Such results as were obtained by the northern party have been greatly lost sight of in the painful interest connected with the cause of the scurvy, a subject which it would be altogether improper to enter upon here. But the effort to penetrate across the polar pack has proved other facts besides the necessity for a change in sledge diet. The attempt was never a hopeful one, but if it had not been made, no one would have been satisfied that it was impossible. If the men had been able to march as far every day after the scurvy appeared as they did before it—in other words, if the scurvy had not broken out—they would have reached only twenty-seven miles further north. The Pole lay 435 miles from their most advanced depôt. Their total distance marched was 521 geographical miles, so that under impossibly favourable circumstances—if they had been able to travel in a perfectly straight line, pulling a single sledge, and with ice as smooth as a lake, they would have succeeded in reaching the Pole and half-way back again, a conclusion which would be neither satisfactory nor instructive. If a comparatively unbroken ice-cap exists, and if its surface affords better travelling than its broken margin, it is possible that some future expedition may yet find it lying nearer Cape Joseph Henry, and travel over it to 84° or 85°, but certainly not to the Pole. The broken condition of the floes is inexplicable; perhaps a small island or bank exists to the northward. Those who choose to think so have two facts to hang their faith on: a hare track was found thirty miles from the land, and the depth of the Polar Sea at the furthest camp was only seventy fathoms.
When the northern party arrived on board the ship, they found her very different to what they had left her. The thawing snow had been thrown off her upper deck, and the banking up round her sides had almost disappeared. A deep pool of not very clean water lay all round the ship, and in order to get on board it was necessary to cross a bridge some twenty feet long made of poles and planks. The tide rose and fell in this pool, showing that the ice in which the ship was imbedded was actually supported like a bridge between the shore and the floebergs; in fact, so fixed was the ship that, when the snow banking sank a little more, the tide might be seen rising and falling against the torn and ragged planking of her sides. Other pools of water lay on the floes, especially in the neighbourhood of floebergs. Cracks, too, were opening in every direction, and though there was as yet no motion in the pack, it seemed as if it only wanted a strong wind to set it grinding and roaring as it did in autumn. This state of affairs, together with the two following even more important considerations, made us very anxious about Lieutenant Aldrich and his crew. He had a good store of lime juice laid out in depôt for his return journey, but, with the experience of the northern party before us, we could hardly hope that his crew would be free from scurvy when they reached it. And again, we knew, from the reports of his auxiliary sledge, that he had penetrated far to the westward across an absolute desert of deep snow, which, if once softened, would effectually bar his return, and cut him off from assistance.
In many places round the ship the snow was softening rapidly, so much so that spots once hard enough to walk on were now totally impassable. Even snow-shoes, which had proved most useful on the march to the rescue of the northern party a week before, now balled so much under the heel, and shovelled up such a weight of slush, that they could not be used.
On clear days the depôt at Cape Joseph Henry was visible with a good glass from the top of Cairn Hill. As long as it could be seen we knew that the party had not reached it, and a most anxious watch was kept on the little flickering miraged spot. Up to the 18th June no change occurred, and then Lieutenant May and his indefatigable dogs went off to try and find some trace of the missing party. On the 25th the suspense came to an end. It was Sunday morning, and shortly after service the news came from Cairn Hill that both Aldrich’s sledge and the dog-sledge were in sight. The two tents pitched on the floes near Mushroom Point could be made out plainly. They were evidently encamped for the day as usual. Their homeward march would not begin till evening, so at 7 p.m. everyone that could left the ship to meet them. Rounding a low point, we came on them suddenly. The “Challenger” led the way with colours flying and sledge-sail set. Her officer and the last man left of his crew—a stalwart, light-hearted teetotaler—hauled in her drag-belts. One man, unable to walk, lay muffled on the sledge, the others kept up as best they could, taking turns on the dog-sledge. They had turned back from a point two hundred and thirty geographical miles to the westward, and had travelled, there and back, over seven hundred miles of coast-line, but had found no shore leading poleward. On their outward journey, as they passed each