CHAPTER VIII.
UPERNAVIK.
I had set my heart upon making a thorough survey of the fiord of Aukpadlartok. As recorded in a previous chapter, I had previously been there and penetrated to within five miles of the glacier. It was, therefore, with much regret that I found the water wholly impassable to a boat. Even the air was so thick that I could not see the front of the glacier, so that I failed to note any changes which might have taken place in the interval of eight years since I had visited it before. Philip told me, however, that during the past two or three years the discharge of icebergs had been much greater than formerly, and that if they continued to increase in the same proportion he would be obliged to quit the place, as he could hardly at any time get in and out from his hut. Indeed, his residence appeared to me even more dreary than Jensen’s, for about the latter the icebergs were comparatively few, while Philip was thoroughly encircled by them. What measureless powers of endurance and hardihood such men as these must possess! I confess that I never look upon them except with astonishment.
Our voyage to Upernavik was without incident worthy of note, except that our mate was blessed with his usual fortune in discovering soundings. In a place where a rock was never before known to exist, he found one which by a miracle we grazed without damage to the Panther’s keel or bottom.
To our arrival in Upernavik I had looked forward with some real pleasure; and not the least among those which I actually found was a civilized bed, and other homelike luxuries which Dr. Rudolph was good enough to place at my disposal. And oh the luxury of that bed after eight weeks in the narrow quarters of a ship’s bunk, always damp, and black with coal-dust, and daily rendered worse by the unsuccessful attempts of an idiotic cabin-boy to put it to rights and keep it clean!
The window of my room opened upon the sea, and was full of sweet flowers that had been nurtured tenderly by my good hostess, as if they were children. It was strange to look out through a little wilderness of roses, mignonnette, and heliotrope, upon a great wilderness of icebergs. The sea was, indeed, as cold as cold could be, and the waves broke fiercely right beneath me on the rocky shore; but about me all was peace and quiet—the pictures on the wall, the fire in the stove, the home comforts of the modest house which sheltered me—all spoke defiance of place or climate, and told a tale of tranquillity and contentment that was worth going thrice three thousand miles to see, even though the storms were never so threatening, and ice-barriers without number intervened.
We remained a week at Upernavik, and during that time I never saw the Panther. I never was so glad not to see any thing in all my life before. I was quite willing to believe that the artists were painting and photographing icebergs without limit, and were getting into their camera every thing from a native to a mountain, but I did not want to see it. My enjoyment of the little home into which I had fallen was too fresh to court disturbance. To forget for a time that there was ever such an enemy to man as a ship’s cook, and to partake of some simple fare with which a woman’s hand had had to do, was too great a luxury to be profaned, and I lived along through my week at Dr. Rudolph’s in a state of bliss. I wrote, and read, and played with the children, Anne and Christian. I talked with Jensen about his life, and the Greenland legends which he had gathered in his long experience. I helped my host, the governor, to make up his annual accounts for the next ship home and I bungled through my Danish with his amiable wife, making her laugh continually at my mistakes; and altogether, quite free from care, gave myself up wholly to enjoyment for the seven days.
Now the coming of the ship was a matter of serious concern to Governor Rudolph. The store-rooms were very empty, and there was much danger of famine if the ship did not come at all. To the governor’s family there would be a lack of every luxury. She was overdue almost a month, and great alarm was in the settlement already. But she did come at last, and I never saw people more rejoiced. The ship was the Constancia, and Captain Bang, her master, was as intelligent a man as he was good fellow. He spoke capital English, and helped us with our pipes and punch in the evening, and enjoyed the flowers as much as I did, and the delightful breakfast of smoked salmon, venison sausage, and pickled halibut, and the substantial lunch, and the late dinners, that were none the worse for the cigars and wine and Santa Cruz that he brought off one day to help out with; for the doctor was the most hospitable of all old-fashioned gentlemen and having three times dined our whole huge cabin mess, and opened his house to every body every day, his supply of cigars and liquors, after a whole year’s pulling at them on his own part, had run rather low. Our mess would gladly have replenished the doctor’s fast-failing stock; but with true American energy we had gone to work at the start as if to get through with what supplies we had in the shortest possible space of time; and there was not now among us so much as a single “Havana,” or even a bottle of ale, to bless ourselves with.
The doctor surprised me one day by coming into my room, and in his genial way calling out, “You know dis man; you know dis feller, eh?” producing from behind his coat a rascally face, which I never could forget in any length of time. It was the face of Hans Heindrich.
Now Hans is a man of some celebrity. In 1853 Dr. Kane took him from Fiskernaes, South Greenland, upon his famous voyage into Smith’s Sound. His age then was about twenty years; and he lived well on board the brig Advance, and waxed fat, and tricked his master, from whom he finally ran away, and joined the Smith Sound savages, marrying one of their women, by name Merkut. Among these people I found him in 1860, and took him aboard with his wife, Merkut, and his baby, Pingasuk. I ought to have known better. He tricked me worse than he had tricked Dr. Kane. I am fully convinced that he was instrumental in causing the death of two of my command, though it was never possible to prove any thing against him positive enough to insure conviction. It is hard to collect evidence where there are no eyes to see nor ears to hear. Being unable to verify my suspicions, I brought him back in 1861, and delivered him over to the Danish authorities, from whom Dr. Kane had taken him eight years before. Even now he could not cease from mischief, breeding quarrels wherever he went; and his wife was in a state of chronic dissatisfaction because she could not live in her old-fashioned savage way, and her children (she had two now) were a burden on the poor-fund. I gave Merkut some money to buy clothes for the children, and within an hour it was all spent at the Government store-house for figs and sugar-candy.