Читать книгу My Arctic journal: a year among ice-fields and Eskimos - Josephine Diebitsch Peary - Страница 5

Table of Contents

Melville Bay—On the Edge of the Dreaded Ice-pack—Fourth of July—Butting the Ice—Accident to the Leader of the Expedition—Gloom on the “Kite”—Blasting the “Kite” out of a Nip—A Real Bear and a Bear Hunt—A Chase on the Ice—A Phantom Ship—Free of the Pack and in the North Water at Last—The Greenland Shore to Barden Bay—First Sight of the Arctic Highlanders.

Thursday, July 2. We are opposite the “Devil’s Thumb,” latitude 74° 20′, and now, at 8 P. M., are slowly making our way through the ice which marks the entrance into the Melville Bay “pack.”

Friday, July 3. At midnight the engine was stopped, the ice being too thick for the “Kite” to make any headway. At 6.30 A. M. we started again, and rammed our way along for an hour, but were again forced to stop. At eleven o’clock we tried it once more, but after a couple of hours came to a standstill. We remained in this condition until after five o’clock, when the engine was again started. For two hours we made fairly good progress, and we thought that we should soon be in open water, but a small neck of very heavy ice stopped us. While we were on deck, the mate in the “crow’s-nest,” which was hoisted to-day, sang out, “A bear! A bear!” Off in the distance we could see an object floating, or rather swimming, in the water, and in a minute the boys were climbing helter-skelter over the sides of the “Kite,” all with guns, although some soon discovered that theirs were not loaded; but the bear turned out to be a seal, and not one of about thirty shots hit him. It is now nearly 11 P. M. The sun is shining beautifully, and it is perfectly calm. I have worn only a gray spring jacket, which I have found sufficient for the balmy temperature. At midnight the cannon was fired, the flags were run up and dipped, and the boys fired their rifles and gave three cheers for the Fourth of July. The thermometer marked 31°.

“A Bear! A Bear!”

Saturday, July 4. The ice remains stubborn, and we are fast bound. All around the eye sees nothing but the immovable pack, here smooth as a table, at other places tossed up into long hummock-ridges which define the individual ice-cakes. Occasional lanes of water appear and disappear, and their presence gives us the one hope of an early disentanglement. The event of the day has been a dinner to Captain Pike, in which most of the members of our party participated. After dinner hunting-parties scoured the ice after seals, with the result of bringing in two specimens, one weighing twenty-six pounds, and the other thirty-three pounds.

Sunday, July 5. All night we steamed along slowly, but at 8 A. M. we were forced once more to stop. The day has been very disagreeable, foggy, rainy, and even snowy. We have done nothing but eat and sleep. A lazily hovering ivory-gull, which ventured within near gunshot, has been added to our collections.

Tuesday, July 7. The weather yesterday was dreary and disagreeable, but to-day it seems warmer. The snow has ceased falling, although the sky is still overcast, and the fog prevents us from seeing the horizon. At noon the sun came through the clouds for a few moments, and the fog lifted sufficiently for the captain to make an observation and find that our position was latitude 74° 51′. During the afternoon the wind died down, and an attempt was made to get through the ice; but after boring and ramming the immovable pack for nearly an hour, and gaining only a ship’s length, we concluded that we were burning coal for nothing. Mr. Peary, with Gibson, Astrup, Cook, and Matt, has been busy all the afternoon sawing, marking, and fitting the lumber for our Whale Sound cottage. The curing of a large number of drake-skins, intended to be made up into undershirts for winter wear, was a part of the day’s work.

Thursday, July 9. Yesterday and to-day the fog lifted sufficiently at times to permit us to see the land, about forty miles distant. A good observation places us in latitude 74° 51′, and longitude about 60° W. Mr. Peary fixed the points with his pocket sextant and the ship’s compass, and then made a sketch of the headlands. The ice looks rotten, but yet it holds together too firmly to permit us to force a passage. We measured some of the floes, and found the thickest to be two and a half feet. It has seemed very raw to-day, owing largely to a slight northwest wind; and for the first time the average temperature has been below the freezing-point, being 31½° F.