successive cape, another and another came into view, till, on rounding a headland in north latitude 83°.7, they found the shore-line bending off to the southward. At this spot, since called Cape Columbia, a slaty cliff sloping downward to the floes formed the most northern point of the new world. For miles on either side the shore was lifeless, but there on the slope of the cape, amongst the stones and snow, they found a little Arctic poppy, with its tiny yellow petals withered into lines and folds of green. Beyond Cape Columbia it was sometimes hard to tell where the land ended and the frozen sea began; here and there, banks of sand and gravel were bare of snow, but when you dug into them with a pick there was deep ice beneath. On the left lay a monotonous, snow-clad shore rising into irregular mountain groups, and on the right, perennial floes, worn into mounds and valleys. They still followed the shore-line, till, on their forty-fifth day’s journey, they found themselves further south than the winter quarters of the ship. Then they came to the limit of their provisions. There was only enough left to carry them back to their farthest depôt. And so, recovering in succession each of the little piles of stores deposited on their outward journey, they retraced their footsteps along this shore that no other human eyes than theirs had ever looked on. For a week before the dog-sledge met them their state was even worse than we had feared. The snow that bore them on their outward way had softened; every step sank a different depth in it, sometimes to the knee, sometimes to the waist. The men broke down one by one, strength and appetite failed them, and every motion of their swollen and stiffened limbs was an agony. They would haul the sledge five or six yards forward, and then stop for want of breath. With fifty miles of bottomless snow before them, it was no wonder some of them began to think their prospects hopeless, and wanted to be left behind rather than burden the others with their weight. But the sight of the dog-sledge put new life in the party. Its four strong men and six plucky dogs soon got them over their difficulties. Now they were safe and close to the ship, and knees grew straighter than they had been for many a day; those who could walk at all required an order to keep them on the dog-sledge. There was amongst them an ex-member of the “Bulldog” sledge, who had impressed himself specially on his former sledge-mates by one peculiar trait—he never could see a joke till hours after it was made, and then his sudden roars of laughter would sometimes wake the whole crew from their first sleep. The poor fellow was now amongst the worst, but he insisted on being helped into the drag-belts, and staggered alongside the ship in harness. Thus ended the spring sledging.
For another month hunting parties scoured the land, and two sledges tried to find an overland route to the “Discovery” in case our ship should suffer in the disruption of the pack; but so far as the “Alert” was concerned, the exploring work of the year was over. Of the “Discovery’s” proceedings we yet knew little. We had heard that Lady Franklin Sound had proved a mere inlet. No news had reached us from the North Greenland detachment, but the shore that we could see from our mast-heads and from the hills of Floeberg Beach was long and deeply indented, and its extreme limit at Cape Britannia was far to the east, but little to the north.
The summer disruption of the pack was now evidently close at hand, and it was therefore necessary to come to an immediate decision about the future. We had men in both ships who had passed many winters in “whalers,” and they were unanimously of opinion that the “Alert” had little if any chance of ever leaving her winter quarters. Those with knowledge of naval Arctic work thought otherwise. The “break-up,” when it did come, would probably give us a choice of three alternatives—namely, to advance, to stay where we were, or to retreat. As for advancing, in some very favourable season we might perhaps get the ship about twelve miles further westward and five further north, but this was the very utmost that could be hoped for; and for all purposes of northward extension our present position was just as good. Any advance along the shores of Greenland was utterly out of the question, for the eastward motion of the pack threw its chief pressure on that shore. What, then, would another year at Floeberg Beach enable us to accomplish? Assuming, against all precedent, that our crew would completely recover and be as strong as ever they were—assuming, too, that the whole force of the Expedition, guided by the experience already gained, could be launched northwards over the floes, there could even then be no hope whatever of adding one degree to our north latitude.
THE NORTH COAST OF GREENLAND, FROM CAPE BRITANNIA (AT EXTREME LEFT OF UPPER SKETCH) TO THE MOUTH OF ROBESON CHANNEL AND CAPE RAWSON (AT RIGHT OF LOWER SECTION). SKETCHED FROM THE MAIN-TOP OF H.M.S. “ALERT” AT HER WINTER QUARTERS.