The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole

So, over it they went, but they soon began to wish they had tried any other plan, for the snow-track quickly came to an end, and then the difficulty of passing even the empty sledges from one ice mass to another was very great, while the process of carrying forward the goods on the shoulders of the men was exceedingly laborious. The poor dogs, too, were constantly falling between masses, and dragging each other down, so that they gave more trouble at last than they were worth.

In all these trying circumstances, the Eskimo women were almost as useful as the men. Indeed they would have been quite as useful if they had been as strong, and they bore the fatigues and trials of the journey with the placid good humour, and apparent, if not real, humility of their race.

At last, one afternoon, our discoverers came suddenly to the edge of this great barrier of ancient ice, and beheld, from an elevated plateau to which they had climbed, a scene which was calculated to rouse in their breasts feelings at once of admiration and despair, for there, stretching away below them for several miles, lay a sea of comparatively level ice, and beyond it a chain of stupendous glaciers, which presented an apparently impassable barrier—a huge continuous wall of ice that seemed to rise into the very sky.

This chain bore all the evidences of being very old ice—compared to which that of the so-called “ancient sea” was absolutely juvenile. On the ice-plain, which was apparently illimitable to the right and left, were hundreds of pools of water in which the icebergs, the golden clouds, the sun, and the blue sky were reflected, and on the surface of which myriads of Arctic wild-fowl were sporting about, making the air vocal with their plaintive cries, and ruffling the glassy surfaces of the lakes with their dipping wings. The heads of seals were also observed here and there.

“These will stop us at last,” said Alf, pointing to the bergs with a profound sigh.

“No, they won’t,” remarked the Captain quietly. “Nothing will stop us!”

“That’s true, anyhow, uncle,” returned Alf; “for if it be, as Chingatok thinks, that we are in search of nothing, of course when we find nothing, nothing will stop us!”

“Why, Alf,” said Leo, “I wonder that you, who are usually in an enthusiastic and poetical frame of mind, should be depressed by distant difficulties, instead of admiring such a splendid sight of birds and beasts enjoying themselves in what I may style an Arctic heaven. You should take example by Benjy.”

That youth did indeed afford a bright example of rapt enthusiasm just then, for, standing a little apart by himself, he gazed at the scene with flushed face, open mouth, and glittering eyes, in speechless delight.

“Ask Chingatok if he ever saw this range before,” said the Captain to Anders, on recovering from his first feeling of surprise.

No, Chingatok had never seen it, except, indeed, the tops of the bergs—at sea, in the far distance—but he had often heard of it from some of his countrymen, who, like himself, were fond of exploring. But that sea of ice was not there, he said, when he had passed on his journey southward. It had drifted there, since that time, from the great sea.

“Ah! the great sea that he speaks of is just what we must find and cross over,” muttered the Captain to himself.

“But how are we to cross over it, uncle?” asked Leo.

The Captain replied with one of his quiet glances. His followers had long become accustomed to this silent method of declining to reply, and forbore to press the subject.

“Come now, boys, get ready to descend to the plain. We’ll have to do it with caution.”

There was, indeed, ground for caution. We have said that they had climbed to an elevated plateau on one of the small bergs which formed the outside margin of the rugged ice. The side of this berg was a steep slope of hard snow, so steep that they thought it unwise to attempt the descent by what in Switzerland is termed glissading.

“We’ll have to zig-zag down, I think,” continued the Captain, settling himself on his sledge; but the Captain’s dogs thought otherwise. Under a sudden impulse of reckless free-will, the whole team, giving vent to a howl of mingled glee and fear, dashed down the slope at full gallop. Of course they were overtaken in a few seconds by the sledge, which not only ran into them, but sent them sprawling on their backs right and left. Then it met a slight obstruction, and itself upset, sending Captain Vane and his companions, with its other contents, into the midst of the struggling dogs. With momentarily increasing speed this avalanche of mixed dead and living matter went sliding, hurtling, swinging, shouting, struggling, and yelling to the bottom. Fortunately, there was no obstruction there, else had destruction been inevitable. The slope merged gradually into the level plain, over which the avalanche swept for a considerable distance before the momentum of their flight was expended.