Sailing Through the Pack.

Friday, July 10. This morning the rigging was covered with hoar-frost, making the “Kite” look like a “phantom ship.” The fog hung heavily about us, shutting out the land completely. In the forenoon a sounding was made, but no bottom was found at 343 fathoms. While we were at dinner, without any warning the “Kite” began to move, steam was immediately gotten up, and for an hour and a half we cut our way through the ice, which had become very rotten, large floes splitting into several pieces as soon as they were struck by the “Kite.” We made about three knots, when we were again obliged to halt on account of a lowering fog. Our little move was made just in time to keep up the courage of some of the West Greenland party, who were beginning to believe that we should be nipped and kept here for the winter.

Although we realized that we were still ice-bound in the great and much-dreaded Melville Bay pack, we could not but enjoy at times the peculiar features of our forced imprisonment. Efforts to escape, with full promise of success, followed by a condition of impotency and absolute relaxation, would alternately elevate and depress our spirits to the extent of casting joy and gloom into the little household. The novelty of the situation, however, helped greatly to keep up a good feeling, and all despondency was immediately dispelled by the sound of the order to “fire up,” and the dull rumbling of the bell-metal propeller. We never tired of watching our little craft cut her way through the unbroken pans of ice. The great masses of ice were thrust aside very readily; sometimes a piece was split from a large floe and wedged under a still larger one, pushing this out of the way, the commotion causing the ice in the immediate vicinity fairly to boil. Then we would run against an unusually hard, solid floe that would not move when the “Kite” struck it, but let her ride right up on it and then allow her gradually to slide off and along the edge until she struck a weak place, when the floe would be shivered just as a sheet of glass is shivered when struck a sharp, hard blow. The pieces were hurled against and on top of other pieces, crashing and splashing about until it seemed as though the ice must be as thick again as it was before the break-up; but the good old “Kite” pushed them aside, leaving them in the distance groaning and creaking at having been disturbed. The day has been pleasant, in spite of an average temperature of 27½°.

Tuesday, July 14. How different everything looks to us since I last wrote in this journal! Saturday the weather was, as usual, cold and foggy; and when, at 5.30 P. M., we found ourselves suddenly moving, every one was elated, hoping we would be able to get into the clear water ahead, which the mate said could be seen from the crow’s-nest. Mr. Peary was particularly pleased, as he said we should then reach Whale Sound by July 15, the limit he had set for getting there. After supper he and I bundled up and went on deck, and watched the “Kite” cut through the rotten ice like butter. We had been on the bridge for some time, when Mr. Peary left me to warm his feet in the cabin. Coming on deck again, he stepped for a moment behind the wheel-house, and immediately after, I saw the wheel torn from the grasp of the two helmsmen, whirling around so rapidly that the spokes could not be seen. One of the men was thrown completely over it, but on recovering himself he stepped quickly behind the house, and I instantly realized that something must have happened to my husband. How I got to him I do not know, but I reached him before any one else, and found him standing on one foot looking pale as death. “Don’t be frightened, dearest; I have hurt my leg,” was all he said. Mr. Gibson and Dr. Sharp helped, or rather carried, him down into the cabin and laid him on the table. He was ice-cold, and while I covered him with blankets, our physicians gave him whisky, cut off his boot, and cut open his trousers. They found that both bones of the right leg had been fractured between the knee and the ankle. The leg was put into a box and padded with cotton. The fracture being what the doctors pronounced a “good one,” it was not necessary to have the bones pulled into place. Poor Bert suffered agonies in spite of the fact that the doctors handled him as tenderly as they could. We found it impossible to get him into our state-room, so a bed was improvised across the upper end of the cabin, and there my poor sufferer lies. He is as good and patient as it is possible to be under the circumstances. The accident happened in this way. The “Kite” had been for some time pounding, or, as the whalers say, “butting,” a passage through the ice, slowly but steadily forging a way through the spongy sheets which had already for upward of a week imprisoned her. To gain strength for every assault it was necessary constantly to reverse, and it was during one of these evolutions, when going astern, that a detached cake of ice struck the rudder, crowding the iron tiller against the wheel-house where Mr. Peary was standing, and against his leg, which it held pinned long enough for him to hear it snap.

