Meantime the world got to work on its preparations. The Czar, foreseeing the possibility that Andrée and his two companions might alight somewhere in upper Siberia, sent a communication by various agencies to the wild inhabitants of his farthest northern domains, explaining what a balloon was, who and what Andrée and his men were, and admonishing the natives to treat any such wayfarers with kindness and respect, aiding them in every way and sending them south as speedily as possible, the special guests of the imperial government and the great white father. In other northern countries similar precautions were taken, with the result that the news of Andrée and his expedition was circulated far up beyond the circle, among the Indians and adventurers of Alaska, the trappers and hunters of Labrador and interior Canada, the Greenland Eskimos, and scores of other tribes and peoples.
But the fall of 1897 passed without any further sign from Andrée, and 1898 died into its winter, with the pole voyagers still unreported. By this time there was a feeling of general uneasiness, but silvered among the optimistic with some shine of hope. It was strange that no further messages of any kind had been received. Another significant thing was that one of the copper-and-cork buoys had been picked up in the arctic current—empty. Still, it might have been dropped by accident, and it was yet possible that Andrée had reached a safe, if distant, anchorage somewhere, and he might turn up the following summer.
Alas, the open season of 1899 brought nothing except one or two more of the empty buoys, and the definite feeling of despair. Expeditions began to organize for the purpose of starting north in search of the balloonists, and Walter Wellman began talking of a pole flight in a dirigible balloon, but such projects were slow in getting under way, and the summer of 1900 came along with nothing accomplished.
On the thirty-first of August of this latter year, however, another, if not very satisfactory, bit of news was picked up. It was, once more, one of the buoys from the balloon. This time, to the delight of the finders, there was a message inclosed, which read, in translation:
“Buoy No. 4. The first to be thrown out. July 11, 10 P. M., Greenwich mean time.
“All well up to now. We are pursuing our course at an altitude of about two hundred and fifty meters. Direction at first northerly, ten degrees east; later northerly, forty-five degrees east. Four carrier pigeons were dispatched at 5.40 P.M. They flew westward. We are now above the ice, which is very cut up in all directions. Weather splendid. In excellent spirits.
“Andrée, Strindberg, Frankel.”
“Above the clouds, 7.45 Greenwich mean time.”
It will be noted at once that the body of this communication was written the night after the departure from Danes Island, and the postscript probably at seven forty-five o’clock the next morning, so that it must have been put overboard nearly thirty-nine hours before the single returning pigeon was released. No light of hope in such a communication.
The North was by this time resonant with rumors and fables. Almost every traveler who came down from the boreal regions brought some fancy or report, sometimes supporting the product of his or another’s imagination with scraps of what purported to be evidence. A prospector came down from the upper Alaskan gold claims with a bit of tarred and oiled cloth which had been given him by the chief of some remote Indian tribe. Was it not a part of the covering of the Andrée balloon? For a time there was a thrill of credulity. Then the thing turned out to be hide, instead of varnished silk, and so the tale came to an evil end.