From Etah, August 20, the ship sailed along the coast, landing Esquimos at the different settlements, and on the 23rd of August at two a. m., we met the Schooner Jeanie, of St. John, N. F., commanded by Samuel Bartlett. The schooner was supplied with provisions and coal for the relief of the Roosevelt, and was executing the plan of the Peary Arctic Club.
There was mail aboard her and we had our first tidings of home and friends in a twelve-month. From newspaper clippings I learned that the British Antarctic Expedition, commanded by Sir Ernest H. Shackleton, had reached within 111 miles of the South Pole.
The mail contained good news for all but one of us. Mr. Borup, in his bunk above the Professor's, read his letters, and in the course of his reading was heard to emit a deep sigh, then to utter an agonizing groan. Prof. MacMillan, thinking that Borup had received bad news indeed, endeavored to console him, and at the same time asked what was the bad news, feeling sure it could be nothing less than the death of Colonel Borup or some other close relative of his.
"What is the matter, George? Tell me."
"HARVARD BEAT YALE!"
The Roosevelt, accompanied by her consort, sailed south to North Star Bay and while entering the harbor ran ashore. Late in the afternoon, however, the rising tide floated her. While waiting for the tide, a party of six, I among the number, went ashore and visited the Danish Missionary settlement established there, the Esquimos acting as our interpreters, we being unable to speak Danish and the missionaries being unable to speak English. It was in North Star Bay that the coal and provisions from the Jeanie were transferred to the Roosevelt.
Aboard the Jeanie, there was a young Esquimo man, Mene, who for the past twelve years had lived in New York City, but, overcome by a strong desire to live again in his own country, had been sent north by his friends in the States. He was almost destitute, having positively nothing in the way of an equipment to enable him to withstand the rigors of the country, and was no more fitted for the life he was to take up than any boy of eighteen or twenty would be, for he was but a little boy when he first left North Greenland. However, Commander Peary ordered that he be given a plentiful supply of furs to keep him warm, food, ammunition and loading outfit, traps and guns, but, I believe, he would have gladly returned with us, for it was a wistful farewell he made, and an Esquimo's farewell is usually very barren of pathos.
Mr. Whitney transferred his augmented equipment to the Jeanie, intending to remain with her down the Labrador, for her Captain had agreed to use every effort to help Mr. Whitney secure at least one polar bear.
Cape York was reached on the morning of August 25, and from the two Esquimo families, living at the extreme point of the Cape, we obtained the mail which had been left there by Captain Adams of the Dundee Whaling Fleet Morning Star. Our letters, although they bore no more recent a date than that of March 23, 1909, were eagerly read.
At Cape York we landed the last of the Esquimos. The decks were now cleared. The boats were securely lashed in their davits, and nine a. m., August 26, in a gale of wind, the Roosevelt put out to sea, homeward-bound, but not yet out of danger, for the gale increased so considerably that the Roosevelt was forced to lay to under reefed foresail, in the lee of the middle pack, until the 29th, when the storm subsided and the ship got under way again.