Wednesday, July 15. Mr. Peary passed a fairly comfortable night, and had a good sleep without morphine to-day, consequently he feels better. As for myself, I could not keep up any longer, and at 11 A. M., after Dr. Cook had dressed the leg and made an additional splint, I lay down, and neither moved nor heard a sound until after five o’clock. This was the first sleep I have had since Friday night. Dr. Cook, who has been more than attentive, has made a pair of crutches for the poor sufferer, but he will not be able to use them for a month.

We find to-day that our latitude is 75° 1′, and our longitude 60° 9′; consequently our headway has been very slow. It seems as if when the ice is loose the fog is too thick for us to travel in safety, and when the fog lifts the ice closes in around us. Once to-day the ice suddenly opened and a crack which visibly widened allowed us to make nearly four miles in one stretch. Throughout much of the night and day we steamed back and forth and hither and thither, trying to get through or around the ice, and to prevent the “Kite” from getting nipped between two floes. A little after supper the fog suddenly closed in upon us, and before we could complete the passage of a narrow and tortuous lead, through which we were seeking escape from the advancing floes in our rear, we were caught fast between two large pans. The ice was only about fourteen inches thick, and there was but little danger of the “Kite” being crushed; still, Captain Pike, with the memories of former disasters fresh in his mind, did not relish the situation, and blasted our way out with gunpowder at 8.15 P. M. This is our first “nip.”

Bruin at Rest.

An hour later the captain called down to me to come up at once, as a bear was advancing toward the ship. The boys had been watching and longing for a bear ever since we left New-York, and many false alarms had been given; but here was a real live polar coming straight for the “Kite.” A very, very pretty sight he was, with black snout, black eyes, and black toes. Against the white snow and ice, he seemed to be of a cream color. His head was thrown up as he loped along toward us, and when, within a short distance of the “Kite,” a gull flew over his head, he made a playful jump at it, all unconscious of the doom which awaited him. Eleven men with guns were stooping down on the quarter-deck waiting for the captain to give the word to fire. A bullet disabled one of the fore legs, while another struck the animal in the head, instantly dyeing it crimson; the bear stopped short, wheeled round, fell over on his head, and then got up. By this time it was simply raining bullets about the poor beast; still he staggered on toward the water. Gibson, who had jumped on the ice as soon as he fired, was now close to him, and, just as he started to swim away, put a ball in his neck, which stopped him short. A boat was lowered, and he was brought alongside the “Kite.” He measured seven feet one inch in length, and we estimated his weight at from eight to ten hundred pounds.

Friday, July 17. Last night was the worst night my poor husband has had. His leg pained him more than it had done so far, and he begged me to give him a sedative, which, with the doctor’s consent, I did; but even then his sleep was disturbed to such an extent that it amounted to delirium. He would plead with me to do something for his leg. After doing everything I could think of, I said, “Can’t you tell me where it hurts you most, and what you think might help you?” His answer was, “Oh, my dear, pack it in ice until some one can shoot it!” In this way he spent the night, and this morning he was thoroughly exhausted. Dr. Cook has succeeded in making his leg more comfortable, and now he sleeps. It seems very hard that I cannot take him away to some place where he can rest in peace.

Tuesday, July 21. Since last writing in my journal, four days ago, we have been steadily nearing Cape York, and we hope soon to clear the ice of Melville Bay, and pass into the open North Water beyond. Our hopes have, however, so often been disappointed that day by day, even when in full view of the land, we become less and less confident of ever being able to disengage ourselves from our confinement. Huge grounded bergs still hold the ice together, and until they show signs of moving there is little prospect of a general break-up.

