While they were engaged in these defences against the enemy, they contrived to open up a friendly intercourse with the Eskimos, visiting them in their snow-huts at the settlements of Etah and Anatoak, distant about thirty and seventy miles from the brig; and, in return for presents of needles, pins, and knives, they undertook to show the white strangers where game was to be procured, as well as to furnish walrus and fresh seal meat. The assistance rendered by the Eskimos was of the greatest value, and we may infer that, without it, Dr. Kane and his followers must have succumbed to the hardships of that dreadful winter.
On the 12th of December, the party which had abandoned the ship suddenly reappeared, finding it impossible to penetrate to the south. They had suffered severely; were covered with rime and snow, and fainting with hunger. It was necessary to use much caution in conveying them below; for after an exposure of such fearful intensity and duration as they had undergone, the warmth of the cabin would have prostrated them completely. They had journeyed three hundred and fifty miles; and their last run from the bay near Etah, some seventy miles in a right line, was through the hummocks with the thermometer at -50°. “One by one,” says Kane, “they all came in and were housed. Poor fellows! as they threw open their Eskimo garments by the stove, how they relished the scanty luxuries which we had to offer. The coffee, and the meat-biscuit soup, and the molasses, and the wheat-bread, even the salt pork, which our scurvy forbade the rest of us to touch—how they relished it all! For more than two months they had lived on frozen seal and walrus meat.”
We cannot dwell on the various little incidents which marked that sad and terrible winter, but an extract or two from Dr. Kane’s journal will show the reader how much the imprisoned explorers endured, and in what spirit they bore their trials:—
“December 1, Friday.—I am writing at midnight. I have the watch from eight to two. It is day in the moonlight on deck, the thermometer getting up again to 36° below zero. As I come down to the cabin—for so we still call this little moss-lined igloë of ours—every one is asleep, snoring, gritting his teeth, or talking in his dreams. This is pathognomonic; it tells of Arctic winter, and its companion, scurvy. Tom Hickey, our good-humoured, blundering cabin-boy, decorated with the dignities of cook, is in that little dirty cot on the starboard side; the rest are bedded in rows. Mr. Brooks and myself chock aft. Our bunks are close against the frozen moss-wall, where we can take in the entire family at a glance. The apartment measures twenty feet by eighteen; its height six feet four inches at one place, but diversified elsewhere by beams crossing at different distances from the floor. The avenue by which it is approached is barely to be seen in the moss-wall forward; twenty feet of air-tight space make misty distance, for the puff of outside temperature that came in with me has filled our atmosphere with vesicles of vapour. The avenue—Ben-Djerback is our poetic name for it—closes on the inside with a door well-patched with flannel, from which, stooping upon all fours, you back down a descent of four feet in twelve through a tunnel three feet high, and two feet six inches broad. Arrived at the bottom, you straighten yourself, and a second door admits you into the dark and sorrowing hold, empty of stores, and stripped to its naked ceiling for firewood. From this we grope our way to the main hatch, and mount by a rude stairway of boxes into the open air.”
“February 21, Wednesday.—To-day the crests of the north-east headland were gilded by true sunshine, and all who were able ascended on deck to greet it. The sun rose above the horizon, though still screened from our eyes by intervening hills. Although the powerful refraction of Polar latitudes heralds his direct appearance by brilliant light, this is as far removed from the glorious tints of day as it is from the mere twilight. Nevertheless, for the past ten days we have been watching the growing warmth of our landscape, as it emerged from buried shadow, through all the stages of distinctness of an India-ink washing, step by step, into the sharp, bold definition of our desolate harbour scene. We have marked every dash of colour which the great Painter in his benevolence vouchsafed to us; and now the empurpled blue, clear, unmistakable, the spreading lake, the flickering yellow; peering at all these, poor wretches! everything seemed superlative lustre and unsurpassable glory. We had so grovelled in darkness, that we oversaw the light.
“Mr. Wilson has caught cold, and relapsed. Mr. Ohlsen, after a suspicious day, startles me by an attack of partial epilepsy; one of those strange, indescribable spells, fits, seizures, whatever name the jargon gives them, which indicate deep disturbance. I conceal his case as far as I can; but it adds to my heavy pack of troubles to anticipate the gloomy scenes of epileptic transport introduced into our one apartment.”
“February 28, Wednesday.—February closes: thank God for the lapse of its twenty-eight days! Should the thirty-one of the coming March not drag us further downward, we may hope for a successful close to this dreary drama. By the 10th of April we should have seal; and when they come, if we remain to welcome them, we can call ourselves saved.