The route chosen by our guide was to follow the shore ice around until the harbor was reached. This was a very circuitous and dangerous road, as in the darkness one would frequently pitch headlong over a steep precipice upon the snow beneath. My trousers were so stiff that I could not bend my knee or lift my foot high enough to clear ordinary impediments, and I fell very often. It was fortunate for me that I never fell upon the shore ice beneath the cliff, for in many places it was very deep, and I could not see where I trod. When I commenced falling I never knew where I would alight, though I usually brought up in some friendly snow-drift. At last all the Inuits grew so impatient to reach the ships that they left Henry and me to find our way as best we could, and pushed on as rapidly as their better vision and greater familiarity with the country would permit. In half an hour from the time they left us they had reached the harbor; but with their accustomed indifference to the comfort of others they failed to say that two "kodlunars" (white men) were still out upon the island—one of them too weak and frozen to keep up with them. As soon as the officers learned the fact from them, Captain Barry despatched "Domino," one of the natives with his ship, to find us and bring us to the vessel. We saw a lantern which he carried, and, coming down from the cliff upon the smooth ice, were overjoyed to find ourselves in the harbor and but a few hundred yards from the ships. We shouted at the top of our voices, and "Domino" ran at once to us. I never was so glad to see any one in my life, for I felt that the terrible ordeal through which I had passed was at an end. We were soon in the warm cabin of the 'Eothen', where my frozen garments were removed and warm, dry "kodlunar" clothing substituted. Were it not for the previous training we had undergone in igloo life, I could not have survived the hardships of that day. As it was, I felt very little inconvenience, except from a severe cold, which always follows a change such as moving from an igloo into the heated air on shipboard. My appetite was enormous, and it seemed as if I could not eat enough of the generous fare of our hosts. I soon regained my usual robust health, and gained flesh at the rate of a pound a day for three weeks.
In the harbor, besides the 'Eothen', and the 'Abbie Bradford', the latter commanded by Captain Fisher, we found the 'Abbott Lawrence', Captain Mozier, and the 'Isabella', Captain Garvin, all except the 'Eothen' being from New Bedford. The ships were all comfortably housed with boards, and so banked up with snow that ordinary coal fires made them uncomfortably warm. It was painful to see, however, that scurvy had broken out in the fleet, and each vessel has had an average of half a dozen cases during our stay with them. They had more than the usual amount of fresh meat at this season, and it was difficult to account for the unusually large percentage of scurvy, unless Captain Fisher's theory were the correct one. He attributed it to the unusual severity of the fall and early winter-season, which, he said, was unprecedented in his experience of over fourteen years in these waters. The ships were driven into winter quarters nearly a month previous to the usual time by a succession of gales and heavy weather, which occasioned the loss of one vessel of the fleet—the brig 'A. J. Ross' of New Bedford, Captain Sinclair, which went ashore near Cape Kendall, on the eastern coast of Rowe's Welcome during the latter part of August. Though scurvy had been so prevalent it had not been so severe as usual, and as yet the graveyard on "Deadmen's Island," on the outer harbor, had received no accession from the crews. The successful treatment of the disease seems to be to compel the patient to eat abundantly of raw walrus or seal meat, and to take moderate exercise, at first under shelter and then in the open air.
[Illustration: THE SHIPS IN WINTER QUARTERS.]
The officers of the vessels treated us with the most unbounded generosity, and readily placed at our disposal whatever they could spare that we required. The wreck of the 'A. J. Ross' had thrown the care of another crew upon them, and yet they could find plenty to add to the comfort of those who have another season in this climate and a long and severe journey before them. Captain Sinclair, though himself so great a sufferer by the loss of a vessel in which nearly his whole means were invested, had been a large contributor toward the search party. They expected to be frozen in here till about the 1st of June, when they could saw a channel through the ice to the clear water beyond Deadmen's Island. Marble Island has been the winter quarters of whaling vessels for many years, though not altogether a safe harbor. In the winter of 1872 two vessels were wrecked here, the 'Ansel Gibbs' and the 'Oray Taft'. The hulk of the latter still lay upon the shore of the inner harbor, but the 'Ansel Gibbs' broke up outside and had long since gone to pieces. The graves of a number of their crews are in the graveyard by the sea. Upon the bald face of a rock near the outside harbor is a list of names written in red paint nearly a century ago; but whether a visitor's list or a gigantic tombstone to record those who perished here long ago by shipwreck is unknown. Upon the north-east end of the island, partly hidden by moss, is a quantity of soft coal, which was probably left here by one of the early Arctic explorers.
The loss of so many vessels in these waters is chiefly attributable to the imperfections in the admiralty charts. The coast line is altogether wrong, and Marble Island is laid down several degrees west of its actual position. Lieutenant Schwatka and Henry Klutschak made careful surveys from Cape Fullerton to the island, and made a chart which has already proved useful to the whalers.
But our more immediate business was with Captain Potter. I asked him if he remembered Captain Barry's getting a Franklin spoon while with him on the 'Glacier', and he said he had never heard anything about it until he read in the newspapers that Barry had sent one to Sir John Franklin's niece, Miss Craycroft, which surprised him very much. He further said that he (Potter) had received three spoons at that time, one of which mysteriously disappeared shortly afterward. The published description of Barry's spoon corresponded exactly with the one he had lost, even to its being broken off near the bowl and mended with copper, as was the one he had received from Sinuksook's wife. Captain Potter further said, that to one who had lived with the Esquimaux, and acquired the pigeon English they use in communicating with the whalers in Hudson's Bay, and contrasted it with the language they use in conversation with each other, the assertion of Captain Barry, that he overheard them talking about books and understood them, was supremely ridiculous. There is probably no white man in the Arctic, or who ever visited it, that would understand them under such circumstances unless it be one or two in Cumberland, who have lived with them for fifteen or twenty years.
In this crucible of fact the famous spoon melted. So far as Captain
Barry and his clews were concerned, we had come on a fool's errand.
CHAPTER III.
OUR DOGS.
There being no cairn, as a matter of course there was no guide to conduct us to it; but instead of returning to New York from Camp Daly, as he would have been justified in doing, Lieutenant Schwatka determined to make the summer search in King William Land, in order to find the records, if possible; or, at any rate to so conduct the search as to make it final and conclusive of the Franklin expedition. Lieutenant Schwatka was much impressed with the statements made by Nutargeark, especially as this native's intelligence and veracity were tested by his pointing out correctly upon the map the location of cairns which he had seen, including one at Cape Herschel, built by Dease and Simpson in 1839, and the spot where McClintock saw a boat with skeletons. Both Hall and McClintock account for the fact of so few bodies being found, by the presumption that Captain Crozier and his men followed the shore ice down, and, dying there, fell through into the water when the ice melted during the summer. Nutargeark, however, said that there were plenty of bodies lying upon the ground on King William Land, which would be invisible in winter from being covered with snow. To verify these statements was the purpose of our journey.