True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World

by A. W. Greely

Even in good weather the making of camp is the worst feature of arctic travel. Everything is frozen solid, from the bread to the bacon, from the tent to the sleeping-bags, which become as stiff as a board. Now conditions were worse than usual owing to the increasing violence of the blizzard. With snow-blinded eyes and a high, annoying wind the putting up of the tent was most difficult, but it was finally done. This gave a wind-protected place where the cook could light his lamp, melt his snow for tea, and thaw out the frozen meat.

Meanwhile the two other men unpacked the sledge and removed the articles into the tent. It was found that the driving wind had sifted fine snow into the provision bags, the sleeping-gear, and everything that was at all exposed. It was a necessary but most tedious labor to carefully brush every particle of snow from each article before moving it into the tent. They knew that a neglect so to do would be felt the next morning through coatings of ice over their gear. While the cook was busy the other sledgemen fed and picketed the dogs. If left loose these domesticated wolves might possibly return to their fellows at the ship, where good food and fighting company were to be had. If they remained at the camp a loose dog would swallow down everything in the shape of skin, hide, or food. More than once an arctic "tenderfoot" has wakened to find his means of travel vanished—sledge-thongs and dog harness entirely gone down the capacious throats of his ravenous team. Egerton, alive to the situation, carefully stored harnesses and camp gear in the tent with the provision bags.

So bad was the weather that it took six hours of steady labor to make camp, change foot-gear, cook, eat, and enter their sleeping-bags.

With the night passed on the blizzard, and morning came—clear, calm, and bitter cold. Even in the tent the temperature was forty-two degrees below freezing. Frost-bitten hands, ravenous dogs, slowly melting snow, and the watched pot that never boils made slow the striking of camp. It was five and a half hours after leaving their sleeping-bags before they were getting a spark of warmth into their benumbed limbs by steady travel over the arctic trail. Though it was bitter cold the dogs kept taut their traces and progress was rapid for several hours. From time to time Petersen would sigh, and to Egerton's question, "What is the matter?" answer that it was only a pain that would pass. But Egerton felt anxious, as the Dane fell back now and then, and when he said that the cramps in his stomach were terrible, halt was made in a sheltered spot where the cooking-lamp could be lighted. In a half-hour a bowl of boiling-hot tea was served, the finest known restorative of vigor and warmth in cases of arctic exposure—far surpassing rum, brandy, or any alcoholic stimulant. The Dane ate neither the offered bread nor the bacon, and indeed of the latter Egerton said that it was frozen so solidly that even a well man could not put tooth through the lean parts.

Soon they came to very bad travelling, across steeply inclined snow slopes along the bordering cliffs of the ice-bound sea that they were forced to follow. In one place the trail led to a snow-drift thirty feet across, whose steep seaward face ended on a rocky ledge with a sheer outward fall of about thirty feet. It was clearly impossible to move the sledge across, and, Alpine-glacier fashion, a road was slowly hewn out with pick and axe. In other bad places the loaded sledge plunged headlong from the top of high hummocks into masses of rubble-ice in the intervening valleys. In such work animals are quite useless, for the Eskimo dog pulls hard and steady only under conditions where the sledge moves constantly forward. When once stalled the dog team sits on its haunches, welcoming a rest, and watches events composedly. In such cases the skilled driver untangles the traces, straightens out the team, calls out shrilly, cracks his whip loudly, and, as the dogs spring forward, gives a timely and skilful twist to the upstanders which helps the sledge to a new start. If the sledge does not then move it must be unloaded and the dogs again started, or it must be hauled by man-power to an easier part of the trail.

This exhausting labor fell on the young officers, as Petersen was so sick as to be unable to do his part. Standing around, the Dane began to lose that warmth of vigorous circulation that alone keeps a man alive in arctic cold. When finally the dog driver was seized with fits of spasmodic shivering and his face showed frequent frostings, with bits of seriously frozen flesh, Egerton became greatly alarmed. As they were then making their way through very bad ice, camping at once was impossible. From time to time, however, the officers, quitting the sledge, took the sufferer in hand, and by five or ten minutes of work would get him so thawed out that he could safely go on.

When a good camping-place was reached, though they had travelled only six miles, Egerton at once stopped, hoping that a good night's rest with warm drink and food would bring the Dane around.

The moment that the tent was up Egerton sent Petersen in with directions to change his clothing, get into the sleeping-bag, and make himself comfortable until dinner was ready. Meanwhile the officers unloaded the sledge, picketed the dogs, and cared for the camp gear.

On crawling into the tent Egerton found Petersen groaning, and on examination was shocked to find that he had crawled into the sleeping-bag without changing his clothing. Especially bad was his failure to replace his damp foot-gear by dry socks—a practice of recognized necessity in arctic travel to prevent the feet from freezing at night.