When at length they stopped, and disentangled themselves from the knot into which the traces had tied them, it was found that no one was materially hurt. Looking up at the height down which they had come, they beheld the Eskimos standing at the top with outstretched arms in the attitude of men who glare in speechless horror. But these did not stand thus long. Descending by a more circuitous route, they soon rejoined the Captain’s party, and then, as the night was far advanced, they encamped on the edge of the ice-plain, on a part that was bathed in the beams of the ever-circling sun.

That night at supper Captain Vane was unusually thoughtful and silent.

“You’re not losing heart, are you, uncle?” asked Leo, during a pause.

“No, lad, certainly not,” replied the Captain, dreamily.

“You’ve not been bumped very badly in the tumble, father, have you?” asked Benjy with an anxious look.

“Bumped? no; what makes you think so?”

“Because you’re gazing at Toolooha’s lamp as if you saw a ghost in it.”

“Well, perhaps I do see a ghost there,” returned the Captain with an effort to rouse his attention to things going on around him. “I see the ghost of things to come. I am looking through Toolooha’s lamp into futurity.”

“And what does futurity look like?” asked Alf. “Bright or dark?”

“Black—black as me,” muttered Butterface, as he approached and laid fresh viands before the party.

It ought to be told that Butterface had suffered rather severely in the recent glissade on the snow-slope, which will account for the gloomy view he took of the future at that time.

“Listen,” said the Captain, with a look of sudden earnestness; “as it is highly probable that a day or two more will decide the question of our success or failure, I think it right to reveal to you more fully my thoughts, my plans, and the prospects that lie before us. You all know very well that there is much difference of opinion about the condition of the sea around the North Pole. Some think it must be cumbered with eternal ice, others that it is comparatively free from ice, and that it enjoys a somewhat milder climate than those parts of the Arctic regions with which we have hitherto been doing battle. I hold entirely with the latter view—with those who believe in an open Polar basin. I won’t weary you with the grounds of my belief in detail, but here are a few of my reasons—

“It is an admitted fact that there is constant circulation of the water in the ocean. That wise and painstaking philosopher, Maury, of the US navy, has proved to my mind that this grand circulation of the sea-water round the world is the cause of all the oceanic streams, hot and cold, with which we have been so long acquainted.

“This circulation is a necessity as well as a fact. At the Equator the water is extremely warm and salt, besides lime-laden, in consequence of excessive evaporation. At the Poles it is extremely cold and fresh. Mixing is therefore a necessity. The hot salt-waters of the Equator flow to the Poles to get freshened and cooled. Those of the Poles flow to the Equator to get salted, limed, and warmed. They do this continuously in two grand currents, north and south, all round the world. But the land comes in as a disturbing element; it diverts the water into streams variously modified in force and direction, and the streams also change places variously, sometimes the hot currents travelling north as under-currents with the cold currents above, sometimes the reverse. One branch of the current comes from the Equator round the Cape of Good Hope, turns up the west coast of Africa, and is deflected into the Gulf of Mexico, round which it sweeps, and then shoots across the Atlantic to England and Norway. It is known as our Gulf Stream.

“Now, the equatorial warm and salt current enters Baffin’s Bay as a submarine current, while the cold and comparatively fresh waters of the Polar regions descend as a surface-current, bearing the great ice-fields of the Arctic seas to the southward. One thing that goes far to prove this, is the fact that the enormous icebergs thrown off from the northern glaciers have been frequently seen by navigators travelling northward, right against the current flowing south. These huge ice-mountains, floating as they do with seven or eight parts of their bulk beneath the surface, are carried thus forcibly up stream by the under-current until their bases are worn off by the warm waters below, thus allowing the upper current to gain the mastery, and hurry them south again to their final dissolution in the Atlantic.

“Now, lads,” continued the Captain, with the air of a man who propounds a self-evident proposition; “is it not clear that if the warm waters of the south flow into the Polar basin as an under current, they must come up somewhere, to take the place of the cold waters that are for ever flowing away from the Pole to the Equator? Can anything be clearer than that—except the nose on Benjy’s face? Well then, that being so, the waters round the Pole must be comparatively warm waters, and also, comparatively, free from ice, so that if we could only manage to cross this ice-barrier and get into them, we might sail right away to the North Pole.”

“But, father,” said Benjy, “since you have taken the liberty to trifle with my nose, I feel entitled to remark that we can’t sail in waters, either hot or cold, without a ship.”

“That’s true, boy,” rejoined the Captain. “However,” he added, with a half-humorous curl of his black moustache, “you know I’m not given to stick at trifles. Time will show. Meanwhile I am strongly of opinion that this is the last ice-barrier we shall meet with on our way to the Pole.”

