3. The dogs, under the superintendence of Carlsen, took their part in the transport of the baggage, but showed themselves very lazy and intractable under his management, and seemed to take a pleasure in plunging their loaded sledge deep into the snow, out of which it was beyond the old man’s power to free them without help. Nor was their own strength equal to going over the track twice at least, even with only one cwt. each time. If, therefore, their services were to be turned to account, they must be led by some one whom they obeyed, who could help them by shoving or dragging, who could set up the sledge when it overturned, and was strong enough to keep constantly lifting the heavy bags, and who could pass over the same piece of road four or five times, if necessary. This duty was taken in turn by Haller and myself, and we succeeded in transporting in this way daily all the bread and the spirits, weighing together from 8 to 10 cwt., and, in some cases, at a later period, even the entire load of a great sledge divided into parts. I mention this in order to show the great services which our dogs, though their number was small, rendered during the march.
4. In the first week after the Tegetthoff was abandoned, whenever Weyprecht encamped at the end of the day’s march, Haller, Zaninovich and I returned in the dog-sledge to the ship in order to replenish the stores we had consumed. The distance, which we had taken a week to pass with all our baggage, was done by the help of the dogs in an hour or two. In these different visits we did our utmost to fulfil the commissions of our companions. We rummaged the hold, though in many of the cases we opened nothing was to be seen but a dressed bear-skin. In one of these trips we filled a small cask with a concentrated decoction of all the tea which was left behind, and the rum we found was used to give it the proper strength. When we returned to the boat-parties before the morning start, this still lukewarm decoction of tea and rum met with great approbation, but the greatest was reserved for the remains of the condensed milk we brought with us, not merely because it was milk, but because to us it was the only milk in the world. Round the remains of the bears we had killed we always found flocks of sea-gulls screaming and quarrelling. Sometimes too we saw bears prowling round the ship at a distance, waiting till their time for plunder came. They seemed to wait for the moment when they should be able to take permanent possession of a fortress which had been so long hostile to their race.
5. But we had the benefit of their company through the earlier part of our journey. May 23, a bear was shot by Weyprecht, and forthwith the gulls, who always turned up whenever there was anything eatable to be got, consumed the remains with astonishing rapidity, even to the bones. On the 26th, when I was about two miles from the advanced parties, fetching something which had been left behind, I suddenly sighted a bear at about 100 paces distant, lying in the snow and apparently asleep. The dogs too got sight of him, and I had much trouble in keeping them in, till I overturned the sledge to act as a breast-work. As the bear rose and stood on his hind legs I fired, but though severely wounded, he managed to crawl away. The dogs, rushing off with the sledge behind them, assailed the wounded animal with a fury which would have been fatal to them, if the sledge had been checked by any obstacle. Torossy specially showed a complete ignorance of how matters stood, and was saved by Jubinal from the paws of his assailant. Whenever the bear came up to the sledge, Jubinal swung round with it, till I came up so close as to make sure of killing it with my last cartridge. On the 31st, Klotz shot a bear which came within ten paces of the boats; but notwithstanding this addition of fresh meat, the stores we brought in the dog-sledge from the ship maintained their charm.
IN THE HARBOUR OF AULIS.
6. A few days after the abandonment of the ship, dark masses of clouds, indicating open water, were seen in the south-west, which doubtless proceeded from the fissures we had observed three weeks before from Cape Brünn. There was good ground, therefore, to hope that we should get beyond the land-ice in a few days, and reach the network of ever-changing “leads.” If we succeeded in this, we might then launch the boats in one of these water-ways, and following the windings of its course between the fields of ice, escape to the south with greater rapidity. Our most sanguine expectations were exceeded when, on the 28th, we reached unexpectedly a small flat island, the very existence of which was unknown to us—Lamont Island. Ascending the highest point of it, we saw an “ice-hole” stretching to the south-east, in which was floating an enormous table-shaped iceberg. This “ice-hole” was not more than a mile from the southern extremity of the island, which was itself still surrounded by forced-up blocks of ice. A driving snow-storm detained us on the 29th on the island, and we contented ourselves with gathering pieces of drift-wood lying on the shore. On the 30th we delayed no longer in our attempt to advance to the edge of the floes and launch our boats. But our calculations were doomed to disappointment; after a toilsome search of several days to find a suitable spot from which to launch our boats, we were convinced that this was for the present impossible, because the edges of the “ice-hole” were surrounded with broad barriers of broken ice, rendering the passage of the boats and sledges impossible. Weyprecht and Klotz had meanwhile started to reconnoitre, and their report on their return showed that sledging, for the present at least, was at an end. The ice-hole before us extended far eastward, and the attempt to outflank it would have led us through walls of ice piled up to the height of fifty feet. We went back, therefore, to the more level surface of ice we had left, and pitched our camp, which we called the “Harbour of Aulis;” for, like the Greeks of old, we had here to wait for more favourable winds. Winds only could open the ice before us and widen the “leads” into a navigable condition. We had never kept at any great distance from our boats while engaged in transporting their heavy loads, but henceforward we were careful to keep close to them, as we had every reason to look for the speedy breaking up and separation of the ice. We were now in 79° 46′ N. L., and therefore only five miles from the ship. Cape Tegetthoff was still distinctly visible on our northern horizon.
