The Romance of Polar Exploration / Interesting Descriptions of Arctic and Antarctic Adventure from the Earliest Time to the Voyage of the "Discovery"

by G. Firth Scott

The sun set on October 16 for the remainder of the winter. A party was out taking observations over some mountains behind the bay in which the Fram was anchored, and had returned to camp for the evening meal as the sun was going down. One of the party drew the attention of the others to it, and they gathered at the door of the tent and watched it in silence. "We were looking at the sun for the last time that year," Captain Sverdrup wrote in his account of the expedition. "Its pale light lay dying over the 'inland ice'; its disc, light red, was veiled on the horizon; it was like a day in the land of the dead. All light was so hopelessly cold; all life so far away. We stood and watched it till it sank; then everything became so still that it made one shudder—as if the Almighty had deserted us and shut the gates of Heaven. The light died away across the mountains and slowly vanished, while over us crept the great shades of the Polar night, the night that kills all life."

With a stretch of four months' darkness before them, it was impossible to avoid recalling the records of others who had gone through the lonely period of darkness and cold. It was a disquieting subject. Franklin, with 138 men under his command, had seen the sun go down into the Polar night, and not a man of all the party had lived to tell the tale. Greely, with twenty-five men, had seen the silent darkness come on near where they were situated at the moment—six had lived to see the dawn. Nordenskjold, wintering in White Bay, had seventeen men die of scurvy, with an abundance of food around them, for when the last victim was found, lying where he fell, he had a piece of salt pork still clutched in his fingers, while in the camp there were scores of tins of preserved fresh meat unopened. True it was that science, since then, had made vast strides, and prejudice and ignorance had been largely overcome; but when men find themselves absolutely cut off from all communication with the outside world, and with all sorts of possible dangers and disasters hidden in the future, it is only the fool-hardy who fails to realise them. The brave man does not shut his eyes to dangers; he looks them squarely in the face and determines to overcome them. Such a man usually wins. It is the man who shuts his eyes to what is in front of him who is defeated.

The winter passed without any fatality among them, although there was an occasion when one of the members nearly came to his end. Various trips were taken when the moon was up to try and locate the site where Greely made his historic camp on Pim Island. In February two men set out to look for it, and, as they did not intend to be long away, they took neither food nor sleeping-bags with them. The weather was clear and cold, with the thermometer at -40° Fahr., but the men experienced no ill effects from it on their journey. They found some pieces of rope and sail-cloth scattered about at a spot on the north side of the island, and came to the conclusion that this must have been the site of the camp. Having examined the place, they were about to return to the Fram, when one of them sank to the ground. His companion strove to lift him up, but without avail; he had suddenly become exhausted, and his strength gave out so entirely that he could not remain on his feet. It was a serious situation. A few hours of inactivity in such a temperature, without an excess of fur clothing and warm food, meant freezing to death. His companion was in doubt whether to wait and strive to rouse him, or to run to the ship for help. He adopted the latter course, and sped away as fast as his legs could carry him. Arrived at the Fram, he raised the alarm, and every one turned out and hastened to the rescue. A sledge was quickly harnessed to a dog team, and on it were placed furs and food. The place where the man had collapsed was about a mile away, and the rescuers were soon at his side. He lay in a heap on the frozen snow, too far gone to recognise any one. He was pushed into a sleeping-bag, placed on the sledge, and driven off at top speed to the ship, where he was promptly put into his bunk and restoratives administered to him. Soon the efforts were successful, and he sank into a sleep from which he awakened, many hours after, little the worse for his adventure. He escaped without even a touch of frost-bite.

A few days after this episode the temperature fell rapidly, until the thermometer registered as low as -58° Fahr. Peary, the American explorer, was at the time some fifteen miles to the north of the Fram, and the temperature in his locality went down to -67° Fahr., a cold so intense that, hardened as he was to the rigours of Arctic weather, he had seven toes so severely frost-bitten that they had to be amputated. A small party from the Fram was out on the ice at the time, and the cold was so trying to them that they squeezed into their sleeping-bags clad, as they were, in heavy fur garments. Still they were unable to get warm, so they lit their oil stove to raise the temperature in the tent. While this was being done, one man complained bitterly of the cold in his back, and a comrade, seeking a cause for it, found that the moisture from his body had turned to white frost on the inside of his thick woollen jersey. To thaw it, they put the lighted stove between the jersey and the man's back, whereupon he exclaimed, "Ah, that's not quite so cold."

Yet the way in which mankind can adapt themselves to all varieties of climate, by use and custom, was shown by a visit they had from one of Peary's Eskimo. He reached the Fram on a day when the temperature was at -40° Fahr. Invited on board, he said he must first change his travelling clothes, and, in the open air, he stripped to the waist to remove his heavy furs and put on a lighter suit. He was apparently as unaffected by the intense cold on his naked flesh as one of the Norwegians would have been had the thermometer stood at forty degrees above instead of forty degrees below zero.

The visit of the Eskimo proved an enjoyable break to the explorers, though their generosity in giving him presents, at the time of his departure, resulted in so many more coming to visit them that they had rather too much of a good thing. But when he first arrived the visitor was peculiarly welcome. They entertained him to various amusements, commencing with dinner and concluding with a concert. To the latter the Eskimo contributed his share. He was greatly taken with a toy drum belonging to one of the party, and played his own idea of a melody upon it. As his hosts did not manifest any displeasure at his performances—whatever they may have felt—he became bolder and offered to sing them a song.

To the accompaniment of the drum, he commenced with a weird, wild wail, which gradually developed in volume of sound and variety of intonation until the listeners began to feel shivers running up and down their spines. At that point the singer, who had so far sat rigid, began to sway his body from side to side, while he tossed his head backwards and forwards. He had long dank black hair, and, as he moved quicker and quicker, in time with the drum and the staccato wails, his hair was tossed over his face until the features were obscured. This appeared to be the critical moment in the performance, for he raised himself from his seat, and, with his hair tossing, his voice wailing, his body swaying, and his hands thumping vigorously at the drum, he completed the discomfiture of his hosts, who, disposed to smile at the beginning of the performance, were distinctly uncomfortable at the finish. The performer, however, was by no means dissatisfied with himself. He was a great singer, he told them, perhaps the greatest in the tribe. They had only to ask some of the others of his tribe to sing to realise the truth of what he said, he added. But the Norwegians were satisfied with the one experience.

ESKIMO VISITORS TO THE FRAM IN NIGHT ATTIRE.