“Is there not some tradition of a mild climate in the furthest north among the Eskimos?” asked Alf.

“Of course there is. It has long been known that the Greenland Eskimos have a tradition of an island in an iceless sea, lying away in the far north, where there are many musk-oxen, and, from what I have been told by our friend Chingatok, I am disposed to think that he and his kindred inhabit this island, or group of islands, in the Polar basin—not far, perhaps, from the Pole itself. He says there are musk-oxen there. But there is another creature, and a much bigger one than any Eskimo, bigger even than Chingatok, who bears his testimony to an open Polar sea, namely, the Greenland whale. It has been ascertained that the ‘right’ whale does not, and cannot, enter the tropical regions of the Ocean. They are to him as a sea of fire, a wall of adamant, so that it is impossible for him to swim south, double Cape Horn, and proceed to the North Pacific; yet the very same kind of whale found in Baffin’s Bay is found at Behring Straits. Now, the question is, how did he get there?”

“Was born there, no doubt,” answered Benjy, “and had no occasion to make such a long voyage!”

“Ah! my boy, but we have the strongest evidence that he was not born there, for you must know that some whalers have a habit of marking their harpoons with date and name of ship; and as we have been told by that good and true man Dr Scoresby, there have been several instances where whales have been captured near Behring Straits with harpoons in them bearing the stamp of ships that were known to cruise on the Baffin’s Bay side of America. Moreover, in one or two instances a very short time had elapsed between the date of harpooning on the Atlantic and capturing on the Pacific side. These facts prove, at all events, a ‘North-west Passage’ for whales, and, as whales cannot travel far under ice without breathing, they also tend to prove an open Polar sea.

“Another argument in favour of this basin is the migration of birds to the northward at certain seasons. Birds do not migrate to frozen regions, and such migrations northward have been observed by those who, like ourselves, have reached the highest latitudes.

“Captain Nares of the Alert, in May 1876, when only a little to the southward of this, saw ptarmigan flying in pairs to the north-west, seeking for better feeding-grounds. Ducks and geese also passed northward early in June, indicating plainly the existence of suitable feeding-grounds in the undiscovered and mysterious North.

“We have now passed beyond the point reached by Captain Nares. My last observation placed us in parallel 84 degrees 40 minutes, the highest that has yet been reached by civilised man.”

“The highest, uncle?” interrupted Leo. “Yes—the highest. Scoresby reached 81 degrees 50 minutes in 1806, Parry 82 degrees 45 minutes in 1827—with sledges. That unfortunate and heroic American, Captain Hall, ran his vessel, the Polaris, in the shortest space of time on record, up to latitude 82 degrees 16 minutes. Captain Nares reached a higher latitude than had previously been attained by ships, and Captain Markham, of Captain Nares’ expedition, travelled over this very ‘sea of ancient ice’ with sledges to latitude 83 degrees 20.4 minutes—about 400 miles from the Pole, and the highest yet reached, as I have said. So, you see, we have beaten them all! Moreover, I strongly incline to the belief that the open Polar Sea lies just beyond that range of huge icebergs which we see before us.”

The Captain rose as he spoke, and pointed to the gigantic chain, behind one of which the sun was just about to dip, causing its jagged peaks to glow as with intense fire.

“But how are we ever to pass that barrier, uncle?” asked Alf, who was by nature the least sanguine of the party in regard to overcoming difficulties of a geographical nature, although by far the most enthusiastic in the effort to acquire knowledge.

“You shall see, to-morrow,” answered the Captain; “at present we must turn in and rest. See, the Eskimos have already set us the example.”

Chapter Nine.

The Captain makes a Stupendous Effort. Disappointments and Discoveries

Next morning the ice-plain was crossed at a swinging gallop. Indeed, the dogs were so fresh and frisky after a good rest and a hearty meal that they ran away more than once, and it became a matter of extreme difficulty to check them. At last the great chain was reached, and the party came to an abrupt halt at the base of one of the largest of the bergs. Captain Vane gazed up at it as Napoleon the First may be supposed to have gazed at the Alps he had resolved to scale and cross.

The resemblance to alpine scenery was not confined to mere form—such as towering peaks and mighty precipices—for there were lakelets and ponds here and there up among the crystal heights, from which rivulets trickled, streams brawled, and cataracts thundered.