ESKIMO DRAWINGS MADE AT STORM CAMP
I quote from my Journal:
March 17th.—A glorious day, clear as a crystal and the sun is shining nearly twelve hours. The land distinctly visible, but not as far away as I could wish. The Captain and his party pulled out early and Clark and his party soon after. I brought up the rear a little later with my party.
After working through about a mile of fearfully rough ice, we came out upon what looked as if it might be (and God knows I hoped it was) the comparatively unbroken homogeneous ice of the central Polar Sea. A beautiful sight, the level, slightly drifted snow plain stretching away apparently infinitely to the North.
March 18th.—Another glorious day but bitterly cold, the brandy remaining frozen and the petroleum white and viscid; my dogs very tired and unambitious. It is aggravating not to be travelling faster in such weather and going, and it is not pleasant to be at the rear attending to loose ends, but I have the consolation of knowing that my advance parties are, or ought to be, a good distance ahead, and that before long I shall be in my proper place at the very head of the line, breasting the air that comes direct from the pole uncontaminated by any form of life. At this camp one new sledge was made out of two broken ones.
And so the work went on, the parties going and coming, myself in touch with and pushing those ahead of me and pulling those in the rear, so to speak, in a position where I could straighten out any little hitches and keep the distribution of the parties such as to minimise the work of igloo building, and prevent confusion rising when two or three parties got bunched together. It was brute hard work and bitter cold. The brandy continued frozen and oil viscid, but everyone was eager and cheerful. The Captain, Doctor, and Clark on the qui vive all the time, and the Eskimos hustling with their usual willingness. On the 22d, at my camp on a big floe selected for this purpose, cache number two was established. Although the work was not moving with the speed which I could have desired, it was moving with such apparent smoothness that I constantly feared some insurmountable obstacle was waiting for us just ahead, and yet I felt that it might be that twenty years of work, disappointment and sacrifice would perhaps be allowed to win. During the night of the 21st at this camp the wind came on fresh from the west, blowing with distinct fierceness all night and day of the 22d and causing pronounced changes in the ice. Our big floe cracked and rumbled frequently and the walls of our igloo were split but not so seriously as to be beyond repair. Wind shelters were constructed for the dogs and they were double rationed. Although a bitter day, the 22d was the first day since I left land that I was held up by the weather, and I could have travelled on this day had there been any necessity for it, but to have done so would only have piled my party up on top of the Captain’s, who was now one march ahead of me, and given us unnecessary and disagreeable labour and discomfort in building an additional igloo in the wind and driving snow. When we left this camp, I found, as I had expected, that the storm had caused pronounced changes in the ice. Some two miles from camp a newly formed lane of water a hundred yards or more wide gave us some trouble to negotiate, and at two other places enormous pressure leads had been formed across the Captain’s trail. The northern ice in every instance had shifted to the eastward.
Several narrow leads that the Captain’s party passed, and on which the intense cold had already formed young ice gave us no trouble. Our camp at the end of this march was located in a hollow between two enormous hummocks on a large old floe.
I quote from my Journal:
Though I fight against it continuously, I find it impossible under conditions like to-day not to indulge in some thoughts of success as I tramp along, and I get so impatient that I do not want to stop at the igloos but keep right on and on. At night I can hardly sleep waiting for the dogs to get rested sufficiently to start again. Then I think, what will be the effect if some insuperable obstacle, open water, absolutely impossible ice, or an enormous fall of snow knock me out now when everything looks so encouraging? Will it break my heart, or will it simply numb me into insensibility? And then I think, what’s the odds, in two months at the longest the agony will be over, and I shall know one way or the other, and then whichever way it turns out, before the leaves fall I shall be back on Eagle Island again, going over the well-known places with Jo and the children, and listening to the birds, the wind in the trees, and the sound of lapping waves (do such things really exist on this frozen planet?).