ON the 9th September, a party of four officers and four men, with three sledges, each drawn by eight dogs, left the ship for the westward to explore a route for subsequent crews, push forward a small depôt, and search the country for game. On the first day’s march, our halt for lunch was ludicrously uncomfortable. A cold wind blew. All our water-bottles were hermetically sealed by the freezing in of the rough wooden plugs we had hastily fitted to them. There was nothing to drink but icy cold raw rum. One or two attempted it, and only succeeded in half-choking themselves, very much to the amusement of the rest.
When camping-time came, we found ourselves rounding into a narrow channel between two fine bays, whose “dumb-bell” shape at once suggested the title by which they were ever afterwards known. A strong tide in the narrow passage, representing the handle of a dumb-bell, had kept a small pool of water from freezing, leaving a hole about as large as a Trafalgar Square fountain. In this a seal was swimming about, turning his black shining head and large eyes from side to side in amazement at our appearance. All was fish that came to our net. He would at least make a good beginning for our game-bag. He was struck in the head, and consequently floated; but it was by no means a simple matter to get him out of the pool, for the ice was thin at the edges, and an unpleasantly swift-looking current was running below. Fred, our Eskimo, was equal to the occasion. Spread out flat on the ice, with a piece of cord in one hand and a batten in the other, he managed to reach the edge and secure our prize. He was rewarded for his exertions by a good share of liver for supper; indeed, no one at that time felt inclined to dispute the delicacy with him, for, by some mistake, our unpractised cook had fried a little of the blubber with it. The meat is very dark and rich, and is far from unpalatable; but if the least bit of blubber is cooked with it, it is exactly like mutton fried in cod-liver oil. This solitary “floe-rat” was the only seal shot in the Northern Sea. We had little sleep that night, the novelty of the circumstances, the low temperature of our beds, and the wind, which threatened to blow the tent over, kept most of us awake. The dogs too were behaving in an extraordinary manner. Something evidently made them uneasy; there was none of the usual snarling and growling going on. All at once there was a tremendous hubbub. We rushed out, and discovered that the brutes had scented out the spot where we had buried and cached our seal. They had succeeded in digging it up, and not a fragment was left. Fortunately, the skin and blubber were buried separately, and were still safe. Next morning our party subdivided. Three travelled forward with the sledges to deposit the depôt as far as possible northward and westward. Petersen, the Dane, experienced in snow-house building in Hayes’ Expedition, set about constructing huts in a position that might be useful to later parties; and two of us started inland to search for game. The broad flats at the head of the bay looked promising, but were lifeless. Then we plodded on over the hills; not even a lemming track was to be seen. A few ridges were blown clear of snow, and sometimes the lee side of a red granite boulder would appear above the universal white. We worked towards a long westward-running depression in the land, hoping that there at least a little vegetation might exist; but on reaching the last ridge overlooking it, we discovered that it was filled with a sheet of green ice, stretching several miles to the westward. The lake—for lake it was—evidently discharged through gullies in the low hills at its farther end, and beyond these, twenty miles off, a range of pyramidal snowy peaks stood out clear and sharp against the calm green sky. When we stopped to secure a sketch, the lifeless stillness of our lonely lake was most impressive. No human eye had ever looked upon it before. And now there was neither bird or beast, or even tiny flower or blade of grass, to dispute possession.
About a mile from us on the left shore, a small rocky island caught a gleam of sunshine coming down through a ravine, and flickered strangely by refraction. The ice afforded easy walking towards it, but on reaching it we found that a rapidly-freshening wind was coming off the land, carrying clouds of snow with it, so that a retreat towards camp was plainly advisable. Before leaving, however, we set about piling up a few stones to record our visit. Under the edges of almost the first stone raised we were surprised to find the scattered vertebræ of a small fish. Some feathered summer visitor had evidently carried them there from the lake. We bottled the little bones in a small glass tube, and during two long days’ most careful search for game, no other vestige or track of living creature was discovered.
Our return to camp was very near being enlivened by an incident. The wind had freshened so much, and carried such a quantity of large crystalled snow with it, that it was impossible to travel except in one direction—namely, straight before it. Fortunately, it blew directly towards our camp. So we started off across the lake, knee-deep or more in a flying drift which rustled like dead leaves in autumn. The ice was not thick even close to shore, for we had fired a bullet through it to try whether the water beneath was salt or not, and when we got about half-way across, it began to crack in an alarming manner, and to yield unmistakably to every footstep. We could neither stop nor turn back; the only thing to be done was to separate and shuffle on as fast as possible. The water soaked through cracks in our footsteps; but we were soon wading in the deeper snow of the land, and reached camp without further excitement, and thoroughly resolved to be more careful of untried ice in the future. Starting early next morning, we made a more extended, but equally fruitless, search for game. There was neither bird nor beast in the country, and but for a musk ox skull picked up near the shore we might have supposed that no living creature had ever visited the land. Punctual to their time, our sledges reappeared on the morning of the fourth day, having succeeded in depositing their load of pemmican on the further shore of Black Cliff Bay. The ice they had travelled over was so insecure in some places between the shore and the heavy floes that the sledges had broken through more than once, and the travellers had been wet through ever since they left us. There was evidently no game to be got, so we returned to the ship, and on the way back met a strong party hauling forward two boats in order to deposit them at an advanced point in readiness for the spring sledging.
