One who studies the enormous volume of literature in which the Arctic story is told, scarcely can fail to be impressed by the pertinacity with which men, after one experience in the polar regions, return again and again to the quest for adventure and honors in the ice-bound zone. The subaltern on the expedition of to-day, has no sooner returned than he sets about organizing a new expedition, of which he may be commander. The commander goes into the ice time and again until, perhaps, the time comes when he does not come out. The leader of a rescue party becomes the leader of an exploring expedition, which in its turn, usually comes to need rescue.
So we find Dr. Kane, who was surgeon of an expedition for the rescue of Franklin, commanding four years later the brig "Advance," and voyaging northward through Baffin's Bay. Narrowly, indeed, he escaped the fate of the man in the search for whom he had gained his first Arctic experience. His ship, beset by ice, and sorely wounded, remained fixed and immovable for two years. At first the beleaguered men made sledge journeys in every direction for exploratory purposes, but the second year they sought rather by determined, though futile dashes across the rugged surface of the frozen sea, to find some place of refuge, some hope of emancipation from the thraldom of the ice. The second winter all of the brig except the hull, which served for shelter, was burned for fuel; two men had died, and many were sick of scurvy, the sledge dogs were all dead, and the end of the provisions was in sight. In May, 1855, a retreat in open boats, covering eighty-five days and over fifty miles of open sea, brought the survivors to safety.
When men have looked into the jaws of death, it might be thought they would strenuously avoid such another view. But there is an Arctic fever as well as an Arctic chill, and, once in the blood, it drags its victim irresistibly to the frozen North, until perhaps he lays his bones among the icebergs, cured of all fevers forever. And so, a year or two after the narrow escape of Dr. Kane, the surgeon of his expedition, Dr. Isaac I. Hayes, was hard at work fitting out an expedition of which he was to be commander, to return to Baffin's Bay and Smith sound, and if possible, fight its way into that open sea, which Dr. Hayes long contended surrounded the North Pole. No man in the Kane expedition had encountered greater perils, or withstood more cruel suffering than Dr. Hayes. A boat trip which he made in search of succor, has passed into Arctic history as one of the most desperate expedients ever adopted by starving men. But at the first opportunity he returned again to the scenes of his peril and his pain. His expedition, though conducted with spirit and determination, was not of great scientific value, as he was greatly handicapped in his observations by the death of his astronomer, who slipped through thin ice into the sea, and froze to death in his water-soaked garments.
A most extraordinary record of daring and suffering in Arctic exploration was made by Charles F. Hall, to whom I have already referred. Beginning life as an engraver in Cincinnati, he became engrossed in the study of Arctic problems, as the result of reading the stories of the early navigators. Every book bearing on the subject in the library of his native city, was eagerly read, and his enthusiasm infected some of the wealthy citizens, who gathered for his use a very considerable collection of volumes. Mastering all the literature of the Arctic, he determined to undertake himself the arduous work of the explorer. Taking passage on a whaler, he spent several years among the Esquimaux, living in their crowded and fetid igloos, devouring the blubber and uncooked fish that form their staple articles of diet, wearing their garb of furs, learning to navigate the treacherous kayak in tossing seas, to direct the yelping, quarreling team of dogs over fields of ice as rugged as the edge of some monstrous saw, studying the geography so far as known of the Arctic regions, perfecting himself in all the arts by which man has contested the supremacy of that land with the ice-king. In 1870, with the assistance of the American Geographical Society, Hall induced the United States Government to fit him out an expedition to seek the North Pole—the first exploring party ever sent out with that definite purpose. The steamer "Polaris," a converted navy tug, which General Greely says was wholly unfit for Arctic service, was given him, and a scientific staff supplied by the Government, for though Hall had by painstaking endeavor qualified himself to lead an expedition, he had not enjoyed a scientific education. Neither was he a sailor like DeLong, nor a man trained to the command of men like Greely. Enthusiasm and natural fitness with him took the place of systematic training. But with him, as with so many others in this world, the attainment of the threshold of his ambition proved to be but opening the door to death. By a sledge journey from his ship he reached Cape Brevoort, above latitude 82, at that time the farthest north yet attained, but the exertion proved too much for him, and he had scarcely regained his ship when he died. His name will live, however, in the annals of the Arctic, for his contributions to geographical knowledge were many and precious.
The men who survived him determined to continue his work, and the next summer two fought their way northward a few miles beyond the point attained by Hall. But after this achievement the ship was caught in the ice-pack, and for two months drifted about, helpless in that unrelenting grasp. Out of this imprisonment the explorers escaped through a disaster, which for a time put all their lives in the gravest jeopardy, and the details of which seem almost incredible. In October, when the long twilight which precedes the polar night, had already set in, there came a fierce gale, accompanied by a tossing, roaring sea. The pack, racked by the surges, which now raised it with a mighty force, and then rolling on, left it to fall unsupported, began to go to pieces. The whistling wind accelerated its destruction, driving the floes far apart, heaping them up against the hull of the ship until the grinding and the prodigious pressure opened her seams and the water rushed in. The cry that the ship was sinking rung along the decks, and all hands turned with desperate energy to throwing out on the ice-floe to windward, sledges, provisions, arms, records—everything that could be saved against the sinking of the ship, which all thought was at hand. Nineteen of the ship's company were landed on the floe to carry the material away from its edge to a place of comparative safety. The peril seemed so imminent that the men in their panic performed prodigious feats of strength—lifting and handling alone huge boxes, which at ordinary times, would stagger two men. A driving, whirling snowstorm added to the gloom, confusion, and terror of the scene, shutting out almost completely those on the ice from the view of those still on the ship. In the midst of the work the cry was raised that the floes were parting, and with incredible rapidity the ice broke away from the ship on every side, so that communication between those on deck and those on the floe was instantly cut off by a broad interval of black and tossing water, while the dark and snow-laden air cut off vision on every side. The cries of those on the ice mingled with those from the fast vanishing ship, for each party thought itself in the more desperate case. The ice was fast going to pieces, and boats were plying in the lanes of water thus opened, picking up those clinging to smaller cakes of ice and transporting them to the main floe. On the ship the captain's call had summoned all hands to muster, and they gazed on each other in dumb despair as they saw how few of the ship's company remained. All were sent to the pumps, for the water in the hold was rising with ominous rapidity. The cry rang out that the steam-pumps must be started if the ship was to be saved, but long months had passed since any fire had blazed under those boilers, and to get up steam was a work of hours. With tar-soaked oakum and with dripping whale blubber the engineer strove to get the fires roaring, the while the men on deck toiled with desperate energy at the hand-pumps. But the water gained on them. The ship sunk lower and lower in the black ocean, until a glance over the side could tell all too plainly that she was going to her fate. Now the water begins to ooze through the cracks in the engine-room floor, and break in gentle ripples about the feet of the firemen. If it rises much higher it will flood the fire-boxes, and then all will be over, for there is not one boat left on the ship—all were landed on the now invisible floe. But just as all hope was lost there came a faint hissing of steam, the pumps began slowly moving, and then settled down into their monotonous "chug-chug," the sweetest sound, that day, those desperate mariners had ever heard. They were saved by the narrowest of chances.