Kane had now been two years in the arctic regions, and the day of release, so far at least as their little brig was concerned, seemed as far off as ever. Nearly all the men were invalids, and it took all the doctor’s unremitting attention to keep them from utter despondency; others, again, wanted only strength to become mutinous. Kane writes at the beginning of March that his journal “is little else than a chronicle of sufferings.” Brooks, his first officer, “as stalwart a man-o’-war’s-man as ever faced an enemy,” burst into tears when he first saw himself in the glass. On the 4th their last remnant of fresh meat had been doled out, and the region about their harbour ceased to yield any game.
May arrived, and with returning spring, and some supplies obtained from the natives, the crew were so far restored to health that all but three or four could take some part in the preparations for an immediate start to the southward. It had become only too evident that their vessel, now almost dismantled to the water’s edge—the woodwork having been needed for fuel—must be abandoned. But one month’s provisions remained, and they were thirteen hundred miles from the nearest Danish settlement.
The last farewell to the brig was made with some degree of solemnity. It was Sunday. After prayers and a chapter of the Bible had been read, Kane addressed his men, not affecting to disguise from them the difficulties still to be overcome, but reminding them how often an unseen Power had already rescued them from peril. He was met in a right spirit, and a memorial was shortly afterwards brought to him, signed by the whole company, which stated that they entirely concurred in his attempt to reach the south by means of boats, and that they were convinced of the necessity of abandoning the brig. All then went on deck. The flags were hoisted and hauled down again, and the men walked once or twice around the brig, looking at her timbers, and exchanging comments [pg 248]upon the scars, which reminded them of every stage of her dismantling. The figure-head—the fair Augusta, the little blue girl with pink cheeks, who had lost her breast by an iceberg and her nose by a nip off Bedevilled Reach—was taken from the bows. “She is at any rate wood,” said the men, when Kane hesitated about giving them the extra burden, “and if we cannot carry her far we can burn her.”
Their boats were three in number, all of them well battered by exposure to ice and storm, almost as destructive of their seaworthiness as the hot sun of other regions. Two of them were cypress whale-boats, twenty-six feet long, with seven feet beam, and three feet deep. These were strengthened with oak bottom-pieces and a long string-piece bolted to the keel. A washboard of light cedar, about six inches high, served to strengthen the gunwale and give increased depth. A neat housing of light canvas was stretched upon a ridge-line sustained fore and aft by stanchions. The third boat was the little Red Eric. They mounted her on the old sledge, the Faith, hardly relying on her for any purposes of navigation, but with the intention of cutting her up for firewood in case their guns should fail to give them a supply of blubber. Indeed, in spite of all the ingenuity of the carpenter, Mr. Ohlsen, well seconded by the persevering labours of M’Garey and Bonsall, not one of the boats was positively seaworthy. The Hope would not pass even charitable inspection, and they expected to burn her on reaching water. The planking of all of them was so dried up that it could hardly be made tight by caulking. The three boats were mounted on the sledges, the provisions stowed snugly under the thwarts; the chronometers, carefully boxed and padded, placed in the stern-sheets of the Hope, in charge of Mr. Sontag. With them were such of the instruments as they could venture to transport. Their powder and shot, upon which their lives depended, were carefully distributed in bags and tin canisters.
“There was,” says Kane, “no sign or affectation of spirit or enthusiasm upon the memorable day when we first adjusted the boats to their cradles on the sledges, and moved them off to the ice-foot. But the ice immediately around the vessel was smooth, and as the boats had not received their lading, the first labour was an easy one. As the runners moved, the gloom of several countenances was perceptibly lightened. The croakers had protested that we could not stir an inch. These cheering remarks always reach a commander’s ears, and I took good care, of course, to make the onset contradict them. By the time we reached the end of our little level the tone had improved wonderfully, and we were prepared for the effort of crossing the successive lines of the belt-ice, and forcing a way through the smashed material which interposed between us and the ice-foot.
“This was a work of great difficulty, and sorrowfully exhausting to the poor fellows not yet accustomed to heave together. But in the end I had the satisfaction, before twenty-four hours were over, of seeing our little arks of safety hauled up on the higher plane of the ice-foot, in full time for ornamental exhibition from the brig; their neat canvas housing rigged tent-fashion over the entire length of each; a jaunty little flag, made out of one of the commander’s obsolete linen shirts, decorated in stripes from a disused article of stationery—the red-ink bottle—and with a very little of the blue-bag in the star-spangled corner. All hands after this returned on board. I had ready for them the best supper our supplies afforded, and they turned in with minds prepared for their departure next day.
“They were nearly all of them invalids, unused to open air and exercise. It was necessary to train them very gradually. We made but two miles the first day, and with a single boat; and, indeed, for some time after this I took care that they should not be disheartened by overwork. They came back early to a hearty supper and warm beds, and I had the satisfaction of marching them back each recurring morning refreshed and cheerful. The weather, happily, was superb.”
Repeated sledge journeys back to the brig, and afterwards from station to station, were made, as they could not transport all their goods at one time in their enfeebled state. No one worked harder than did the commander himself. On one of his last visits to the brig, he, with the aid of Morton and an Esquimaux, baked 150 lbs. of bread, and performed other culinary operations for the benefit of the whole party.
Their journey was one of peril and difficulty, and constantly interrupted by gales. The reflection would now and again force itself upon their minds that a single storm might convert the precarious platform on which they travelled into a tumultuous ice-pack. While crossing a weak part of the ice one of their sledge-runners broke through, and but for the presence of mind of Ohlsen, the load, boat and all, would have gone under. He saw the ice give way, and by a violent exercise of strength, passed a capstan-bar under the sledge, and thus bore the load till it was hauled on to safer ice. He was a very powerful [pg 250]man, and might have done this without injuring himself; but it would seem his footing gave way under him, forcing him to make a still more desperate effort to extricate himself. It cost him his life: he died three days afterwards, from the strain on his system.
But there were times when travelling was not so difficult, and when they could hoist their sails, and run rapidly before the wind over solid ice. It was a new sensation to the men. Levels which, under the slow labour of the drag-rope, would have delayed them for hours, were glided over without a halt, and the speed of the sledges made rotten ice nearly as available as sound. They made more progress in one day in this manner than they had previously in five. The spirits of the men rose; “the sick mounted the thwarts; the well clung to the gunwale; and, for the first time for nearly a year, broke out the sailors’ chorus, ‘Storm along, my hearty boys!’ ”