When we started it was with Panikpah, lightest of us all and most experienced, in the lead, the few remaining dogs attached to the long broad-runner sledge—the “Morris K. Jesup”—following him, and the rest of the party abreast in widely extended skirmish line, fifty to sixty feet between each two men, some distance behind the sledge. We crossed in silence, each man busy with his thoughts and intent upon his snowshoes. Frankly I do not care for more similar experiences. Once started, we could not stop, we could not lift our snowshoes. It was a matter of constantly and smoothly gliding one past the other with utmost care and evenness of pressure, and from every man as he slid a snowshoe forward, undulations went out in every direction through the thin film incrusting the black water, The sledge was preceded and followed by a broad swell. It was the first and only time in all my Arctic work that I felt doubtful as to the outcome, but when near the middle of the lead the toe of my rear kamik as I slid forward from it broke through twice in succession, I thought to myself “this is the finish,” and when a little later there was a cry from someone in the line, the words sprang from me of themselves: “God help him, which one is it?” but I dared not take my eyes from the steady, even gliding of my snowshoes, and the fascination of the glassy swell at the toes of them.
When we stepped upon the firm ice on the southern side of the lead, the sighs of relief from the two men nearest me in the line on either side were distinctly audible. I was more than glad myself. The cry I had heard had been from one of my men whose toe, like mine, had broken through the ice.
To give an illustration of the temperament of my Eskimos, the temperament which fits them so especially for Arctic work, the Chief Engineer of the Roosevelt was rather a heavy man, weighing something over 235 pounds; and as we stooped untying our snowshoes, one of my men, Ahngmalokto, turned sidewise to me and said, “Pearyaksoah, if the Chief had been with us, he would be down there now (indicating the depths below us), wouldn’t he?” And Ahngmalokto was entirely right.
When we stood up from unfastening our snowshoes, and looked back for a moment before turning our faces southward, a narrow black ribbon cut the frail bridge on which we had crossed, in two. The lead was widening again and we had just made it.
The ice on the southern side of the lead was an awful mess, and we climbed to the top of the highest upheaved mass of it to see if we could make out any practicable route through. To and beyond the horizon extended such a hell of shattered ice as I had never seen before and hope never to see again, a conglomeration of fragments from the size of paving stones to literally and without exaggeration the dome of the Capitol, all rounded by the terrific grinding they had received between the jaws of the “big lead” when its edges were together and shearing past each other. It did not seem as if anything not possessing wings could negotiate it, and I turned to my men to say a few encouraging words, but caught a glint in their eyes and a setting of the jaws, such as I had noticed before when they and I had been mixed up with a roaring herd of infuriated bull walrus or facing a wounded polar bear, and I shut my mouth and said nothing, for I knew words were not necessary.
During this march and the next and part of the next, we stumbled desperately southward through this frozen Hades, constantly falling and receiving numerous uncomfortable bruises. My uncushioned stumps seemed to catch it especially, and it is no exaggeration to say that at our first camp my jaws were actually aching from the viciousness with which I had repeatedly ground my teeth together during the march.
On the next march after we emerged from the southern edge of the zone of shattered ice, we made out the distant snow-clad summits of the Greenland mountains, and this improved the spirits of my men. One or two of them had said while waiting north of the lead, that they could see land clouds from one of the high pinnacles close by the lead, but I could make out nothing, and the other Eskimos were not sure of it. There could be no mistake in the matter now, and from here on the going improved. There were very few leads and these narrow and finally disappearing, there was no perceptible movement of the ice, and I recognised that we were now under the shelter of Cape Morris Jesup, and no longer in danger of drifting past it and out into the East Greenland Sea.
In the next march after sighting the land, we came upon the trunk of a tree embedded in a large floe. The part projecting from the ice was about nine or ten feet long, and the diameter at the ice level some ten or twelve inches. The wood was soft, apparently fir, and a small specimen was taken to permit of possible identification later on.
The land seemed bewitched and appeared every night to move away from us as far as we had advanced the day before. Slowly, however, its detail sharpened, and I headed directly for the rolling bit of shore at Cape Neumeyer, where I was positive we would find a few hare and hoped that we might find musk-oxen round in Mascart Inlet.
Finally, we dragged ourselves on to the ice-foot at Cape Neumeyer and inside of an hour had four hare, and very delicious they were, even though unassisted by such frills as salt or fire.