THE WONDERFUL ESCAPE.
OUR voyagers needed all the strength and courage which the timely capture of the great seal had given them. They had drifted into a warmer sea, and windy March was well upon them. Their floe began to herald its fast approaching dissolution. The weary and anxious drifters were startled by day, and awakened suddenly by night, by a rumbling, mingled with fearful grindings and crashes underneath them. Heavy ice-cakes, over-rode by the heavier floe, ground along its under surface, and when finding an opening of thin ice, rushed with a thundering sound to the upper surface. The din was at times so great that it seemed to combine all alarming sounds:—
"Through all its scale the horrid discord ran;
Now mocked the beast—now took the groan of man."
On the eleventh a storm commenced. Whole fleets of icebergs, having broken away from the icy bands in which the floe had held them, hovered round to charge upon the helpless campers. The vast area of ice on which they had been riding for so many months was lifted in places by mighty seas beneath, causing it to crack with a succession of loud reports and dismal sounds, some of which seemed to be directly under them. The wind drove before it a dense cloud of snow, so that one could scarcely see a yard. Night came with a darkness that could be felt. The icy foundation of their camp might separate at any moment, and tumble their huts about their ears, or plunge them in the sea. They gathered their few treasures together, and stood ready to fly—but where? Death seemed to guard every avenue of escape. Suddenly, soon after the night set in, the disruption came. Their floe was shattered, with a fearful uproar, into hundreds of pieces, and they went surging off among the fragments on a piece less than a hundred yards square. They were within twenty yards of its edge, but God had kindly forbid the separation to run through their camp and sever them from their boat or from each other.
After raging sixty hours the storm abated, and their little ice-ship drifted rapidly in the pack. A goodly number of seals were shot, and they began to breathe more freely. After a short time another oogjook was captured, so food was plenty.
March wore away, seals were plenty, and readily taken; and though the bergs ground together and made fierce onsets into the pack, our ice-ship held gallantly on her way. One night the inmates of Joe's hut were about retiring, when a noise was heard outside. "What is it, Joe? is the ice breaking up?" Joe does not stop to answer, but rushes out. But in ten seconds he comes back in a greater hurry, pale and breathless. "There's a bear close to my kayak," he exclaims in an excited tone. Now the situation was this: The kayak was within ten paces of the entrance to the hut, and the loaded guns, which can never be kept in an Esquimo hut on account of the moisture, were in and leaning against the kayak. If the bear should take a notion to put his nose at the hut door, and, liking the odor, knock down the snow wall with his strong paw, and commence a supper on one of its inmates, what was to hinder him? But bears, like many young people, often fail to improve their golden opportunities. He found some seal fat and skins in the kayak, and these he pulled out, and walked off with them a rod or two to enjoy the feast. Joe crept out of the hut, and ran to alarm the men. Captain Tyson followed, slipped softly up to the kayak and seized his gun, but in taking it he knocked down another one and alarmed the bear, who looked up and growled his objections to having his supper disturbed. Tyson leveled his rifle, snapped it, but it missed fire. He tried a second and third time, and it did not go—but he did, for his bearship was taking the offensive. Content to see his enemy flee, the bear returned to his supper. How many foolish bears have we seen on our explorations lose their lives by an untimely eating; but some men, more foolish, lose more than life by drinking. The captain returned to the field with a new charge in his gun. This time it sent a ball through the bear; the ball entering the left shoulder and passing through the heart, came out at the other side. He staggered, but before he fell Joe had sent another ball into his vitals. He dropped dead instantly. This affair occurred when it was too dark to see many yards, and was much pleasanter in its results than in its duration.