On Saturday a bear with two cubs was seen on the ice ahead of us, and immediately every man was over the side of the vessel making for the animals. The mother, with a tender affection for her young, guided an immediate retreat, herself taking the rear, and alternately inciting the one cub and then the other to more rapid movement. Our boys were wholly unacquainted with the art of rapid traveling on the rough and hummocky ice, and before long the race was admitted to be a very unequal one; they were all quickly distanced. One of the men, in the excitement of the moment, joined in the chase without his gun, and, even without this implement, when he returned to the “Kite” he was so out of breath that he had to be hauled up the sides of the vessel like a dead seal. He lay sprawling and breathless on the deck for at least five minutes, much to the merriment of the crew and the more fortunate members of the party. A round weight of over two hundred pounds was responsible for his discomfiture. Monday morning about two o’clock the fog suddenly lifted, and we found ourselves almost upon the land. The visible shore extended from Cape York to Wolstenholme Island, and we could clearly distinguish Capes Dudley Diggs and Atholl. I held a looking-glass over the open skylight in such a way that Mr. Peary could see something of the outline of the coast. Poor fellow! he wanted to go on deck so badly, thinking that if he were strapped to a board he could be moved in safety, but the doctor persuaded him to give up the thought. As the doctors have all agreed that in six months his leg will be as good as it ever was, he refuses to consider the idea of returning on the “Kite”; as for myself, now that we have started, I want to keep on too. The air is almost black with flocks of the little auk, and a party on the ice to-day brought in sixteen birds in a very short time.

Wednesday, July 22. Drs. Hughes and Sharp brought in sixty-four birds as the result of an all-night catch. We are still in the ice, with no signs of our getting out, although the captain says we have drifted twenty miles to the northward since Monday morning. We are now abreast of Conical Rock. Second Mate Dunphy has just reported seeing from the crow’s-nest a steamer off Cape York, but it is not visible to the naked eye, and we are in doubt as to what it is.

Friday, July 24. The steamer did not materialize; either the mate was mistaken or the vessel drifted away from us. The ice parted early yesterday morning, much to everybody’s relief, and we have since been pushing steadily on our course. The long line of table-topped bergs off Cape York, some of which measured not less than two hundred to three hundred feet in height, and perhaps considerably over a mile in length, is visibly moving over to the American waters, and to this disrupting force we are doubtless largely indebted for our liberation. The scenery of this portion of the Greenland coast is surpassingly fine. The steep red-brown cliffs are frequently interrupted by small glaciers reaching down to the water’s edge. The entrance to Wolstenholme Sound, guarded as it was by huge bergs, was particularly beautiful. Saunders Island in the distance, and Dalrymple Rock immediately in the foreground, stood up like great black giants, contrasting with the snow-white bergs surrounding them and the red cliffs of the mainland on either side. Whenever anything particularly striking or beautiful appears, I am called on deck, and with my hand-glass placed at the open transom over Mr. Peary’s head, manage to give him a faint glimpse of our surroundings. At nine o’clock this evening we rounded Cape Parry, and about ten o’clock stopped at the little Eskimo village of Netchiolumy in Barden Bay, where we hoped to obtain a native house, sledge, kayak, and various native utensils and implements for the World’s Columbian Exposition. Our search-party found only three houses in the settlement, and the lonely inhabitants numbered six adults and five children; five dogs added life to the solitude. These people had quantities of sealskins and narwhal tusks, many of which were obtained in exchange for knives, saws, files, and tools in general. Wood of any kind, to be used in the construction of sledges, kayak frames, and spear- and harpoon-shafts, was especially in demand; they cared nothing for our woven clothing, nor for articles of simple show and finery. We stopped this morning at Herbert Island, where we had hoped to visit a native graveyard, but no graves were found.