The North Pole by Robert E. Peary (room on the broom read aloud .TXT) 📕

At Etah, Rudolph Franke, who had come north with Dr. Cook in 1907, came to me and asked permission to go home on the Erik. He showed me a letter from Dr. Cook directing him to go home this season on a whaler. An examination by Dr. Goodsell, my surgeon, showed that the man suffered from incipient scurvy, and that he was in a serious mental state, so I had no alternative but to give him passage home on the Erik. Boatswain Murphy, whom I was to leave at Etah, was a thoroughly trustworthy man, and I gave him instructions to prevent the Eskimos from looting the supplies and equipment left there by Dr. Cook, and to be prepared to render Dr. Cook any assistance he might require when he returned, as I had no doubt he would as soon as the ice froze over Smith Sound (presumably in January) so as to enable him to cross to Anoratok from Ellesmere Land, where I had no doubt he then was.

On the Erik were three other passengers, Mr. C. C. Crafts, who had come north to take a series of magnetic observations for the department of terrestrial magnetism of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, Mr. George S. Norton, of New York, and Mr. Walter A. Larned, the tennis champion. The Roosevelt's carpenter, Bob Bartlett, of Newfoundland (not related to Captain Bob Bartlett), and a sailor named Johnson also went back on the Erik. That vessel was commanded by Captain Sam Bartlett (Captain Bob's uncle), who had been master of my own ship on several expeditions.

At Etah we took on a few more Eskimos, including Ootah and Egingwah, who were destined to be with me at the Pole; and I left there all the remaining Eskimos that I did not wish to take with me to winter quarters in the North. We retained forty-nine—twenty-two men, seventeen women, ten children—and two hundred and forty-six dogs. The Roosevelt, as usual, was loaded almost to the water's edge with the coal that had been crowded into her, the seventy tons of whale meat which we had bought in Labrador, and the meat and blubber of nearly fifty walruses.

We parted company from the Erik and steamed north on the 18th of August, an intensely disagreeable day, with driving snow and rain, and a cutting wind from the southeast which made the sea very rough. As the two ships separated, they signaled "good-by and good luck" with the whistles, and our last link with civilization was broken.

Since my return I have been asked if I did not feel deep emotion on parting with my companions on the Erik, and I have truthfully replied that I did not. The reader must remember that this was my eighth expedition into the Arctic, and that I had parted from a supply ship many times before. Constant repetition will take the edge from the most dramatic experience. As we steamed north from the harbor of Etah, my thoughts were on the condition of the ice in Robeson Channel; and the ice in Robeson Channel is more dramatic than any parting—save from one's nearest and dearest, and I had left mine three thousand miles below at Sydney. We had some three hundred and fifty miles of almost solid ice to negotiate before we could reach our hoped-for winter quarters at Cape Sheridan. I knew that beyond Smith Sound we might have to make our slow way rod by rod, and sometimes literally inch by inch, butting and ramming and dodging the mountainous ice; that, if the Roosevelt survived, I should probably not have my clothes off, or be able to snatch more than an hour or two of sleep at a time, for two or three weeks. Should we lose our ship and have to make our way over the ice southward from anywhere below Lady Franklin Bay, or possibly beyond there—it was good-by to my life's dream and probably to some of my companions.

The walrus are among the most picturesque and powerful fauna of the far North. More than that, their pursuit and capture, a process by no means devoid of peril, is an important part of every serious arctic expedition, for on every expedition of mine these huge creatures, weighing as they do all the way from 1,200 to 3,000 pounds, are hunted for the purpose of obtaining the maximum of meat for dog food in a minimum of time.

Wolstenholm and Whale Sounds, which are passed before reaching Etah, are favorite haunts of the walrus. The hunting of these monsters is the most exciting and dangerous sport in the arctic regions. The polar bear has been called the tiger of the North; but a contest between one or two, or even three, of these animals and a man armed with a Winchester repeating rifle is an entirely one-sided affair. On the contrary, a contest with a herd of walrus,—the lions of the North,—in a small whale-boat, will give more thrills to the minute than anything else I know of within the Arctic Circle.

On the last expedition I did not go after walrus myself, leaving that exhilarating labor to the younger men. I have seen so much of it in the past that my first vivid impression is somewhat blunted. I have therefore asked George Borup to write for me an account of walrus-hunting, as it appears to a novice, and his story is so vivid that I give it to the reader in his own words, graphic with the keen impressions of a young man and picturesque with college slang. He says:

"Walrus-hunting is the best sport in the shooting line that I know. There is something doing when you tackle a herd of fifty-odd, weighing between one and two tons each, that go for you whether wounded or not; that can punch a hole through eight inches of young ice; that try to climb into the boat to get at or upset you,—we never could make out which, and didn't care, as the result to us would have been the same,—or else try to ram your boat and stave holes in it.

