At two o’clock the next morning we commenced work on an extension of our previous course and continued on throughout the day and on into the following night. It was a tremendous task, as the ice was covered with tightly frozen lumps, old pressure-ridges of uptilted ice cakes. Hacking away with our shot-handled pocket-ax and ice anchor was such back-breaking work that we were compelled to work on our knees most of the time. The sweat was rolling down my face and blurred my snow-glasses, so that I was compelled to take them off for a couple of hours. I paid the penalty by becoming snow-blind in one eye. Dietrichson was not so fortunate. He was badly attacked in both eyes, and had to lie in the tent in his sleeping-bag for two days with his eyes bandaged and suffering acutely from the intense inflammation.
We awoke on the morning of June 5th, tired and stiff, to look upon the level track we had so frantically labored to prepare, but saw in its place a jumbled mass of upturned ice blocks. With the destruction of our fourth course our position was no desperate. But we would hang on till the 15th, when the vital decision would have to be made as to whether or not we should abandon N 25 and make for the Greenland coast while there were yet sufficient provisions left. But we had come here on wings, and I know we all felt only wings could take us back to civilization. If we could only find a floe of sufficient area from which to take off. That was our difficulty.
In the early morning of June 6th Riiser-Larsen and Omdal started out into the heavy fog with the grim determination of men who find themselves in desperate straits, to search for what seemed to us all the unattainable. We saw no more of them till evening. Out of the fog they came, and we knew by their faces, before they uttered a word, that they had good news. Yes, they had found a floe! They had been searching through the fog, stumbling through the rough country. Suddenly the sun broke through and lit up one end of a floe, as Riiser-Larsen puts it, which became our salvation. It was a half mile off, and it would be necessary to build a slip to get out of the lead and bridge two ice cakes before reaching the desired floe.
The main body of the pack was now only ten yards away. Immediately behind the N 25 a huge ice wall was advancing slowly, inch by inch, and fifteen minutes after we started the motors the solid ice closed in over the spot where our plane had lain. We were saved.
We worked our way slowly up to where we meant to build the slip, using a saw to cut out the ice ahead where it was too heavy for the plane to break through. After six hours of steady toil we had constructed our slip and had the plane safe up on floe No. 1. That night of June 6th we slept well, after the extra cup of chocolate that was allowed us to celebrate our narrow escape.
The next morning began the most stupendous task we had yet undertaken: cutting a passage through a huge pressure-ridge,—an ice wall fifteen feet thick which separated floe No. 1 from floe No. 2,—and then bridging between floe No. 1 and floe No. 2 two chasms fifteen feet wide and ten feet deep, separating the two floes from one another. In our weakened condition this was a hard task, but we finished it by the end of the second day. Crossing the bridges between the floes was exciting work. The sustaining capacity of such ice blocks as we could manage to transport and lay in the water could not be great. The heavier blocks which we used for a foundation were floated into place in the sea and left to freeze—as we hoped they would—into a solid mass during the night. When the time came, we must cross at full speed, if we were not to sink into the sea, and then instantly stop on the other side, because we had taken no time to level ahead, so great was out fear that the ice floes might drift apart during the operation of bridging. We made the passages safely and were at last upon the big floe. In order to take advantage of the south wind, which had continued to blow ever since the day of our landing, we leveled a course across the shortest diameter of this cake, which offered only 300 meters for a take-off. But before we completed our work the wind died down. Nevertheless we made a try, but merely bumped over it and stopped just short of the open lead ahead. Our prospects did not look good. The southerly winds had made the deep snow soft and soggy. But it was a relief to know that we were out of the leads, with our plane safe from the screwing of the pack-ice.
It was June 9th, and now began the long grind of constructing a course upon which our final hopes must rest. If we failed there was nothing left. My diary shows the following entry for June 10th:—“The days go by. For the first time I am beginning to wonder if we must make the great sacrifice for our great adventure. The future looks so hopeless. Summer is on. The snows are getting too soft to travel over and the leads won’t open in this continually shifting ice.”
