The North Pole by Robert E. Peary (life changing books to read .txt) 📖

ship, but we were fairly well protected by large pieces which had grounded outside of us. Every little while a big floe came rushing past, crowding everything out of its way and giving our protectors a shove that set them and us nearer the shore. From the crow's nest we could see a little open water near the east coast of the channel, but there was none in our vicinity—only ice, ice, ice, of every imaginable shape and thickness.

Still another day, and the Roosevelt was in the same position, with the ice crowding against her; but at the crest of the high tide the grounded floe-berg to which we were attached by cable went adrift, and we all hurried on deck. The lines were hastily detached from the berg. As the ice went south, it left a stretch of open water before us about a mile long, and we steamed northward along the shore, pushing our way behind the grounded bergs, trying to find another niche where we might be secure from the now rapidly approaching pack.

It was well for us that the wind was blowing violently off shore, as it eased the pressure of the pack against us. One place seemed secure, and we were making ready to attach the cables, when an ice-floe, about an acre in extent with a sharp, projecting point like the ram of a battleship, came surging along toward the Roosevelt, and we were obliged to shift our position. Before the ship was secured, she was again threatened by the same floe, which seemed to be endowed with malign intelligence and to follow us like a bloodhound. We retired to still another position, and secured the vessel and finally the threatening floe passed onwards to the south.

There was no sleep for any one that sunlit night. About ten o'clock the berg fragment to which we were attached drifted loose under the pressure of the furious wind and the rising tide. In contracted space, with the ice whirling and eddying about us, we hastily got our lines in and shifted to another place, only to be driven out of it. We sought still another place of shelter, and in turn were also driven out of that. A third attempt to find safety was successful, but before it was accomplished the Roosevelt had twice been aground forward, her heel had been caught by a berg's spur, and her after rail smashed by the onslaught of another berg.

Saturday, the 29th, was another day of delay but I found some comfort in thinking of my little son in the far-away home. It was his fifth birthday, and Percy, Matt, and I, his three chums, drank a bottle of champagne in his honor. Robert E. Peary, Junior! What were they doing at home? I wondered.

I think that none of the members of the expedition will ever forget the following day, the 30th of August. The Roosevelt was kicked about by the floes as if she had been a football. The game began about four o'clock in the morning. I was in my cabin trying to get a little sleep—with my clothes on, for I had not dared to remove them for a week. My rest was cut short by a shock so violent that, before I realized that anything had happened, I found myself on deck—a deck that inclined to starboard some twelve or fifteen degrees. I ran, or rather climbed the deck, to the port side and saw what had happened. A big floe, rushing past with the current, had picked up the grounded berg to which we were attached by the hawsers, as if that thousand-ton berg had been a toy, and dashed it against the Roosevelt and clear along her port side, smashing a big hole in the bulwarks at Marvin's room. The berg brought up against another one just aft of us, and the Roosevelt slipped from between the two like a greased pig.

As soon as the pressure was relaxed and the ship regained an even keel, we discovered that the cable which had been attached to the floe-berg at the stern had become entangled with the propeller. It was a time for lightning thought and action; but by attaching a heavier cable to the parted one and taking a hitch round the steam capstan, we finally disentangled it.

This excitement was no sooner over than a great berg that was passing near us split in two of its own accord, a cube some twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter dropping toward the ship, and missing our quarter by only a foot or two. "Bergs to the right of them, bergs to the left of them, bergs on top of them," I heard somebody say, as we caught our breath at this miraculous escape.

The ship was now quite at the mercy of the drifting ice, and with the pressure from the outer pack the Roosevelt again careened to starboard. I knew that if she were driven any higher upon the shore, we should have to discharge a large part of the coal in order to lighten her sufficiently to get her off again. So I decided to dynamite the ice.

I told Bartlett to get out his batteries and dynamite, and to smash the ice between the Roosevelt and the heavy floes outside, making a soft cushion for the ship to rest on. The batteries were brought up from the lazaret, one of the dynamite boxes lifted out with caution, and Bartlett and I looked for the best places in the ice for the charges.

Several sticks of dynamite were wrapped in pieces of old bagging and fastened on the end of long spruce poles, which we had brought along specially for this purpose. A wire from the battery had, of course, been connected with one of the primers buried in the dynamite. Pole, wire, and dynamite were thrust down through cracks in the ice at several places in the adjacent floes. The other end of each wire was then connected with the battery, every one retreated to a respectful distance on the far side of the deck, and a quick, sharp push on the plunger of the battery sent the electric current along the wires.

