Doctor William S. Bruce, indeed, tells us in his “Polar Exploration” that, generally speaking, germ diseases are unknown in the Arctic, the intense cold making everywhere—in the air, on the sea and on the land—for a high degree of bacterial sterility. “Under ordinary conditions it is not possible to ‘catch cold’ in the polar regions .… infectious fevers are practically unknown, unless contracted in a dirty ship or filthily kept house.” Hence the feasibility of a practical asepsis in accident or operation. Bishop Bompass once amputated a man’s leg above the knee, and the operation was completely successful. The Bishop had no medical knowledge beyond having attended some lectures at an opthalmic hospital, in order to learn how to treat his Indians for snow-blindness.
The whaling voyage itself might be uneventful enough until a high latitude was reached; but after that, the greatest possible skill was required to navigate [[26]]the ship safely through the “pack” ice coming down from the Pole through Davis Straits and Fox Channel, on its way to the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, to be finally melted and dispersed in the Gulf Stream.
Arctic navigators and oceanographers enumerate many varieties and vagaries of the polar ice. Suffice it here to note that “pack ice” is the jammed and frozen conglomeration of masses of ice from broken floes and vast disintegrating “fields” of ice. In Straits, this pack is always heaviest in the centre but less compact along the shores, so that a vessel can sometimes be worked along the coast when navigation in the middle would be impossible. This “middle pack” is rightly dreaded by Arctic seamen. A change of wind might drift it in upon the shore, when the ship’s destruction would be inevitable. The great danger in meeting the ice pack out at sea consists in the fact that the larger part of the floe is almost submerged and little of it is to be seen. Again, it bristles with spurs and points which stick up and out like spears and rams, any one of which might rip up a hull sailing at any speed.
The rapidity with which the ice pack moves is something wonderful. Miles upon miles of sea will be free from ice, with the exception of small masses from the floes, and the ship ploughs a steady course to the north. Suddenly the wind changes. Ice swiftly makes its appearance on every quarter, and—with incredible rapidity—the vessel is surrounded. But [[27]]warning has been given from the “crow’s nest” (the look-out aloft, a barrel at masthead), and the Master works a cautious way through the “leads” in the shifting ice. Should the pack be exceptionally heavy, threatening to pen in the ship completely, measures for her safety are immediately taken. Orders ring out sharply. The crew, with ice saws or blasting powder, quickly make a space in the ice, like a temporary dock, large enough to warp her into, where she can lie snug while the savage floes grind and crash against each other without. Woe to the ship caught between them ere such a refuge can be made! No vessel that ever adventured in the polar seas could stand the awful grip. There would be a rending of the stoutest timbers, groans of a ship in agony, a lift and a quiver, and as the floes swung apart on the black swell below, the brave creature, mangled, rent, and stove in, would plunge to her bitter grave. As for her crew, their only chance would be to lower the boats, and, either marooned on the ice, drift south on the prevailing current until perchance sighted by a ship; or, if afloat, work their perilous way to the Greenland coast, and take refuge at one of the Danish settlements sparsely scattered on its southern extremity.
Icebergs—those rightly dreaded wanderers of the northern seas—afford a glorious vision in bright, calm weather, as they wend their majestic course to the south, tinted by the setting sun or by the indescribable loveliness of the northern sunrise. Sometimes [[28]]a large portion having been melted, breaks from the berg, when the vast mass slowly careens over, plunges with a thunderous crash, and reasserts itself upon a new floating base, peerless and beautiful as ever. The ship is fortunate who finds herself standing well away at such a moment.
In spite, however, of their bad reputation, the bergs have their uses for those hardy wayfarers of the sea who know them. The ancient Arctic mariner will tell you that an iceberg can sail against the wind as well as with it! Gripped for two-thirds of its bulk by a strong under-current, it can crash its way and forge ahead against the wildest adverse gale. An old whaler told of an experience he had when his ship was beset by the loose floe, and like to be crushed to matchwood. The men were striving all they knew to get her into safety, when a vast berg drove slowly down beside her through the ice, shouldering it aside as a giant liner drives through a heavy sea. With the inspiration of sheer desperation, the Captain saw his chance! The vessel was cautiously worked still nearer the berg and then kedged on to it. Towed thus, with resistless might, she too forged safely through the chafing floe to clear water and deliverance.
Again, a ship—no matter of what class or tonnage—can only carry a certain quantity of water. So, too, with a whaler; she is limited in her supply. It sometimes happens that, cruising about week after week, she runs short of water. On sighting an iceberg, [[29]]she sends off her boats loaded with casks, and the crews refill them either with water from the pools at the foot of the berg, or with the ice itself, which being fresh water ice, melts down, of course, into splendid drinking water after the brine and salt coating from the sea has first been scraped off. For, be it remembered, an iceberg is a portion—the seaward end—of one of the polar glaciers. As the immense ice river reaches the coast it is pushed out over the cliffs, and vast masses break off with terrific detonation, plunge into the sea, and the newly born icebergs go floating far and wide. A large number of these bergs are formed in Eternity Fiord on the Greenland coast, and the crash and roar of them can be heard for miles.
As the season wears on and the whaler’s hold slowly fills with the cargo of the Arctic hunt, from time to time she puts into the sparse harbours of the northern coasts, to refit, or to meet the tribes of Eskimo gathered there to do “trade” with her. The Hudson Bay Company have lately introduced a form of coinage for this purpose, anything of the sort being previously quite unknown among the natives. Pieces of metal in various shapes represent the values of a currency and are used as money. But the prehistoric marketing of barter still holds good throughout the greater part of the Arctic regions.
Sometimes a shipmate has to be left, perforce of accident or illness, to sleep the long sleep that knows no earthly waking, in this drear and far-off land. [[30]]
So much then for the voyage and the voyagers to the Arctic. Now for that frozen world itself, and for those strange people whose lot, compared with that of all the rest of the more genially situated sons of men, would seem to have fallen in the bleakest, harshest and most forbidding places, where human life might scarcely exist.