My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

Of a sudden, as though extinguished, the moonlight faded, huge shadows leaped onto the ice before us, frenziedly waved their arms and melted into the pitch-black darkness which descended. I had read imaginative tales of wanderings in the nether region of the dead, but only now did I have a faint glimmering of the terror (with its certain, exultant intoxication) which lost souls must feel when they wander in a darkness beset with invisible horrors.

Over the ice, cut with innumerable chasms and neck-breaking irregularities, we rushed in the dark. The wind moaned down from the despairing cloud-enfolded heights above; it tore through the bottomless gullies on every side with a hungry roar. Beads of perspiration rolled down my face and froze into icicles on my chin and furs. The temperature was 48° below zero.

Occasionally we stopped a moment to gasp for breath. I could hear the panting of my companions, the labor of the dogs. A few seconds' inaction was followed by convulsive shivering; the pain of stopping was more excruciating than that of climbing. In the darkness, the calls of the invisible Eskimos to the dogs seemed like the weird appeals of disembodied things. I felt each moment the imminent danger of a frightful death; yet the dogs with their marvelous intuition, twisting this way and that, and sometimes retreating, sensed the open leads ahead and rushed forward safely.

At times I felt the yawning depth of ice canyons immediately by my side—that a step might plunge me into the depths. Desperately I held on to the sledges, and was dragged along. Such an experience might well turn the hair of the most expert Alpinist white in one night; yet I did not have time to dwell fully upon the dangers, and I was carried over a trip more perilous than, later, proved the actual journey on sea-ice to the Pole.

Occasionally the moon peered forth from its clouds and brightened the gloom. In its light the ice fields swam dizzily by us, as a landscape seen from the window of a train; the open gashed gullies writhed like snakes, pinnacles dancing like silver spears. By alternate running and riding we managed to keep from freezing and sweating. We finally reached an altitude of inland ice exceeding two thousand feet. Silver fog crept under our feet. We were traveling now in a world of clouds.

We paced twelve miles at a rapid speed. In the light of the moon-burned clouds which rolled about our heads, I could see the forms of my companions only indistinctly. The dogs ahead were veiled in the argent, tremulous mists; the ice sped under me; I was no longer conscious of an earthly footing; I might have been soaring in space.

We began to descend. Suddenly the dogs started in leaps to fly through the air. Our sleds were jerked into clouds of cutting snow. We jabbed our feet into the drift to check the mad speed. On each side we saw a huge mountain, seemingly thousands of feet above us, but ahead was nothing but the void of empty space. Soon the sledges shot beyond the dogs. We threw ourselves off to check the momentum. With dog intelligence and savage strength judiciously expended, we reached the sea level by flying flights over dangerous slopes, and, like cats, we landed on nimble feet in Sontag Bay.

A bivouac was arranged under a dome of snow-blocks, and exhausted by the mad journey, a sleep of twenty-four hours was indulged in.

Now, for a time, our task was easier. A course was set along the land, southward. Each of the native settlements was visited. The season's gossip was exchanged. Presents went into each household, and a return of furs and useful products filled our sledges. Thus the time was occupied in profitable visits during the feeble light of the November moon. With the December moon we returned northward to Ser-wah-ding-wah.

Then our struggle began anew for the walrus grounds. The Polar drift, forcing through Smith Sound, left an open space of water about ten miles south of Cape Alexander. This disturbed area was our destination. It was marked by a dark cloud, a "water-sky"—against the pearly glow of the southern heavens. The ice surface was smooth. We did not encounter the crushed heaps of ice of the northern route, but there were frequent crevasses which, though cemented with new ice, gave us considerable anxiety, for I realized that if a northwesterly storm should suddenly strike the pack we might be carried helplessly adrift.