The seal hunting was successful, and with bear meat and blubber, a full store, there was no hunger unappeased; but the wind blew a gale, and the sailless, rudderless, oarless little ice-ship, now banging against a berg, and now in danger of being run down by one, all the while growing alarmingly smaller, finally shot out into the open sea away from the floe. This would not do. So, feeling that they might soon be dropped into the sea, they loaded the boat with such things as was strictly necessary, and all hands getting aboard, sailed away. A part of their ammunition, their fresh meat, a full month's supply, and many other desirable things, were abandoned. The boat, only intended to carry eight persons, was so overloaded with its twenty, including children, that it was in danger of being swamped at any moment. The frightened children cried, and the men looked sober. They sailed about twenty miles west, and landed on the first tolerably safe piece of ice which they met. Hans and family nestled down in the boat, and the rest, spreading on the floe what skins they had, set up a tent, and all, after eating a dry supper of bread and pemmican, lay down to rest. Thus, boating by day, and camping on the ice at night for several days, they drew up on the fourth of April upon a solid looking floe. Snow-huts were built, seals were taken, and hope revived. But what is hope, resting on Arctic promises? The gale was abroad again, the sea boisterous, and their floe was thrown into a panic. Fearful noises were heard beneath and around them, and their icy foundations quaked with fear. Joe's snow-hut was shaken down. He built it again, and then lot and house fell off into the sea and disappeared. Thus warned, the camp was pushed farther back from the water. But they did not know where the crack and separation would next come. Thus they lived in anxious watchings through weary days, the gale unabated. Finally, one night, the feared separation came. All hands except Mr. Meyers were in the tent; near them, so near a man could scarcely walk between, was the boat, containing Meyers and the kayak; but with mischievous intent, the crack run so as to send the boat drifting among the breaking and over-lapping ice. Mr. Meyers could not manage it, of course, under such circumstances, and the kayak was of no use to any but an Esquimo, so he set it afloat, hoping it would drift to the floe-party. Here was a fearful situation! The floe-party, as well as Mr. Meyers, was sure to perish miserably if the boat was not returned. There was only a dim light, and objects at a short distance looked hazy. It was a time for instant and desperate action. Joe and Hans took their paddles and ice-spears and started for the boat, jumping from one piece of floating, slippery ice to another. They were watched in breathless suspense until they seemed, in the shadowy distance, to have reached the boat, and then all was shut out in the darkness.
The morning came, and the floe party were glad to see that the boat had three men in it. It was a half mile off, and the kayak was as far away in another direction. It was soon clear that the boat could not be brought back without a stronger force. Tyson led the way, and finally all but two of the men made the desperate passage of the floating ice to the imperiled craft. It was with difficulty that, with their combined force, the boat was returned to the floe. The kayak was also recovered.
For a brief time there was quiet all around. The aurora gleamed, and displayed its wonderful beauty of form and motion; while the majestic icebergs, in every varied shape, reflected its sparkling light. The grandeur of sea and sky seemed a mockery to the danger-beset voyagers. The elements might be grand, but they had combined to destroy them, for a new form of peril now appeared. The sea came aboard of their icy craft. They were sitting one evening under their frail tent, the boat near, when a wave swept over their floe, carrying away tent, clothing, provisions—every thing except what was on their persons or in the boat. The women and children had been put on board in fear of such an occurrence, and the men had just time to save themselves by clinging to the gunwale. The boat itself was borne into the middle of the floe. When the wave subsided the boat was dragged back, lest another push by a succeeding one might launch it into the sea from the other side. It was well they did this, for another wave bore it to the opposite edge and partly slipped it into the water. This game of surging the boat from one side to the other of the floe, was kept up from nine o'clock in the evening to seven in the morning. All this time the men were in the water, fighting the desperate battle for its safety, and the preservation of their own lives; the conflict being made more terrible by the fact that every wave bore with it ice-blocks from a foot square to those measuring many yards, having sharp edges and jagged corners, with which it battered their legs until they were black and blue. It was the severest test of their courage and endurance yet experienced. But God was their helper. Not one perished, and when the defeated sea was by his voice commanded to retire, and the day appeared, they were not seriously harmed. But they were cold and wet, without a change of clothes and utterly provisionless.
It is not surprising that after their rough handling on the floe they should seek a larger and safer one. This they did, launching their crowded boat into the turbulent sea, and, working carefully along, succeeded in landing safely on one stronger looking; nothing worse happening than the tumbling overboard of the cook, who was quickly rescued. Here, cold, half-drowned, hungry, and weary to faintness, they tried to dry and warm themselves in the feeble rays of the sun, and wait for their food at the hand of the great Provider in the use of such means as were yet left to them. They had preserved their guns and a small supply of powder and shot. Snow and rain came on, and continued until noon of the next day, April twenty-second. Their hunger was fearful. Mr. Meyers had been slightly frost-bitten when drifting away alone in the boat, his health seemed broken, and he was actually starving.