Riiser-Larsen looked the ground over and decided that we must remove the two and a half feet of snow right down to the solid ice and level a track twelve meters wide and four hundred meters long. It was a heartbreaking task to remove this wet summer snow with only our clumsy wooden shovels. It must be thrown clear an additional six meters to either side, so as not to interfere with the wing stretch. After but a few shovelfuls we stood weak and panting gazing disheartened at the labor ahead.
One problem was how to taxi our plane through the wet snow and get it headed in the right direction. We dug down to the blue ice, and now we were confronted with a new difficulty. The moist fog, which came over us immediately, melted the ice as soon as it was exposed. We found that by working our skis underneath the plane we were able finally to get her to turn, but after splitting a pair of skis we decided to take no more chances that way. In desperation we now tried stamping down the snow with our feet and found that it served the purpose admirably. By the end of our first day of shoveling down to the blue ice, we had succeeded in clearing a distance of only forty meters, while with the new method we were able to make one hundred meters per day. We adopted a regular system in stamping down this snow. Each man marked out a square of his own, and it was up to him to stamp down every inch in this area. We figured that at this rate we would have completed our course in five days.
During the first day’s work we saw our first sign of animal life since the seal popped his head up out of the lead where we first landed. Somebody looked up from his work of shoveling snow to see a little auk flying through the fog overhead. It came out of the north and was headed northwest. Next day two weary geese flopped down beside the plane. They must have thought that dark object looming up through the fog in all that expanse of desolate white looked friendly. They seemed an easy mark for Dietrichson, but the rich prize was too much for his nerves and he missed. The two geese ran over the snow a long distance as if they did not seem anxious to take wing again. They too came from the north and disappeared into the northwest. We wondered if there could be land in that direction. It was an interesting speculation.
On the 14th our course was finished. Then Riiser-Larsen paced it again and was surprised to find that instead of four hundred meters it was five hundred. When he informed Amundsen of this fact, the Captain was quick to remark that one million dollars couldn’t buy that extra hundred meters from him, and we all agreed that it was priceless. And so it proved to be.
On the evening of the 14th, after our chocolate, and with a southerly wind still blowing—this was a tail-wind on this course and of no help to us—we decided to make a try. But we only bumped along and the plane made no effort to rise. What we needed to get off with was a speed of 100 kilometers per hour. During all our previous attempts to take off, forty kilometers had been the best we could do. On this trial we got up to sixty, and Riiser-Larsen was hopeful. It was characteristic of the man to turn in his seat as we jumped out and remark to me: “I hope you are not disappointed, Ellsworth. We’ll do better next time.” That calm, dispassionate man was ever the embodiment of hope.
That night it was my watch all night. Around and around the ice-cake I shuffled, with my feet thrust loosely into the ski straps and a rifle slung over my shoulder, on the alert for open water. Then, too, we were always afraid that the ice-cake might break beneath us. It was badly crevassed in places. Many times during that night, on my patrol,
I watched Riiser-Larsen draw himself up out of the manhole in the top of the plane to see how the wind was blowing. During the night the wind had shifted from the south and in the morning a light breeze was blowing from the north. This was the second time during our twenty-five days in the ice that the wind had blown from the north. We had landed with a north wind—but were we to get away with a north wind? That was the question. The temperature during the night was—1.5°c. and the snow surface was crisp and hard in the morning. We now were forced to dump everything that we could spare. We left one of our canvas canoes, rifles, cameras, field-glasses; we even discarded sealskin parkas and heavy ski-boots, replacing them with moccasins. All we dare retain was half of our provisions, one canvas canoe, a shotgun and one hundred rounds of ammunition.
Then we all climbed into the plane and Riiser-Larsen started up. Dietrichson was to navigate. The plane began to move! After bumping for four hundred meters the plane actually lifted in the last hundred meters. When I could feel the plane lifting beneath me I was happy, but we had had so many cruel disappointments during the past twenty-five days that our minds were in a state where we could feel neither greater elation nor great suffering. Captain Amundsen had taken his seat beside Riiser-Larsen, and I got into the tail.
