My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

THE MOONLIGHT QUEST OF THE WALRUS

DESPERATE AND DANGEROUS HUNTING, IN ORDER TO SECURE ADEQUATE SUPPLIES FOR THE POLAR DASH—A THRILLING AND ADVENTUROUS RACE IS MADE OVER FROZEN SEAS AND ICY MOUNTAINS TO THE WALRUS GROUNDS—TERRIFIC EXPLOSION OF THE ICE ON WHICH THE PARTY HUNTS—SUCCESS IN SECURING OVER SEVEN SLED-LOADS OF BLUBBER MAKES THE POLE SEEM NEARER—AN ARCTIC TRAGEDY

VIII
Five Hundred Miles Through Night and Storm

The early days of November were devoted to routine work about Annoatok. Meat was gathered and dried in strips by Francke; a full force of men were put to the work of devising equipment; the women were making clothing and dressing skins; and then a traveling party was organized to go south to gather an additional harvest of meat and skins and furs. For this purpose we planned to take advantage of the November moon. Thus, in the first week of the month, we were ready for a five-hundred-mile run to the southern villages and to the night-hunting grounds for walrus.

A crack of whips explosively cut the taut, cold air. The raucous, weird and hungry howl of the wolf-dogs replied: "Ah-u-oo, Ah-u-oo, Ah-u-oo!" rolled over the ice; "Huk-huk!" the Eskimos shouted. There was a sudden tightening of the traces of our seven sledges; fifty lithe, strong bodies leaped forward; and, holding the upstanders, the rear upright framework of the native sledges, I and my six companions were off. In a few moments the igloos of the village, with lights shining through windows where animal membranes served as glass, had sped by us. The cheering of the natives behind was soon lost in the grind of our sledges on the irregular ice and the joyous, unrestrained barking of the leaping, tearing, restless dog-teams.

To the south of us, a misty orange flush suffused the dun-colored sky. The sun, which we had not seen for an entire month, now late in November far below the horizon, sent to us the dim radiance of a far-away smile. After its setting it had, about noon time of each day, set the sky faintly aglow, this radiance decreasing until it was lost in the brightness of the midday moon. Rising above the horizon, a suspended lamp of frosty, pearl-colored glass, the moon for ten days of twenty-four hours, each month, encircled about us, now lost behind ice-sheeted mountains, again subdued under colored films of frost clouds, but always relieving the night of its gloom, and permitting, when the wind was not too turbulent, outside activity.

A wonderful animal is the sea-horse, or whale-horse, as the Icelanders and Dutch (from whom we have borrowed "walrus") call it. In the summer its life is easy and its time is spent in almost perpetual sunny dreams, but in winter it would be difficult to conceive of a harder existence than its own. Finding food in shallow Polar seas, it comes to permanent open water, or to the crevasses of an active pack for breath. With but a few minutes' rest on a storm-swept surface, it explores, without other relief for weeks, the double-night darkness of unknown depths under the frozen sea. At last, when no longer able to move its huge web feet, it rises on the ice or seeks ice-locked waters for a needed rest. In winter, the thump of its ponderous head keeps the young ice from closing its breathing place. If on ice, its thick skin, its blanket of blubber, and an automatic shiver, keep its blood from hardening. This is man's opportunity to secure meat and fuel, but the quest involves a task to which no unaided paleface is equal. The night hunt of the walrus is Eskimo sport, but it is nevertheless sport of a most engaging and exciting order.

So that I might not be compelled to start on my dash stintedly equipped, we now prepared for such an adventure by moonlight. Before this time there had not been sufficient atmospheric stability and ice continuity to promise comparative safety. My heart exulted as I heard the crack of the whips in the electric air and felt the earth rush giddily under my feet as I leaped behind the speeding teams. The fever of the quest was in my veins; its very danger lent an indescribable thrill, for success now meant more to me than perhaps hunting had ever meant to any man.

Not long after we started, darkness descended. The moon slowly passed behind an impenetrable curtain of inky clouds; the orange glow of the sun faded; and we were surrounded on every side by a blackness so thick that it was almost palpable.