Our bronze skins were adapted to cold and winds, but the torture of the cold, drenching water was new. For five months we had been battered by winds and cut by frosts, but water was secured only by melting ice with precious fuel which we had carried thousands of miles. If we could get enough of the costly liquid to wash our cold meals down, we had been satisfied. The luxury of a face wash or a bath, except by the wind-driven snows, was never indulged in. Now, in stress of danger, we were getting it from every direction. The torments of frost about the Pole were nothing compared to this boiling blackness.
Twenty-four hours elapsed before there was any change. Such calls of nature as hunger or thirst or sleep were left unanswered. We maintained a terrific struggle to keep from being washed into the sea. At last the east paled, the south became blue, and the land on both sides rose in sight. The wind came steadily, but reduced in force, with a frosty edge that hardened our garments to sheets of ice.
We were not far from the twin channels, Cardigan Strait and Hell Gate, where the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic meet. We were driving for Cardigan Strait, past the fiords into which we had descended from the western seas two weeks before. We had, therefore, lost an advance of two weeks in one day, and we had probably lost our race with time to reach the life-saving haunts of the Eskimo.
Still, this line of thought was foreign to us. Not far away were bold cliffs from which birds descended to the rushing waters. At the sight my heart rose. Here we saw the satisfying prospect of an easy breakfast if only the waves would cease to fold in white crests. Long trains of heavy ice were rushing with railroad speed out of the straits. As we watched, the temperature continued to fall. Soon the north blackened with swirling curls of smoke. The wind came with the sound of exploding guns from Hell Gate. What, I asked myself, was to be our fate now?
We took a southwest course. Freezing seas washed over the berg and froze our numbed feet to the ice, upon which a footing otherwise would have been very difficult. Adrift in a vast, ice-driven, storm-thundering ocean, I stood silent, paralyzed with terror. After a few hours, sentinel floes of the pack slowly shoved toward us, and unresistingly, we were ushered into the harboring influence of the heavy Polar ice.
The berg lost its erratic movement, and soon settled in a fixed position. The wind continued to tear along in a mad rage, but we found shelter in our canoe, dozing away for a few moments while one paced the ice as a sentinel. Slowly a lane of quiet water appeared among the floes. We heard a strangely familiar sound which set our hearts throbbing. The walrus and the seal, one by one, came up to the surface to blow. Here, right before us, was big game, with plenty of meat and fat. We were starving, but we gazed almost helplessly on plenty, for its capture was difficult for us.
We had only a few cartridges and four cans of pemmican in our baggage. These were reserved for use to satisfy the last pangs of famine. That time had not yet arrived. Made desperate by hunger, after a brief rest we began to seek food. Birds flying from the land became our game at this time. We could secure these with the slingshot made by the Eskimos, and later, by entangling loops in lines, and in various other ways which hunger taught us.
A gull lighted on a pinnacle of our berg. Quietly but quickly we placed a bait and set a looped line. We watched with bated breath. The bird peered about, espied the luring bait, descended with a flutter of wings, pecked the pemmican. There was a snapping sound—the bird was ours. Leaping upon it, we rapidly cut it in bits and ravenously devoured it raw. Few things I have ever eaten tasted so delicious as this meat, which had the flavor of cod-liver oil.
The ice soon jammed in a grinding pack against the land, and the wind spent its force in vain. We held our position, and two of us, after eating the bird, slept until the sentinel called us. At midnight the wind eased and the ice started its usual rebound, seaward and eastward, with the tide.
This was our moment for escape. We were about ten miles off the shore of Cape Vera. If we could push our canvas canoe through the channels of water as they opened, we might reach land. We quickly prepared the boat. With trepidation we pushed it into the black, frigid waters. We hesitated to leave the sheltering berg which had saved our lives. Still, it had served its purpose. To remain might mean our being carried out to sea. The ultimate time had come to seek a more secure refuge on terra firma.