Читать книгу Beyond Adventure - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 25

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Before turning the ship southward for the homeward journey, he decided to explore 300 miles of unknown Grant Land coast to connect with Sverdrup's surveys to the west. Starting late in the season, with legs swollen from the effects of starvation and far below his normal strength, he accomplished his object but only with terrific suffering. The ice was covered with thaw-water which formed lakes and rivers. At times the men waded up to their armpits in the icy water while the dogs swam, the sledges kept afloat by inflated sealskins. Food they got by killing dogs, but the worst hardship was the constantly wet clothes. Peary's footgear began to disintegrate. He fitted his kamiks with tin soles from food cans. The stumps of his toes were in bad shape, aching and throbbing. By the time he reached the ship, Peary was almost finished. Bartlett says: "His foot gear was so saturated with water that it had long ceased to be of any use. He had on his feet pemmican tins and the inside ones were even reduced to the size of a Canadian nickel. Can you imagine a man with all his toes gone doing this? But he did."

There was bad news at the ship. The Roosevelt had broken out of her berth on July 4th, and had been smashed against the ice foot, breaking off her stern post and rudder as well as two blades from her propeller. "It was marvellous," Bartlett says, "the way Peary took the accident to the Roosevelt. He didn't turn a hair. It was this attitude in the face of privations and dangers that made us love and respect him." The next day Peary said to Bartlett, "We've got to get her back, Captain. We are going to come again next year." "I should have thought," Bartlett says, "he wouldn't have wanted ever to see that place again. But it was like him when he was lowest to be still planning for the future. Already he was thinking of his next attack on the Pole."

Getting the ship back to New York was an amazing performance of courage and seamanship. I have not space to give the details, but it is summed up by Rear Admiral Sigsbee, the hero of the Maine: "Peary's bringing of his ship, the Roosevelt, home in the late fall of 1906, fighting her through the heavy Arctic ice . . . encountering storm after storm, with rudder and stern post torn away, propeller crippled, and with pumps going constantly, has been characterized as one of the ablest, most resourceful and courageous affairs of its kind in the annals of Arctic exploration."

When Peary returned from this, his seventh expedition, he was more than fifty years of age. Twenty of those years had been spent in the Arctic or in preparations. At the half-century mark, a man has long passed his prime, and Peary knew all too well what a toll on his strength and endurance the last expedition had taken. Still, he had gained valuable knowledge of the sea ice. This he believed would outweigh his physical deterioration. He was more than ever convinced that his plan of supporting parties would work successfully, given normal weather conditions. On September 15, 1906, the President of the United States had written Morris K. Jesup:

I think Peary is doing a good service to the whole nation, and I shall stand by him and see that he is not hurt by his absence.

With kind regards, believe me,

Faithfully yours,

Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt's faith, and that of Mr. Jesup, gave Peary renewed determination to try for the Pole again. He knew it would be for the last time. Through the efforts of Mr. Jesup, the Peary Arctic Club, and his own lectures, sufficient money was raised to repair the Roosevelt, install a new engine, and equip the expedition. Peary hoped to get away by July 1, 1907, but work on the ship was not completed. Just at this time Mr. Jesup died. It was a crushing blow, for not only was he a tower of strength financially, but a devoted friend and a firm believer in Peary's ultimate success. Peary wrote: "Yet when I gathered myself together . . . I realized that the project was too big to die . . . This feeling carried me past many a dead center of fatigue and utter ignorance as to where the remaining money for the expedition was to come from."