The Great White North: The story of polar exploration from the earliest times to the discovery of the poleWright, Helen S. (Helen Saunders)
History
The Great White North: The story of polar exploration from the earliest times to the discovery of the pole
Wright, Helen S. (Helen Saunders)
Arctic regions; North Pole
was a mass of ice frozen fast to the buffalo-skin; Godfrey had to cut me
out with his jackknife. Four days after our escape, I found my woollen
comfortable with a goodly share of my beard still adhering to it.
“We were able to melt water and get some soup cooked before the rest of
our party arrived: it took them but five hours to walk the nine miles.
They were doing well, and, considering the circumstances, in wonderful
spirits. The day was most providentially windless, with a clear sun. All
enjoyed the refreshment we had got ready. The crippled were repacked in
their robes; and we sped briskly toward the hummock-ridges which lay
between us and the Pinnacly Berg.
“The hummocks we had now to meet came properly under the designation
of squeezed ice. A great chain of bergs stretching from northwest to
southeast, moving with the tides, had compressed the surface-floes; and,
rearing them up on their edges, produced an area more like the volcanic
pedregal of the basin of Mexico than anything else I can compare it to.
“It required desperate efforts to work our way over it,—literally
desperate, for our strength failed us anew, and we began to lose our
self-control. We could not abstain any longer from eating snow; our
mouths swelled, and some of us became speechless. Happily the day was
warmed by a clear sunshine, and the thermometer rose to -4° in the shade:
otherwise we must have frozen.
“Our halts multiplied, and we fell half-sleeping on the snow. I could
not prevent it. Strange to say, it refreshed us. I ventured upon the
experiment myself, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes; and
I felt so much benefited by it that I timed the men in the same way.
They sat on the runners of the sledge, fell asleep instantly, and were
forced to wakefulness when their three minutes were out. By eight in
the evening we emerged from the floes. The sight of the Pinnacly Berg
revived us. Brandy, an invaluable resource in emergency, had already been
served out in tablespoonful doses. We now took a longer rest, and a last
but stouter dram, and reached the brig at 1 P.M., we believe without a
halt. I say _we believe_: and here perhaps is the most decided proof of
our sufferings: we were quite delirious, and had ceased to entertain a
sane apprehension of the circumstances about us. We moved on like men
in a dream. Our footmarks seen afterwards showed that we had steered a
bee-line for the brig. It must have been by a sort of instinct, for it
left no impress on the memory. Bonsall was sent staggering ahead, and
reached the brig, God knows how, for he had fallen repeatedly at the
track-lines; but he delivered with punctilious accuracy the messages I
had sent by him to Dr. Hayes. I thought myself the soundest of all, for
I went through all the formula of sanity, and can recall the muttering
delirium of my comrades when we got back into the cabin of our brig.
Yet I have been told since of some speeches and some orders, too, of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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