7. The space in the boats being insufficient for the crew and all the baggage we had to take, Weyprecht determined to send back Orel and nine men to bring away the jolly-boat, which had been left behind, and I went on in the dog-sledge to help in the work of removing more stores from the ship. It took me just three hours to do the distance, which it had cost the advanced parties eight days to accomplish. The activity of the dogs received a fresh stimulus from their coming on the track of a bear running in the direction of the ship, and when we came within 1,000 yards of it, there we saw our enemy, who, however, thought it more prudent not to await our attack. On the 7th of June the equipment of the jolly-boat was completed, and we returned to our companions with a load of 3 cwt. of boiled beef, shot, and other necessaries. The old track, now well trodden down, proved a great advantage to us. If we had deviated a single step, we should at once have stuck fast, for the character of the snow had altered, and where it lay in masses it had become mere sludge. The temperature, which at the end of May had varied between 25° and 19° F., rose, on June 1, to freezing-point, and remained steady at that point for some time. Even during the weeks of midsummer the temperature rose only a few degrees above freezing-point. On the 3rd of June it rained for the first time, and gradually the weather assumed the character of fogs and driving mists so common to the Arctic Ocean. Clear days were of rare occurrence, and, occasionally only, the sun shone for a few hours. On our return to the boats we found their crews were sitting up and looking out, like young birds in a nest, to see what we had brought from the ship. Tobacco was regarded as a right royal gift, and Dr. Kepes, to whom I gave a shirt-sleeve well stuffed out with the precious weed, regarded himself as a Crœsus.
8. Meantime our longings to launch grew apace; anxiously we looked for the widening of a fissure to enable us to advance southward. We attempted again and again to approach the “ice-hole,” but always found insuperable difficulties to bar the way. The effort to get one of our boats into a dock we had hewn in the ice nearly ended in its loss, and nothing was left to us but to repeat the flank march along the fatal “ice-hole” to the “harbour of Aulis,” there to watch for the breaking-up of the ice. Throughout the day we sat penned up in the boats, worn-out with a feeling of indescribable weariness, each morning longing for the end of the day, and at every meal thinking when the next would be ready. It seemed as if the time for launching the boats would never come. When the hoarse melancholy scream of the burgomaster-gull sounded through the stillness of the night, it seemed like a demon voice from another world, proclaiming that all our efforts would avail nothing to deliver us from the icy power which held us in its grasp. A visit from a bear was a welcome change in the monotony of our life.
9. We were now in the middle of June. Winds from the south still prevailed, and we were close to the ship at the expiration of some weeks; the third part of our provisions was consumed, and of the 250 German miles between the ship and coast of Lapland we had accomplished but one mile and a quarter. If this should continue to be the rate of our progress, we had the prospect of reaching home in twenty years! Yet gloomy as things appeared, there were moments when we were tempted to think that the end of our trials had come at last. Thus, on the 17th of June, an “ice-hole” opened close to us; instantly we prepared to take advantage of it. The day was perfectly clear, and though the temperature in the shade stood at freezing-point (F.), it was to us an African heat. We threw down the walls of ice, levelled a track for the sledges, and that night we stood, with all our baggage, at the edge of the open water, and, on the morning of the 18th of June, we at last succeeded in launching our boats and putting all our baggage on board. The sledges, fastened to the boats, were towed in their wake. The dogs were put in the different boats, Jubinal alone taking kindly to his new abode, seeing doubtless that he would have to sleep no longer on snow. After drinking some tea with the last remains of our rum, we pushed off, steering towards the south, and it was a sure sign of the elevation of our spirits, that three-and-twenty tobacco-pipes were immediately put into active operation. Our progress, however, was but small, scarcely more than one mile an hour, which was fully accounted for by the deep lading of the boats and the towing of the sledges. We might have sailed about three miles, steering in a southerly direction, when a heavy floe stopped us and progress for the time being impossible, we drew the boats up on the ice and went to rest. Soon after snow began to fall and a west wind set in which gradually veered to the south, and the floes were again forced together, and we found all the “leads” closed up when we attempted to move on in the morning. Again we had to wait, but with this difference, that we were now at the mercy of the wind, which might drive us with the floe, on which we happened to be, wherever it pleased.
