My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

We deferred our visit to the native huts, and invited Governor Fenker and his wife to dine aboard the schooner. The surprise of the evening for these two guests was the playing of our phonograph, the tunes of which brought tears of homesickness to the eyes of the Governor's gentle wife.

Anywhere on the coast of Greenland, the coming of a ship is always one of the prime events of the season. So uneventful is life in these out-of-the-way places that such an arrival is the greatest possible social enlivener. The instant that the approach of our schooner had been noted, the Eskimo girls—queer little maids in queer little trousers—decided upon having a dance, and word was brought us that everyone was invited to take part. The sailors eagerly responded, and tumbled ashore as soon as they were permitted, leaving merely enough for a watch on board ship. Then, to the sound of savage music, the dance was continued until long after midnight. A curious kind of midnight dance it was, with the sun brightly shining in a night unveiled of glitter and color glory. The sailors certainly found pleasure in whirling about, their arms encircling fat and clumsy waists. They did admit, however, when back on board the schooner, that the smell of the furs within which the maidens had spent the past winter was less agreeable than the savor of fish. The name of this scattered settlement of huts, Godhaven, comes, clearly enough, from its offering fortunate refuge from storms; that the place is also known as Lively is not in the least to be wondered at, if one has watched a midnight dance of the little population and their visitors.

Before hauling in anchor in the harbor of Godhaven, we made some necessary repairs to the yacht and filled our tanks with water. With a free wind speeding onward to the west of Disco, we passed the narrow strait known as the Vaigat early the following morning. As I stood on deck and viewed the passing of icebergs, glittering in the limpid, silvery light of morning like monstrous diamonds, there began to grow within me a feeling—that throbbed in pulsation with the onward movement of the boat—that every minute, every mile, meant a nearing to that mysterious center, on the attaining of which I had set my heart, and which, even now, seemed unlikely, improbable. Yet the thought gave me a thrill.

Before noon we reached the mouth of Umanak Fiord, into the delightful waters of which we were tempted to enter. The lure of the farther North decided us against this, and soon the striking Svarten Huk (Black Hook), a great rock cliff, loomed upon the horizon. Beyond it, gradually appeared a long chain of those islands among which lies Upernavik, where the last traces of civilized or semi-civilized life are found. The wind increased in force but the horizon remained remarkably clear. Over a bounding sea we sped rapidly along to the west, into the labyrinth of islands that are sprinkled along the southern shore of Melville Bay.[3] Beyond, we were to come into the true boreal wilderness of ice, where there were only a few savage aborigines, its sole inhabitants.

On the following day, with reduced sail and the help of the auxiliary engine, we pushed far up into Melville Bay, where we ran into fields of pack-ice. Here we decided to hunt for game. With this purpose it was necessary to keep close to land. Here also came our first realistic experience with the great forces of the North. The pack-ice floated close around us, young ice cemented the broken masses together, and for several days we were thus closely imprisoned in frozen seas.

These days of enforced delay were days of great pleasure, for the bears and seals on the ice afforded considerable sport. The constant danger of our position, however, required a close watch for the safety of the schooner. The Devil's Thumb, a high rock shaped like a dark thumb pointing at the sky, loomed darkly and beckoningly before us. A biting wind descended from the interior.

The ice groaned; the eiderducks, guillemots and gulls uttered shrill and disturbing cries, seemingly sensing the coming of a storm.

For three days we were held in the grip of the relentless pack; then the glimmer of the land ice changed to an ugly gray, the pack around us began to crack threateningly, and the sky darkened to the southward.

The wind ominously died away. The air thickened rapidly. A general feeling of anxiety came over us, although my familiarity with storms in the North made it possible for me to explain that heavy seas are seldom felt within the zone of a large ice-pack, for the reason that the icebergs, the flat ice masses, and even the small floating fragments, ordinarily hold down the swells. Even when the pack begins to break, the lanes of water between the fragments thicken under the lower temperature like an oiled surface, and offer an easy sea. Furthermore, a really severe wind would be sure to release the schooner, and it would then be possible to trust it to its staunch qualities in free water.

Hardly had we finished dinner when we heard the sound of a brisk wind rushing through the rigging. Hurrying to the deck, we saw coils of what looked like smoky vapor rising in the south as if belched from some great volcano. The gloom on the horizon was rapidly growing deeper. The sound of the wind changed to a threatening, sinister hiss. In the piercing steel-gray light we saw the ice heave awesomely, like moving hills, above the blackening water. The bergs swayed and rocked, and the massed ice gave forth strange, troublous sounds.