“Time and again,” writes Greely, “only the most desperate efforts and measures secured the safety of the specially strengthened launch, while the whale-boat escaped destruction only by speedy unloading and drawing-up on floes. Every cache, however small, was taken up, ending with damaged, mouldy bread, etc., at Cape Hawks.”
GREELY’S ABANDONMENT OF FORT CONGER
Fort Conger had been abandoned August 9, 1883; on September 13, the whale-boat had been left behind (afterward recovered), and the men were fighting their desperate way across the pack to the shore. The following day Greely made this entry in his journal:—
“The absence of sufficient light to cast a shadow has had very unfortunate results, as several of the men in the past few days have been sadly bruised or strained. When no shadows form and the light is feeble and blended, there is the same uncertainty about one’s walk as if the deepest darkness prevailed. The most careful observation fails to advise you as to whether the next step is to be on a level, up an incline, or over a precipice. These conditions are perhaps the most trying to Sergeant Brainard, who, being in advance selecting our road, finds it necessary to travel as rapidly as possible. A few bad falls quite demoralize a man, and make him more than ever doubtful of his senses. Travelling slowly, with our heavily laden sledges, we rarely suffer much from this trouble, as our steps are slow and uncertain at the best, but when a jar does come on a man pulling his best, it gives his system a great shock and strain.”
On September 17, all articles that were not of vital importance were abandoned, and yet the men were hauling about six thousand pounds. At the end of a weary day Sergeant Brainard wrote in his journal:—
“Turned in at 11 P.M., after ten hours of the severest physical strain. As the sleeping-bags (of those of us in the tepee) are protected from the ice by only one thickness of canvas, our comfort can be imagined.”
Three days later he adds:—
“We are now carrying burdens which would crush ordinary men, but the texture of the party is of the right sort, and adversity will have very little effect on our spirits.”
On September 29, 1883, Greely made a landing at a point midway between Cape Sabine and Isabella, after fifty-one days of the most arduous travel.
“The retreat from Conger to Cape Sabine,” writes Greely, “involved over four hundred miles’ travel by boats, and fully a hundred with sledge and boat; the greater part of which was made under circumstances of such great peril or imminence of danger as to test to the utmost the courage, coolness, and endurance of any party, and the capacity of any commander. As to my officers and men, it is but scant justice to say that they faced resolutely every danger, endured cheerfully every hardship, and were fully equal to every emergency (and they were many) of our eventful retreat.”