CHAPTER XI
CLOSE QUARTERS WITH THE ICE
That no time should be lost on the upward voyage, and also that my Eskimos might not have too much leisure in which to consider the dangers which constantly threatened their floating home, I kept them all busy. The men were put to work making sledges and dog-harness, so that when we reached Cape Sheridan—if we reached it,—we might be ready for the fall hunting. I had on board the raw materials, and each Eskimo built a sledge for himself, putting his best work into it. This pride of the Eskimo in personal achievement has been of great service to me, and has been encouraged by special prizes and special praise.
The Eskimo women were put to work on our winter garments as soon as possible after leaving Etah, so that, in the event of our losing the ship, every man would have a comfortable outfit. In the North we wear practically the same clothing as the Eskimos, including the fur stockings with the fur on the inside. Otherwise we should have frozen feet often instead of only occasionally. A man who could not live without silk stockings would not be likely to attempt the North Pole. As we had altogether, including the Eskimos, sixty-nine persons on board the ship—men, women, and children—it will be seen that there was considerable sewing to be done. Old garments had to be overhauled and mended, and new ones made.
The worst of the ice fighting did not begin immediately, and the new members of the expedition, MacMillan, Borup, and Dr. Goodsell, were at first much interested in watching the Eskimo women at their sewing. They sit on anything that is convenient, a chair, a platform, or the floor. In their own quarters they remove their footgear, put up one foot, and hold one end of the fabric between their toes, sewing a seam over and over from them, instead of toward them, as our women do. The foot of an Eskimo woman is a sort of third hand, and the work is gripped between the great toe and the second toe.
The Eskimo women have great confidence in their own skill at garment-making, and they take suggestions from the inexperienced white men with a good-natured and superior tolerance. When one of the northern belles was shaping a garment for Bartlett to wear on the spring sledge journey, he anxiously urged her to give him plenty of room. Her reply was a mixed Eskimo and English equivalent for:
"You just trust me, Captain! When you get out on the road to the Nor Pol, you'll need a draw-string in your jacket, and not gussets." She had seen me and my men come back from previous sledge journeys, and she knew the effect of long continued fatigue and scanty rations in making a man's clothes fit him loosely.
The Eskimos had the run of the ship, but the port side of the forward deck house was given to them entirely. A wide platform three or four feet high, made of packing boxes, was placed around the wall of the deck house for them to sleep on. Each family had its own quarters, partitioned off by planks, and screened in front by a curtain. They cooked their own meat and whatever else they desired, though Percy, the ship's steward, provided them with tea and coffee. If they had baked beans, or hash, or anything of that kind from the ship's store, it was cooked for them by Percy; and he also furnished them with his famous bread, which for lightness and crispness is unsurpassed in the round world.
The Eskimos seemed always to be eating. There was no table for the crowd of them, as they do not incline to regular meal hours; but each family ate by itself, as appetite dictated. I gave them pots, pans, plates, cups, saucers, knives, forks, and oil stoves. They had access to the ship's galley, day and night; but Percy was always amiable, and the Eskimos at length learned not to wash their hands in the water in which he purposed to boil meat.
The third day out the weather was villainous. It rained steadily, and there was a strong southerly wind. The group of dogs on the main deck stood about with low, dejected heads and dripping tails. Only at feeding time did they take courage even to fight or snap at one another. Most of the time the ship was stationary, or drifting slowly with the ice toward the mouth of Dobbin Bay. When at last the ice loosened, we made about ten miles in open water—then the wheel rope broke, and we had to stop for repairs, unable to take advantage of the stretch of water still before us. The captain's remarks when the strands of that cable parted I will leave to the imagination of the reader. Had the accident occurred at a time when the ship was between two big floes, the fortress of the North Pole might still remain uncaptured. It was after midnight before we got under way, and half an hour later we were stopped again by the impassable ice.