During this march the dogs were much excited at one time by the scent of something to windward, and for three or four miles struck such a pace that I found it difficult to keep ahead of them even by running, so stepped one side and let them pass. At the time I thought it might possibly be a bear and was strongly tempted to go in pursuit. Later I was very glad that I did not, as the scent noticed by the dogs was undoubtedly from a seal in an open lead.
As we advanced the character of the ice improved, the floes became apparently larger and the rafters more infrequent, but the cracks and narrow leads increased and were nearly all active. These cracks were uniformly at right angles to our course, and the ice on the northern side was moving more rapidly eastward than that on the southern. Our pace was heart-breaking, particularly so as we were on scant rations.
As dogs gave out, unable to keep the pace, they were fed to the others. April 20th we came into a region of open leads, trending nearly north and south, and the ice motion became more pronounced. Hurrying on between these leads a forced march was made. Then we slept a few hours, and starting again soon after midnight, pushed on till a little before noon of the 21st.
I should have liked to leave everything at this camp and push on for the one march with one empty sledge and one or two companions, but I did not dare to do this owing to the condition of the ice, and was glad as we advanced that I had not attempted it. I do not know if any of my Eskimos would have remained behind. In this last spurt we crossed fourteen cracks and narrow leads, which almost without exception, were in motion.
When my observations were taken and rapidly figured, they showed that we had reached 87° 6′ north latitude, and had at last beaten the record, for which I thanked God with as good a grace as possible, though I felt that the mere beating of the record was but an empty bauble compared with the splendid jewel on which I had set my heart for years, and for which, on this expedition, I had almost literally been straining my life out.
It is perhaps an interesting illustration of the uncertainty or complexity of human nature that my feelings at this time were anything but the feelings of exultation which it might be supposed that I should have. As a matter of fact, they were just the reverse, and my bitter disappointment combined perhaps with a certain degree of physical exhaustion from our killing pace on scant rations, gave me the deepest fit of the blues that I experienced during the entire expedition.
As can perhaps be imagined, I was more than anxious to keep on, but as I looked at the drawn faces of my comrades, at the skeleton figures of my few remaining dogs, at my nearly empty sledges, and remembered the drifting ice over which we had come and the unknown quantity of the “big lead” between us and the nearest land, I felt that I had cut the margin as narrow as could reasonably be expected. I told my men we should turn back from here.
My flags were flung out from the summit of the highest pinnacle near us, and a hundred feet or so beyond this I left a bottle containing a brief record and a piece of the silk flag which six years before I had carried around the northern end of Greenland.
Then we started to return to our last igloo, making no camp here.