PETERSEN’S GRAVE, OVERLOOKING FLOEBERG BEACH
On the 25th, portions of four hunting parties from the Lake Hazen region came in, bringing reports of a bag of one hundred and forty-four head of musk-oxen and deer. Following the return of these parties the dogs died rapidly, the number one night reaching ten. It was evident that prompt action must be taken, and in three days one hundred and two dogs, twenty adult Eskimo men and women and six children were sent into the field in addition to those already out. From this time until the 7th of February, the dogs and the greater portion of the Eskimos remained in the Lake Hazen region, a portion of the men coming to the ship during the full moon of each month with sledge loads of meat, and returning with tea, sugar, oil and biscuit. With their departure the ship was almost deserted, daylight was nearly gone and the winter may be said to have commenced, though for convenience it was assumed to begin on the 1st of November when the winter routine of two meals a day went into effect, partly as a measure of economy, and partly to leave the short and very rapidly decreasing hours of twilight in the middle of the day uninterrupted for work.
The ice outside of us was constantly in motion, more or less active with the currents of the tides, and about the middle of October the young ice incessantly forming between the large floes became of such thickness, that its crushing up rendered the movement of the ice very audible. First as a loud murmur, later with increasing cold as a hoarse roar, sometimes continuous, sometimes intermittent, like heavy surf upon the shore, which kept the air vibrating, and coming as it did through the darkness and frequently snow-filled air, contained a peculiarly savage and foreboding note. On the 31st, after dinner, I climbed to the summit of our lookout hill and sat for some time upon a projecting rock. A fine snow was falling amidst a semi-luminous fog, through which just the outlines of the Roosevelt loomed. I quote from my journal as follows:
The Roosevelt lies below me, on one side the frozen shore of the Arctic “Ultima Thule,” on the other the great white disk of the central Polar Sea with its mysteries and its terrors, its story of heroic effort, and its still unconquered secret. No other ship has been so far north in this region and but one other ship has reached so high a latitude anywhere in the entire circuit of the Polar Sea, and that one did not attain her vantage ground by stress of continued battle, as has the Roosevelt, but drifted to her position—helpless and inert in the grasp of the ice.
Yet the Roosevelt lies there, sturdy but graceful, her slender masts piercing the fog and falling snow; a nimbus-circled glow of light at every port, and a broad bar of yellow luminance from the galley lamp shining forward over her and out through the mist, just as if she were a steamer anchored in the North River in a foggy night.
As I look at her a whole series of pictures rises before me. The bright days at Bucksport, Maine, when I and one other watched her grow into sturdy shape under the fostering care of her builder, Captain Dix; the launching, when Mrs. Peary, smashing an ice-encased bottle of wine against the steel-clad stern, christened her “Roosevelt”; New York Harbour, with the tribute to her mission, from all the surrounding craft; that black night in the straits of Belle Isle; the fog-shrouded swell of the North Atlantic and Davis Strait; the familiar black cliffs of Cape York rising directly over her bow; the perfect summer day at Bache Peninsula; the battleroyal with the huge floes as we crossed and recrossed Kennedy and Robeson Channels; the towering cliffs of Cape Constitution, Franklin Island and Polaris Promontory as she breasted the fierce north wind blowing down the Channel, with her engines stubbornly throbbing “Northward, Northward, Northward”; and finally the view that gray September morning when we rounded Rawson and opened up the ice-bound northern shore of Grant Land, with the wide-stretching ice-fields of the central Polar Sea fading away under the northern horizon.
CHAPTER IV
THROUGH THE “GREAT NIGHT” ON THE SHORES OF THE CENTRAL POLAR SEA
The winter, which for convenience I assume to comprise the time from November 1st to February 7th, the date of the return of the last of the field parties, was marked by practically the same ice and atmospheric conditions as the fall, accompanied of course by a greater degree of cold and almost entire absence of light.
Through all its vicissitudes and against continued stress of wind and ice, the Roosevelt clung to her moorings against the ice-foot, presenting a marked contrast to the usual pictures of Arctic ships in winter quarters. Having no topmasts to house, the ship’s slender masts and light but effective rigging rose aloft just as they did in the summer time. With decks uncovered and only the houses banked in with snow, at a little distance in the dim light the ship’s general appearance was much as when afloat. One very distinctive, very salient feature, was the galley lamp, the “eye of the Roosevelt” as it was called, which night and day from early October, when the sun left us, until early March when it returned, shone through the galley window, lighting the main deck and piercing the darkness, the falling snow, the fog, for a considerable distance on either bow. This beam of yellow light showed clearly from the top of the lookout hill which some of us climbed every practicable day, and was visible to every returning party from Hecla or the hunting fields of the interior as soon as it rounded Cape Sheridan.
To anyone given to a belief in such things there were several encouraging omens about the ship’s position. The Roosevelt’s nose pointed persistently almost true north, the bright yellow eye looked incessantly to the northward and the beaten sledge road from the ship to all points of communication led north along the ice-foot.