurely in another direction, looking back every now and then, suspiciously alert. When the deer halted suddenly and swung round facing them, it was clear that they had given the magic call taught by Eskimo father to Eskimo son through generation after generation, the imitation call at which every buck reindeer stops instantly—a peculiar hissing call like the spitting of a cat, only more lingering.

The two men leveled their rifles, and the magnificent buck went down in his tracks. The dogs had been watching, with heads and ears erect; but at the report of the rifles they swung sharply to the shore, and the next instant we were hurrying across the rocks and over the snow, the dogs dragging the sledges as if they had been empty.

When we reached the two hunters they were standing patiently beside the deer. I had told them not to disturb him, as some good photographs were desired. He was a beautiful creature, almost snow-white, with magnificent branching antlers. When the photographs were taken, all four of the men set to work, skinning and cutting him up.



The scene is vivid in memory: the towering mountains on both sides of James Ross Bay, with the snow-covered foreshore stretching down to the white surface of the bay; in the south the low-lying sun, a great glare of vivid yellow just showing through the gap of the divide, the air full of slowly dropping frost crystals; and the four fur-clad figures grouped around the deer, with the dogs and the sledges at a little distance—the only signs of life in that great white wilderness.

When the deer was skinned and dressed, the pelt was carefully rolled and put on one of the sledges, the meat was made into a pile for Wesharkoopsi to take back to the ship when he returned from Sail Harbor with empty sledge, and we pushed along the western shore of the bay; then, taking to the land again, still westward across this second peninsula and low divide, till we came to the little bight, called Sail Harbor by the English, on the western side of Parry Peninsula.

Here, out at the mouth of the harbor, under the lee of the protecting northern point, we made our second camp.

Wesharkoopsi deposited his load of supplies, and I wrote a note for Bartlett, who was west of us on his way to Cape Columbia. That night we had deer steak for supper—a feast for a king.

After a few hours' sleep we started, straight as the crow flies, across the eastern end of the great glacial fringe, heading for the mouth of Clements Markham Inlet. Reaching the mouth of the inlet, we kept on down its eastern shore, finding very good going; for the tides rising in the crack next the shore had saturated the overlying snow, then freezing had formed a narrow but smooth surface for the sledges.

A part of this shore was musk-ox country, and we scanned it carefully, but saw none of the animals. Some miles down the bay we came upon the tracks of a couple of deer. A little farther on we were electrified by a tense whisper from the ever sharp-sighted Egingwah:

"Nanooksoah!"

He was pointing excitedly toward the center of the fiord, and following the direction of his finger we saw a cream-colored spot leisurely moving toward the mouth of the fiord—a polar bear!

If there is anything that starts the blood lust in an Eskimo's heart more wildly than the sight of a polar bear, I have yet to discover it. Hardened as I am to arctic hunting, I was thrilled myself.



While I stood in front of the dogs with a whip in each hand, to keep them from dashing away—for the Eskimo dog knows the meaning of "nanooksoah" as well as his master—the three men were throwing things off the sledges as if they were crazy.

When the sledges were empty, Ooblooyah's team shot by me, with Ooblooyah at the up-standers. Egingwah came next, and I threw myself on his sledge as it flew past. Behind us came Koolatoonah with the third team. The man who coined the phrase "greased lightning" must have ridden on an empty sledge behind a team of Eskimo dogs on the scent of a polar bear.

The bear had heard us, and was making for the opposite shore of the fiord with prodigious bounds. I jumped to the up-standers of the flying sledge, leaving Egingwah to throw himself on it and get his breath, and away we went, wild with excitement, across the snow-covered surface of the fiord.

When we got to the middle the snow was deeper, and the dogs could not go so fast, though they strained ahead with all their might. Suddenly they scented the trail—and then neither deep snow nor anything else could have held them. Ooblooyah, with a crazy team and only himself at the up-standers, distanced the rest of us, arriving at the farther shore almost as soon as the leaping bear. He loosed his dogs immediately, and we could see the bear in the distance, followed by minute dots that looked hardly larger than mosquitoes swarming up the steep slope. Before our slower teams got to the shore, Ooblooyah had reached the top of the slope, and he signaled us to go around, as the land was an island.

When we reached the other side, we found where the bear had descended to the ice again and kept on across the remaining width of the fiord to the western shore, followed by Ooblooyah and his dogs.

A most peculiar circumstance, commented on by Egingwah as we flew along, was that this bear, contrary to the custom of bears in Eskimo land, did not stop when the dogs reached him, but kept right on traveling. This to Egingwah was almost certain proof that the great devil himself—terrible Tornarsuk—was in that bear. At the thought of chasing the devil, my sledge companion grew even more excited.

On the other side of the island the snow was deeper and our progress slower, and when we reached the western shore of the fiord, up which, as on the island, we had seen from a distance the bear and Ooblooyah's dogs slowly climbing, both we and our dogs were pretty well winded. But we were encouraged by hearing the barking of the free dogs up somewhere among the cliffs. This meant that the bear had at last been brought to bay. When we reached the shore our dogs were loosed from the sledges. They swarmed up the hot trail, and we followed as best we could.

A little farther on we came to a deep canon, and as we could tell by the sounds, the dogs and the bear were at the bottom. But where we stood the walls were too precipitous for even an Eskimo to descend, and we could not see our quarry. He was evidently under some projecting ledge on our side.