"Get in a mix-up with a herd, when every man in the whale-boat is standing by to repel boarders, hitting them over the head with oars, boat-hooks, axes, and yelling like a cheering section at a football game to try to scare them off; with the rifles going like young Gatling guns, and the walruses bellowing from pain and anger, coming to the surface with mad rushes, sending the water up in the air till you would think a flock of geysers was turned loose in your immediate vicinity—oh, it's great!

"When we were walrus-hunting, the Roosevelt would steam along, with all hands on the watch. Then suddenly a keen-eyed Eskimo would sing out, 'Awick soah!' or, possibly, 'Awick tedicksoah!' ('Walruses! A great many walruses!')

"We would look to see if there were enough of the animals to make a raid worth while; then, if the prospect was satisfactory, the Roosevelt would steam along to leeward, for if they smelled her smoke they would wake up and we would never see them again.

"Henson, MacMillan, and I used to take turns going after these brutes. Four or five Eskimos, one sailor, and a whale-boat were assigned to each of us. The boats were painted white to resemble pieces of ice, and the row-locks were muffled, that we might steal along as noiselessly as possible.

"As soon as we sighted a herd worthy of our lead, we would sing out to our men, 'Shake her up!' and they would all come on the jump. After a hurried though careful look to see if we had four or five oars, five harpoons, lines, floats, two rifles, and ammunition, we would cry, 'Stand by to lower away'; and as the Roosevelt slackened speed we would slide down the davit ropes, man the oars, and go out to look for trouble—which we usually found.

"We would get as near as possible to the walruses on the ice. If they were sound asleep, we could row to within five yards and harpoon a couple; but generally they would wake up, when we were about twenty yards away, and begin to slide off into the water. We would then shoot, and if they attacked us it was easy to harpoon them; while if they started to leave the country, it might be a Marathon race before we got close enough to make the harpoons fast in their hides.

"A walrus when killed will go to the bottom like a ton of lead, and our business was to get a harpoon into him before that event took place. The harpoon is fastened to the float by a long thong made of sealskin, and a float is made of the entire skin of a seal filled with air for buoyancy.

"A thing we soon learned to look out for was to let this thong, which was neatly coiled up like a lasso before it was thrown, have the right of way and all the space it needed; for if it happened to take a turn around one of our legs when the other end was fast to a walrus, we would be missing that useful member, and be pulled into the water—and possibly drowned.

"Now a crew that goes through a scrimmage with these monsters develops teamplay of a high order in a surprisingly short time. The sailor would steer, four Eskimos would row, and in the bow would be the best harpooner with one of us beside him. The two men forward would enable the men rowing to be spelled, if we had a long chase.

"I shall never forget my first mix-up with a herd. We had sighted about ten walruses two miles away, and MacMillan and I, Dennis Murphy, a sailor, and three Eskimos manned a whale-boat, and off we went. About two hundred yards from the walruses we quit rowing and let Murphy scull us, while Mac and I crouched side by side in the bow, the Eskimos with their harpoons being ready right behind us.

"When we were about twenty yards from the herd, one bull woke up, gave a grunt, poked another, woke him, and then—bang! bang! bang! we opened fire. Mac had a Winchester automatic rifle, and he got off five shots so fast that before the first one left the muzzle the other four were chasing it. He dropped a large bull, which gave a convulsive flop and rolled into the water with a splash. I hit a couple, and with hoarse grunts of pain and fury they all wriggled off the ice and dived out of sight. The boat was hurried to within five yards of Mac's bull, and an Eskimo hurled a harpoon, hit the large bull, and threw overboard the sealskin float. At this stage of the game about forty other walruses, that had been feeding below, came up to the surface to see what the noise was about, spitting the clam shells out of their mouths and snorting. The water was alive with the brutes, and many of them were so close to us that we could hit them with the oars. A harpoon was driven into another by a corking throw; and just then, when my magazine was empty, things began to come our way.

"Suddenly a large bull, followed by two others, all wounded, came to the surface twenty yards off, gave tongue to their battle-cry and charged. The Eskimos were not pleased at the look of things. They grabbed the oars and began to bang them on the gunwale of the boat, yelling like so many steam sirens, hoping to scare the invaders off; but they might as well have been crooning