Читать книгу Beyond Adventure - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 20

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For six dreary weeks, Peary lay in semi-darkness on his back in the dilapidated shelter at Fort Conger, suffering excruciating pain from his frozen feet. It seemed that all his hopes for attaining the Pole, or even being able to live, were ended, but his indomitable spirit would not let him give up. In his lowest moment he wrote on the wall his motto, "I shall find a way or make one."

When he could stand for a few minutes, he determined to return to the Windward, where his toes could be amputated, and the party set out in moonlight for the 250-mile journey along the broken ice foot. He wrote: "I remember few more grim and desolate scenes than the environs of Fort Conger as I took them in while being lashed to my sledge, a helpless cripple, on the bitterly cold February morning when I left the fort to return to the Windward. The dead-white slopes of the hills lifting to the lifeless blue-black sky, the dead white expanse of harbor and bay reaching away to the ribbon of pale, steely light past the black blot of Cape Leiber . . . are deeply graven on my memory. The un-relieved blackness of the preceding six weeks, during which I lay there on my back, accompany the scene as a nightmare."

On March 13th all but the little toes of both Peary's feet were amputated. Even before they had healed, he set out on a remarkable series of journeys to explore the land west of Kane Basin, which was then completely unknown. The season was so far advanced toward summer that the ice, in places, was covered with pools through which the men had to wade, sometimes waist deep. It caused excruciating pain to Peary's maimed feet.

In the meantime, back in New York, a group of men under the leadership of Peary's devoted friend Morris K. Jesup had formally organized the Peary Arctic Club on January 29, 1899, and arranged to send a ship north each summer during his stay in the Arctic. The Diana arrived August 12th, at Etah, Greenland, whence the Windward had gone when released from the ice. Herbert Bridgeman, one of Peary's strongest backers, was on board and urged Peary to return because of his mutilated feet. He replied, "When my furlough has expired or I have reached the Pole, I shall be ready to go."