The door of the snowhouse is now kicked out—all tumble about to warm up and stop chattering teeth. Breaking camp is a matter of but a minute, for things fall almost automatically into convenient packs. The sledges are loaded and lashed in a few minutes. Then the teams are gathered to the pulling lines, and off we go with a run. The pace for dog and man is two and a half miles an hour, over good ice or bad ice, hard snow or soft snow, or tumbling over neckbreaking irregularities. There is no stop for lunch, no riding, or rest, or anything else. It is drive—drive.
At times it was impossible to perspire, and the toxin of fatigue, generating unearthly weariness, filled the brain with fag. When perspiration oozed from our pores, as we forced forward, step by step, it froze in the garments and the warmer portions of our bodies were ringed with snow. Daily, unremittingly, this was our agony.
In starting before the end of the winter night, and camping on the open ice fields in the long northward march, we had first accustomed our eyes to frigid darkness and then to a perpetual glitter. This proved to be the coldest season of the year, and we ought to have been hardened to all kinds of Arctic torment. But man gains that advantage only when his pulse ceases to beat.
Continuing the steady stride of forward marches, far from land, far from life, there was nothing to arouse a warming spirit. Along the land there had been calms and gales and an inspiring contrast, even in the dark days and nights, but here the frigid world was felt at its worst. The wind, which came persistently from the west—now strong, now feeble, but always sharp—inflicted a pain to which we never became accustomed.
The worst torture inflicted by the wind and humid air of an Arctic pack came from a mask of ice about the face. It was absurdly picturesque but painful. Every bit of exhaled moisture condensed and froze either to the facial hair or to the line of fox tails about the hood. It made comical caricatures of us.
BRADLEY LAND DISCOVERED
SUBMERGED ISLAND OF POLAR SEA
GOING BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF LIFE
Frequent turns in our course exposed both sides of the face to the wind and covered with icicles every hair offering a convenient nucleus. These lines of crystal made an amazing dash of light and color as we looked at each other. But they did not afford much amusement to the individual exhibiting them. Such hairs as had not been pulled from the lips and chin were first weighted, and then the wind carried the breath to the long hair with which we protected our heads, and left a mass of dangling frost. Accumulated moisture from the eyes coated the eyelashes and brows. The humidity escaping about the forehead left a crescent of snow above, while that escaping under the chin, combined with falling breath, formed there a semi-circle of ice. The most uncomfortable icicles, however, were those that formed on the coarse hair within the nostrils. To keep the face free, the Eskimos pull the facial hair out by the roots, the result of which is a rarity of mustaches and beards. Thus, with low temperature and persistent winds, life was one of constant torture on the march; but cooped in snowhouses, eating dried beef and tallow, and drinking hot tea, some animal comforts were occasionally to be gained in the icy camps.
SWIFT PROGRESS OVER SMOOTH ICE
BUILDING AN IGLOO
A LIFELESS WORLD OF COLD AND ICE