Two days afterwards, on 14th September, a wind came from the south and gradually increased into a violent gale. The ice between the ship and the land broke up, and the pack again separated from the shore. The whole air was filled with drifting snow blown from the land, and flying past in a dense cloud higher than the topmasts. It was only in the lulls that it was possible to distinguish the shore not one hundred yards off. The boat party had not yet returned, and we were not a little anxious about it; but late in the evening a figure was seen signalling from the beach. A double-manned boat pushed off from the ship, and, after a tough struggle, pulling in the teeth of the gale, reached the shore. Then we learnt that the returning crews had narrowly escaped being carried off by the breaking-up ice, and were about two miles from the ship dragging an exhausted man on the sledge, and thoroughly fatigued by their long forced march against the gale. Assistance was promptly despatched to them; all were soon brought safely on board. The severity of the weather was not the only reason why we were anxious that the sledge parties should be on board. A crisis in our fortunes was approaching, for the pack was still moving from the shore, and in a few hours it might be possible to advance the ship a little further westward, and perhaps a mile or two further northward. As the drifting snow became less thick, and the weather cleared, we saw that the opportunity had come. Once more we heard the joyful order to get up steam. The rudder was rapidly got into its place, but no efforts could get the screw into its bearings. The fresh surface water entangled about it froze when it was lowered into the colder salt sea beneath, and while all hands were still working at it, the pack closed in as tightly as before. We were all greatly disappointed at the time, but there is now not the slightest doubt that if H.M.S. “Alert” had advanced two miles to the westward she would never have carried her crew southward again. It was from henceforth evident that the ship would have to winter in the spot where chance had placed her, and every effort was at once directed to the sledging.
There was no time to be lost; winter was fast approaching; day and night had again returned. The sun’s dip below the icy horizon to the north was longer and longer every night, and during the day he skirted so low above the southern land that even at noon it was already dusk in our wardroom and between decks. Light fleecy snow fell frequently, and day by day the temperature declined nearer and nearer to zero; but nevertheless, no change took place in the outside pack—it still roared and grated in constant motion. The idea of travelling over it could not be entertained for a moment, and it was necessary to wait till the snow of the shores and the new ice of the inlets and narrow spaces between the pack and shore were hard enough to bear the loaded sledges. On 22nd September the dog-sledges again started for the north to ascertain whether Cape Joseph Henry could be crossed or rounded. And two days later, three eight-man sledges, under Commander Markham, with Lieutenants Parr and May, left the ship with a heavy load of provisions and stores, to be deposited at the most northern suitable fixed point in readiness for the spring campaign. Lieutenant Aldrich and his dog-sledges returned in fourteen days. He had reached the Cape, crossing on his way the ring of latitude from which Sir Edward Parry, the most poleward of our predecessors, had turned back 48 years before. From a cliff two thousand feet above the polar floes, he had seen nothing but ice to the northward; but far westward, seventy miles or more distant, snowy headlands, one beyond the other, extended slightly northward of the land on which he stood.
This was the worst news we had anticipated. It left the future undecided. If his telescope had detected the loom of land to the north, our duty would have been plain, and success at least probable. If, on the other hand, the coast beyond the Cape ran definitely south, the clear negative would have allowed us to turn every energy into a new channel. But now this new-found land must be tracked westward for many a weary mile, and those distant headlands must be rounded one by one before we could be certain that the coast-line did not finally turn polewards, and afford a route which might be followed, if not next year, at least in the following season.
Wind, insecure ice, and constant falls of snow told heavily against Captain Markham’s three sledges, but they successfully deposited their depôt near the Cape, and in such a position that anyone travelling along the beach could not fail to find it even in fog or storm. On their way back, part of the ice they had recently sledged over was found destroyed by the motion of the pack, and it was necessary to haul the sledges over the summits of the Black Cliffs. There, there was no shelter from the wind; the temperature fell to 47 degrees below freezing. That bleak ridge was afterwards known as “Frost-bite Range.” When, after three weeks’ absence, they reached the ship, the whole party was in a wretched condition. Their sleeping-bags, robes, and tent were stiffened into boards of ice, more than twice as heavy as when they set out; and the twenty-four men and officers had no less than forty-three frost-bites amongst them, most of them comparatively slight, but three so severe as to require amputation. While these sledge parties were laying out the autumn depôts and exploring northward, others were no less active in another direction.