About half past three the next afternoon McKinlay and Kataktovick returned from Shipwreck Camp, with thirty gallons of oil, two tins of alcohol, twelve sealskins, a few fawnskins and 6,000 tea tablets. They said that both ways they had found our trail unaltered; apparently the only movement of the ice had been at the sixth camp, where we were.
CHAPTER XVII
THROUGH THE PRESSURE RIDGE
At dawn the next morning, February 28, leaving at this sixth camp some cases of biscuits, with alcohol and coal oil, we started again landward, going over the trail made by the advance party. At one P. M. we came up with them. They were halted by a huge conglomeration of raftered ice tossed up by the storm which had delayed us at Shipwreck Camp. The rafters were from twenty-five to a hundred feet high and ran directly across our path, parallel to the land, and extending in either direction as far as the eye could reach. Viewed from an ice pinnacle high enough to give a clear sight across in the direction of the land the mass of broken ice looked to be at least three miles wide. To get around it was clearly out of the question; an attempt to do so might lead us no one knew whither. Clearly it was a case for hard labor, to build a road across it practicable for sledging; I had seen similar apparently impassible ice on our polar trips but never anything worse. At three o’clock, therefore, I told all hands to set to work building igloos and said that to-morrow we would begin with pickaxes to make a road across the rafters. While they were building the igloos I made a reconnaissance ahead for some distance, returning about dark. We had no thermometer, so that we could not tell the exact temperature, but from the condition of the coal oil, which was very thick and viscid, it must have been between forty-five and fifty-five below zero. It was excellent weather for sledging, fine, clear and calm, if the going had only been good.
March 1, at daylight, I sent back Chafe and Mamen, with an empty sledge and ten dogs, to bring up all the oil, biscuit and alcohol that remained at the sixth camp. They returned with a well-laden sledge, late in the afternoon. I discovered during the day that Malloch and Maurer had frozen their feet, a thing which caused them a good deal of suffering and me a good deal of anxiety. Men with frozen feet are seriously handicapped and make the progress of all difficult until they recover. Fortunately in the present instance the men made known their predicament soon enough to be relieved before dangerously frost-bitten.
At daylight the next morning I sent McKinlay, Hadley and Chafe back over the trail again, to go clear through to Shipwreck Camp with an empty sledge and fourteen dogs. They were to bring back the Peary sledge that we had left there and full loads of pemmican, biscuit and tea.
Our work at road-making which we had begun the day before, was progressing steadily. It was cold, seemingly endless labor, for almost every foot of the trail had to be hewn out of the ice to make a path three or four feet wide, smoothed off enough to permit our sledges to be drawn over it without being smashed. By three o’clock in the afternoon we had got over the first big chain of ridges and on to a small level floe. We were still far from the other side of the great rafters but by working diligently could feel that we had accomplished something at last. We worked on a little too long before starting back to camp and darkness was almost upon us. So I asked the cook to go back to camp while the rest of us were finishing our day’s work and tell Keruk and Malloch and Maurer that we were coming and wanted to have hot tea ready for us as soon as we got back. Malloch and Maurer had been compelled by their frozen feet to rest for the time being, though they insisted that they be allowed to do their share of the work and I almost had to use force to keep them quiet.
The rest of us finally knocked off work and made our way back over the rather tortuous road but when we reached camp no preparations had been made to give us our much-needed tea and on inquiry I found that Templeman had not turned up. It was now almost dark and I was a good deal concerned about his absence, for though a splendid cook and as willing a worker as a man could be, he was not strong enough to withstand for very long the hardships that would surround him if he were lost on the ice. I set out to look for him and we fired off guns and shouted and altogether made all the noise we could to attract his attention. Finally to my great relief I saw him floundering through the snow on a big floe about a quarter of a mile from the camp. My revulsion of feeling was like that of an anxious parent who thinks his youngster has gone off and got lost and then discovers him making his way homeward. In the parable the prodigal son receives the fatted calf; in practice I fear that most errant youngsters receive a sound spanking and perhaps do not suspect until years later that this disguises a tremendous feeling of joy, which expresses itself perversely in punishment for recklessness and warnings “never to do it again.” So when I espied poor Templeman my first impulse was to berate him soundly for wandering from the narrow, though none too straight, path back to camp but when I got near enough to see that he was wading through snow, into which he sank to the waist at every step, and had had the good sense to keep his pickaxe with him, though he was by this time barely able to carry it, my heart smote me and I relented. Templeman said he was sorry he had gone astray but that he had really wanted to do a little scouting by himself. That is the worst temptation in the Arctic; when you send a man out by himself he may go astray and when he realizes that he has lost his way, instead of attempting to retrace his steps, he continues on. I was delighted to see Templeman and to know that he was safely with us again.
At daylight the next morning the chief engineer and I began sledging supplies over the road already built from the camp to the level floe in the midst of the rafters. The rest of the party continued the road-building beyond the floe. We made three trips, with two sledges and eight dogs, and made a good beginning at the transportation of our supplies on the way towards land. We saw several bear tracks and some seal holes in the ice. I sent Kerdrillo and Kataktovick on through the rafters, to report on ice conditions; they found that the going got better as they got further across the rafters which, where we were working, were like a small mountain range. Building a road across them was like making the Overland Trail through the Rockies.
I have always regretted that I took no photographs here but somehow when the light was good enough and I had the time, my camera would be back in camp and when I had my camera with me we would be on the march and I had no time to play photographer. Taking pictures was no sinecure on this trip, anyway, because the cold seemed to affect the shutter and the unrolling of the films. If George Borup had been with us as he was with Peary on our North Pole trip, what a great collection of photographs he could have taken!