The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators

by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

On the sixth of November the sun was seen for the last time. On the seventh, when it was quite dark, the clock stopped suddenly in the middle of the night, and when the men got up in the morning they had lost the exact time. For the rest of the winter they were obliged to guess at the approximate hour; not that it mattered so very much, for life had become an endless night: one went to bed and got up through the force of habit acquired by thousands of previous generations. If the men had not been obliged to, they never would have left their comfortable beds. They had but one idea, to keep warm. The complaint about the insufferable cold is the main motive in this Arctic symphony. Lack of regular exercise was chiefly to blame for this "freezing feeling"—lack of exercise and the proper underwear. It is true that the men dressed in many layers of heavy skins, but their lower garments, which nowadays play a great part in the life of modern explorers, were sadly neglected. In the beginning they washed their shirts regularly, but they found it impossible to dry them; for just as soon as the shirt was taken out of the hot water it froze stiff. When they carried the frozen garment into the house to thaw it out before the fire it was either singed and burned in spots or it refused absolutely to melt back into the shape and aspect of a proper shirt. Finally the washing was given up, as it has been on many an expedition, for cleanliness is a costly and complicated luxury when one is away from the beaten track of civilization.

The walls of the house had been tarred and calked like a ship. All the same, when the first blizzards occurred, the snow blew through many cracks, and every morning the men were covered with a coat of snow and ice. Hot-water bottles had not yet been invented, but at night large stones were roasted in the fire until they were hot, and then were placed in the bunks between the fur covers. They helped to keep the men warm, and incidentally they burned their toes before they knew it. Not only did the men suffer in this way. That same clock which I have already mentioned at last succumbed to the strain of alternating spells of heat and cold. It began to go slower and slower. To keep it going at all, the weight was increased every few days. At last, however, a millstone could not have coaxed another second out of the poor mechanism. From that moment on an hour-glass was used. One of the men had to watch it, and turn it over every sixty minutes.

All this time, while the men never ceased their complaint about feeling cold, the heating problem had been solved by fires made of such kindling-wood as the thoughtful ocean had carried across from the Siberian coast and deposited upon the shore. Finally, however, in despair at ever feeling really warm again, if only for a short while, it was decided, as an extra treat, to have a coal fire. There was some coal on board the ship, but it had been saved for use upon the homeward trip in the spring, when the men would be obliged to travel in open boats. The coal was brought to the house. The worst cracks in the walls were carefully filled with tar and rope, and somebody climbed to the roof and closed the chimney; not an ounce of the valuable heat must be lost. As a result the men felt comfortable for the first time in many months; they also came very near losing their lives. Having dozed off in the pleasant heat they had not noticed that their cabin was filling with coal-gas until finally some of them, feeling uncomfortable, tried to get up, grew dizzy, and fainted. Our friend the barber, possessed of more strength than any of the others, managed to creep to the door. He kicked it open and let in the fresh air. The men were soon revived, and the captain treated them all to a glass of wine to celebrate the happy escape. No further experiments with coal were made during that year.

December was a month of steady blizzards. The snow outside piled up in huge drifts which soon reached to the roof. The hungry foxes, attracted by the smell of cookery wafted abroad through the barrel-chimney, used to gallop across the roof, and at night their dismal and mean little bark kept the men in their bunks awake. At the same time their close proximity made trapping easier, and the skins were now doubly welcome; for the shoes, bought in Holland, had been frozen so often and had been thawed out too near the fire so frequently that they were leaking like sieves and could no longer be worn. New shoes were cut out of wood and covered with fox-fur. They provided comfortable, though far from elegant, footwear.

New Year's day was a dreary feast, for all the men thought of home and were melancholy and sad. Outside a terrible snow-storm raged. It continued for an entire week. No one dared to go outside to gather wood, fearing the wind and cold would kill them. In this extremity they were obliged to burn some of their home-made furniture. On the fifth of January the blizzard stopped. The door was opened, the cabin was put in order, wood was brought from the woodpile, and then one of the men suddenly remembered the date and how at home the feast of the Magi was being celebrated with many happy and innocent pastimes. The barber decided to organize a little feast. The first officer was elected to be "King of Nova Zembla." He was crowned with due solemnity. A special dinner of hot pancakes and rusks soaked in wine was served, and the evening was such a success that many imagined themselves safely home in their beloved fatherland. A new blizzard reminded them that they were still citizens of an Arctic island.

On the sixteenth of January, however, the men who had been sent out to look after the traps and bring in wood suddenly noticed a glimmer of red on the horizon. It was a sign of the returning sun. The dreary months of imprisonment were almost over. From that moment the heating problem became less difficult. On the contrary, the roof and the walls now began to leak, and the expedition had its first taste of the thaw which would be even more fatal than the cold weather had proved to be. As has been remarked, these men had been leading a very unhealthy life. While it was still light outside they had sometimes played ball with the wooden knob of the flagpole of the ship, but since early November they had taken no exercise of any sort. A few minutes spent out of doors just long enough to kill the foxes in the traps was all the fresh air they ever got. Out of a barrel they had made themselves a bath-tub, and once a week every man in turn had climbed through the little square opening into that barrel (see the picture) to get steamed out. But this mode of living, combined with bad food, brought half a year before from Holland, together with the large quantity of fox-meat, now caused a great deal of scurvy, and the scurvy caused more dangerous illness. Barendsz, the man upon whom they depended to find the way home, was already so weak that he could not move. He was kept near the fire on a pile of bearskins. On the twenty-sixth of January another man who had been ill for some time suddenly died. His comrades had done all they could to save him. They had cheered him with stories of home, but shortly after midnight of that day he gave up the ghost. Early the next morning he was buried near the carpenter. A chapter of the Bible was read, a psalm was sung, and his sorrowful companions went home to eat breakfast.

None of the men were quite as strong as they had been. Among other things, they hated the eternal bother of keeping the entrance to the door clear of snow. Why should they not abolish the door, and like good Eskimos enter and leave their dwelling-place through the chimney? Heemskerk wanted to try this new scheme and he got ready to push himself through the narrow barrel. At the same time one of the men rushed to the door to go out into the open and welcome the skipper when he should stick his head through the barrel; but before he espied the eminent leader of the expedition he was struck by another sight: the sun had appeared above the horizon. Apparently Barendsz, who had tried to figure out the day and week of the year after they had lost count of the calendar, had been wrong in his calculation. According to him, there were to be two weeks more of darkness. And now, behold! there was the shining orb, speedily followed by a matutinal bear. The lean animal was at once killed and used to replenish the oil of the odorous little lamp which for more than three months had provided the only light inside the cabin.