Rip! Bang! Boom! The ship quivered like a smitten violin string, and a column of water and pieces of ice went flying a hundred feet into the air, geyser fashion.

The pressure of the ice against the ship being thus removed, she righted herself and lay quietly on her cushion of crushed ice—waiting for whatever might happen next. As the tide lowered, the Roosevelt was bodily aground from amidships forward, heeling first to one side and then to the other with the varying pressure of the ice. It was a new variation of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"—one that sent Eskimo babies, the dogs, the boxes, and even ourselves, tumbling about the decks.

When the tide rose, efforts were made to dislodge the ship from her stranded position. From the port side of the bow a line was made fast to a stationary floe-berg, and the captain called for full steam, first ahead, then astern. For some time there was no perceptible movement of the ship. Finally, the pull on the port bow from the cable, with full speed astern, had the desired effect and the vessel slid off and floated free; but the ice was so heavily packed behind us that we could not move her away. It was far from a pleasant spot.

CHAPTER XIII CAPE SHERIDAN AT LAST

To put it mildly, the position in which we now found ourselves was dangerous—even with the assistance of so experienced and steady an ice fighter as Bartlett. As day followed day and still we hung there at Lincoln Bay, we should doubtless have been extremely anxious had the Roosevelt not had a similar experience on the preceding voyage. But we believed that sooner or later the movement of the ice would enable us to steam the few remaining miles to Cape Sheridan, and possibly beyond there; for our objective point was some twenty-five miles to the northwest of our former winter quarters in 1905-06. We tried to possess our souls in patience, and if sometimes the delay got on our nerves, there was nothing to be gained by talking about it.

On the first of September the ice did not seem to be moving quite so rapidly. The evening before MacMillan had been sent ashore to the bluffs beyond Shelter River, and he had reported that there was considerable open water along the shore. Bartlett then went forward to reconnoiter. On his return he also reported open water, but with corners of big floes barring it in every direction.

That the fall hunting might get under way, Ootah, Aletah, Ooblooyah, and Ooqueah started off for the Lake Hazen region, with a sledge and eight dogs, after musk-oxen and reindeer. It had been planned that they should hunt there until joined by other Eskimos from the ship, after she reached Cape Sheridan or Porter Bay. But in the absence of snow, the going was too rough for even a light sledge, and the Eskimos returned.

At last, a little before midnight on the 2d, we got out of the impasse at Lincoln Bay, where we had been held up for ten days. The cables were taken in, and the Roosevelt, steaming first forward and then astern, extricated herself from the shore pack. We felt as men must feel who are released from prison. There was a narrow lane of open water following the shore, and along that course we steamed, rounding Cape Union about half an hour before midnight.

But we were soon held up again by the ice, a little below Black Cape, a dark cone-shaped mountain standing alone, on the eastern side washed by the waters of the sea, on the west separated by deep valleys from the adjacent mountains. It was a scene of indescribable grandeur, for the coast was lined for miles with bergs, forced shoreward, broken and tilted at right angles. At Black Cape we had made half the distance between our former position at Lincoln Bay and the longed-for shelter at Cape Sheridan.

As we made fast against the land ice, a sixty-foot thick fragment of a floe was driven with frightful force up on the shore a little to the north of us. Had we been in the way of it—but a navigator of these channels must not dwell too much on such contingencies.

As an extra precaution, I had the Eskimos with axes bevel off the edge of the ice-foot abreast of the ship, to facilitate her rising if she should be squeezed by the heavy floes outside. It was snowing lightly all day long; but I went ashore, walking along the ice-foot to the next river, and up to the summit of Black Cape. An occasional walk on land was a relief from the stench and disorder of the ship, for the dogs kept the Roosevelt in a very unclean condition. Many persons have asked how we could endure the presence of nearly two hundred and fifty dogs on the deck of a small ship; but every achievement has its drawbacks, and it must not be forgotten that without the dogs we could not have reached the Pole.

At this point we landed another cache, similar to the one at Lincoln Bay, to be ready for anything that might happen.

On the 4th, the wind came strong from the south, and as there seemed to be a little open water ahead, at eight in the morning we started to get out of our berth. It took an hour to break up the "slob" ice which had cemented about the ship. We were happy to be under way again; but at the delta just ahead of us