True Tales of Arctic Heroism in the New World. Greely Adolphus Washington

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СКАЧАТЬ awful cold in which lived and hunted these half-starved men taxed to the utmost their impaired powers of endurance. For two days in January the temperature was ninety-one degrees below the freezing-point, and the average for that month was four degrees below that of frozen mercury.

      The pall of gloom and despair that had come with the winter darkness, from the frightful cold, and from increasing sickness was somewhat broken on March 15, 1853, when the weakest half of the crew was told off in parties to make the spring retreat with sledges. To put them in condition for the field M'Clure gave them full rations. It was strange to note how closely they, eating once more heartily, were watched and to what extent the few ounces of extra food made them objects of envy to their healthier and stronger comrades, who were to stay by the ship another awful winter.

      The doctors, however, were under no delusion as to the ultimate outcome of the situation. The weaker members of the crew were to take the field and die like men, falling in the traces as they dragged along the fatal sledge, as the surgeons Armstrong and Piers had reported in writing "the absolute unfitness of the men for the performance of this journey."

      Though Captain M'Clure, with the spirit of optimism that belongs to a commander, endeavored to persuade himself to the contrary, it was evident to Dr. Armstrong that critical conditions had developed that threatened the extermination of the expeditionary force.

      The able and clear-sighted doctor realized that the sick were not simply suffering from physical exhaustion induced by the short rations of many months. He recognized with horror that far the greater number of the crew were slowly perishing from the dreaded and fatal arctic scourge – scurvy. The progress and prevalence of the disease were such that it was to be feared there would not remain after a few months enough well men to properly care for their sick comrades. It was a living death that was being faced from day to day.

      But fate, inexorable and inexplicable, was doubly placing its veto on the feeble plans of man. Three of the men who were told off for the forlorn hope died within a fortnight, while thirty-three of the remaining thirty-six men were suffering from materially impaired health. Then came the relief from outside sources, which saved the expedition as a whole.

      Meanwhile, unknown to M'Clure, a searching squadron of five British ships, commanded by Captain Sir Edward Belcher, R.N., was wintering about two hundred miles to the eastward of the Investigator. Sledging from one of these ships, the Resolute, at Bridgeport Inlet, Melville Island, Lieutenant Mecham, in October, 1852, had visited Winter Harbor, and on top of the famous sandstone rock had found the record there deposited by M'Clure in his visit to that point in April, 1852, six months earlier, which stated that the Investigator was wintering in Mercy Bay. The fast-approaching darkness made the trip to Mercy Bay impossible, even if the ship was yet there – most doubtful from the record. For M'Clure had added: "If we should not be again heard of … any attempt to succor would be to increase the evil."

      Nevertheless, Captain Kellet, commanding the Resolute, thought it wise to send a party to Mercy Bay the coming spring, not for M'Clure alone, but to seek at that place and far beyond such news as was attainable about Collinson's squadron. For this duty was selected Lieutenant Bedford C. T. Pim, R.N., a young officer of spirit and determination, who had volunteered for the journey. Kellet's advisers urged that he delay the departure until the end of March, with its longer days and warmer weather. Pim insisted on an early start, for it was a long journey. Collinson's squadron was provisioned only for that year and so would break out through the ice early from their more southerly ports. Providentially, Kellet listened to Pim's importunate pleas, as otherwise at least half of the crew of the Investigator would have perished.

      On March 10, 1853, Pim started on this journey of nearly two hundred miles, the first long sledge trip ever attempted in an arctic expedition at such an early date – twenty-five days in advance of any other sledge journey from the Resolute that year. Pim with eight men hauled the man-sledge, while Dr. Domville with one man supported him with a dog-sledge of six animals. Eleven other men were to assist them for five days.

      Things went badly from the very beginning, and Kellet was half inclined to recall Pim. Under frightful conditions of weather and of ice travel one man fell sick and two sledges broke down. Fearing that he would be kept back, Pim wisely stayed in the field, sending back for other men and sledges. The first night out was quite unendurable, the temperature falling to seventy-six degrees below the freezing-point. Then followed violent blizzards which storm-stayed the party for four days, during which the temperature inside their double tent fell to fifty-six degrees below freezing. One comfort to the young lieutenant was the presence of a veteran polar seaman, Hoile, who had learned all the tricks and secrets of handling gear and stores in the field during his campaigns under the famous arctic sledgeman Sir Leopold McClintock. But no skill could make men comfortable under such awful cold. For instance, the fur sleeping bags at the start had been dry, pliant, and cold-proof. Now the vapor from the men's bodies had dampened the bags which, frozen solid, would stand on end without falling, as though made of light sheet-iron.

      Marching onward, Pim's next trouble was with a food-cache, laid down by himself the previous autumn, which wild animals – probably bears and wolves – had plundered in large part, though some of the thick metal coverings of the solidly frozen meats had escaped with rough marks of the teeth and claws.

      Pim took everything with jovial humor, and was entirely happy when he left the firm land of Melville Island to cross frozen Banks Strait to Mercy Bay, Banks Land. Bad as was travel along the ice-foot bordering the land, it was far worse in the strait. Domville officially reported that their course "was beset with every difficulty, every variety of hummocks and deep snow barring our progress in all directions. Some of the ridges, too irregular for a loaded sledge, required portages to be made, a mode of proceeding almost equally difficult and dangerous to the limbs, from the men sinking to the middle through the soft snow amongst the masses of forced-up hummocks."

      Later there came some level stretches, and then Pim hoisted a sail on the man-sledge to help it along. It nearly proved their ruin, for the sledge took charge on a steep, glassy hummock, knocked over the men, plunged into a deep crevasse, and broke a runner. Pim did not hesitate an hour over the best thing to do. Leaving Domville to patch up the sledge and to return and await him at the last depot, Pim started ahead with his six dogs and two men toward Mercy Bay. Sleepless nights of fearful cold, days of weary toil with sun-dazzled eyes, biting blasts of sharp blizzards, exhausting struggles through rubble ice – these one and all could neither quench the spirit nor bend the will of this forceful man. Ever faithful to the motto of his sledge flag, "Hope on: hope ever," he ceased not until the land was reached and success insured.

      Skirting the ice-foot of the northeastern coast of Banks Land, his heart came into his mouth as, rounding a cape, he saw the dark spars of an ice-beset ship loom up against the sullen southern sky. Blistered and brazened, half snow-blinded, with face covered with accumulations of greasy soot, what wonder that this fur-clad figure was thought by the amazed M'Clure to be an Eskimo, a mistake aided by the wild gesticulations and loud, unintelligible shouts of a man whose face was as black as ebony.

      Of Pim's coming Dr. Armstrong of the Investigator says: "No words could express the feelings of heart-felt gladness which all experienced at this unlooked-for, this most providential arrival."

      Over the rough, winding trails of the arctic highway, Pim had travelled four hundred and twenty-seven miles from ship to ship, and made a journey that will ever live in polar annals as fraught with vital interests beyond those of any other single sledge trip.

      Of Pim's work a fellow-officer, McDougal, wrote: "Each member of our little community must have felt his heart glow to reflect that he formed one of the little band whose undertakings in the cause of humanity had been crowned with such success."

      Thus it happened that through the heroic energy and persistent efforts of Bedford Pim, the outcome of the voyage of the InvestigatorСКАЧАТЬ