“‘’Twas on the Arctic polar pack
I smoked my last cigar.’”
Well, the merriment did not last long. In about an hour we saw before us a rising hillside, the snow sloping up to an elevation of twenty feet or more and having drifted in thick mounds above and below it. We halted. Goritz plunged forward and struggled to the top of the eminence. We noticed him turning from side to side, leaning forward, looking backward too over our heads, tramping up and down like a dog on a lost scent. Then he waved his arms. We understood his summons. I watched the dogs, and Hopkins and the Professor ran on, tumbling into the white heaps, apparently hitting slippery surfaces below, which sent them sprawling in a splutter of white dust. The three men at length stood together and their gesticulations made black strokes against a white-gray sky. There was rain coming. I knew we had struck a break; there was a bad hole ahead with a poor chance of getting over it. Slowly the three returned, and it was Hopkins who gave the first intimation of the difficulty.
“Mr. Erickson, we’ve been a little ‘previous’ in our expectations. I think perhaps that psalm of joy was a mistaken indulgence on my part, or else I unconsciously hit the nail on the head and—our last cigar will be smoked here and a few other last things may happen along with it. Go up and look at the scenery.”
He motioned to the snowhill. I did not need the invitation, I was already on my way, noticing Goritz’s gravity and the absence of the Professor’s static grin. And in the interval that may be allowed between my first step and my surmounting the snow bank covering the topsy-turvy abattis of ice blocks, a paragraph of explanation may be wisely inserted.
Anyone familiar with experiences of Arctic voyagers in this western Arctic sea, as for instance the thrilling pages of DeLong’s diary in the disastrous “Jeannette” expedition, will recall the fact of the broken condition of the polar pack in the summer, and its hitherto almost invariably pictured confusion of peaks, ridges and pits. Such a person would question the truthfulness of the few previous pages and note incredulously the absence of any remonstrance on the part of the “Astrum’s” officers at our foolhardy undertaking. There was remonstrance enough however. We were told we could not live in the broken, smashing, surging ice; that there was no even ice floor; that everything was uneasy, perilous, shifting, open; that we should wait until winter had solidified the mass, and then “just hike it north.”
And we knew pretty well ourselves just what everyone else had seen and recorded. But we took the chance, and by a perfect miracle of opportunity found there was, outside of Point Barrow a marvelous field of ice suited for our progress. (The real word turned out to be occupancy.)
Well, I got to the top of the snow pile, and my heart beat a rapid retreat to my boots at the sight before me. Ice, ice, ice, but everywhere in blocks smiting each other, rolling, rocking, jamming, and all together crying aloud in a jargon of groans, shivers, reports, grumbles, growls, like packs of quarreling dogs or wolves. It was a disconcerting, discouraging spectacle, and it stretched endlessly away on every side. And in the middle distance, looming larger each instant, rose a floeberg that came on, shoving to the right and left the ice shards about it, resistlessly, as the steel prow of a cruiser or battleship might sweep a flotilla of boats and barges from the path of its imperious progress.
Its pinnacle blazed in the sun; its prow, a pointed ice foot, pierced the obstacles before it with a rattling discharge of rending and splitting; then came an ominous silence and the powerful ice ram rushed down upon us through softer or smaller particles that brushed to each side in parting waves. A few minutes more and its collision with our floe would follow, and then—? I saw too quickly we could make no headway in that hurly-burly of disorder, and then the thought flashed on me that in the pathway of this rushing dreadnought of the north lay death and destruction.
I leaped down the pressure ridge and regaining my feet at its base ran on shouting to the others, who were arrested by my sudden return, “Back! Back! Back!” waving to them to get away. Goritz understood, the rest followed him. The dogs were wheeled round, the crack of the long whips sounded in their ears, and the sting of the lash tingled on their backs. The lumbering “Pluto” swept in a half circle, and was shot along the trail we had just made towards the south. Perhaps we had gained a hundred yards, when the jolt came. It threw us on our faces and upset the dogs. It came with a queer, smothered roar that sharpened into a long, rending shriek; the ice beneath shook with the blow, and then—parted! A seam opened below the “Pluto,” and water spouting from underneath covered the rearward dogs. The Professor and Hopkins were on the separated section. They sprang forward, while Goritz jumped to his feet in a flash, and played his whip like a demon on the dogs who seemed, to my eyes, tied up in its rapid convolutions.