For two hours we had to fly through the thick fog, being unable either to get above to below it. During all this time we flew slowly, with a magnetic compass, a thing heretofore considered to be an impossibility in the Arctic. Dietrichson dropped down for drift observations as frequently as possible. The fogs hung so low that we were compelled to fly close to the ice, at one time skimming over it at a height of but one hundred feet. Finally we were able to rise above the fog and were again able to use our “Sun Compass.”
Southward we flew! Homeward we flew! One hour—two hours— four, six hours. Then Feucht yelled back to me in the tail. “Land!” I replied, “Spitzbergen?”—“No Spitzbergen, no Spitzbergen!” yells back Feucht in his broken English. So I made up my mind that it must be Franz-Josefs-Land. Anyway, it was land, and that meant everything!
Our rationing regulations were now off, and we all started to munch chocolate and biscuits.
For an hour Riiser-Larsen had noticed that the stabilization rudders were becoming more and more difficult to operate. Finally they failed to work completely and we were forced down on the open sea, just after having safely passed the edge of the Polar pack. We landed in the sea, after flying just eight hours, with barely ninety liters of gasoline in our tanks, one half hour’s fuel supply. The sea was rough, and we were forced to go below and cover up the man-holes, for the waves broke over the plane.
I had eaten seven cakes of chocolate when Feucht yelled, “Land ahead!” But I was now desperately ill and cared little what land it was so long as it was just land. After thirty-five minutes of taxi-ing through the rough sea, we reached the coast.
In we came—“in the wash of the wind-whipped tide.”
“Overloaded, undermanned, meant to founder, we Euchred God Almighty’s storm, bluffed the Eternal Sea!”
How good the solid land looked! We threw ourselves down on a large rock, face upward to the sun, till we remembered that we had better take an observation and know for sure where we were.
It seems remarkable, when I think about it now, how many narrow escapes we really had. Again and again it looked like either life or death, but something always just turned up to help us out. Captain Amundsen’s answer was, “You can call it luck if you want, but I don’t believe it.”
We got out our sextant and found that one of our position lines cut through the latitude of Spitzbergen. While we were waiting to take our second observation for an intersection, three hours later, some one yelled, “A sail!”— and there, heading out to sea, was a little sealer. We shouted after them and put up our flag, but they did not see us, and so we jumped into our plane and with what fuel we had left taxied out to them. They were after a wounded walrus that they had shot seven times in the head, otherwise they would have been gone long before. They were over-joyed to see us. We tried to tow the plane, but there was too much headwind, so we beached her in Brandy Bay, North Cape, North-East-Land, Spitzbergen, one hundred miles east of our starting point at King’s Bay.
We slept continuously during the three days in the sealer, only waking to devour the delicious seal meat steaks smothered in onions and the eider-duck egg omelets prepared for us.
The homage that was accorded us upon our return to civilization will ever remain the most cherished memory of our trip. We took the steamer from King’s Bay for Norway on June 25th, after putting our plane on board, and nine days later arrived at Horten, the Norwegian Naval Base, not far from Olso.
On July 5th, with the stage all set, we flew N 25 into Oslo. It was difficult to realize that we were in the same plane that had so recently been battling in the midst of the Artic ice. Good old N 25! We dropped down into the Fjord amid a pandemonium of frantically shrieking river craft and taxied on through the wildly waving and cheering throngs, past thirteen fully manned British battleships, and as I listened to the booming of the salute from the Fort and looked ahead at the great silent expectant mass of humanity that waited to greet us, I was overcome with emotion and the tears rolled down my face. At that moment I felt paid in full for all that I had gone through.
THREE MONTHS IN AN UNINHABITED LAND
SVEN HEDIN
On a summer’s night in 1906 I settled myself comfortably on the grass under the ancient plane trees of Ganderbal. The moderately warm breezes of Kashmir caressed the trunks and whispered in the crowns, but the grove was dark and the silence was broken only intermittently by nocturnal sounds, after the day had gone to rest.
Why had they not arrived yet, I pondered. Perhaps they would not appear before the new day had risen over the mountains?
“Hello,” I called to the five oarsmen, who had brought me here and who were still busy with their long, slender canoe, “Light a fire so that the caravan may find us.”
Dried branches crackled and cracked and tongues of flame fluttered as golden pennants in a wind. The plane trees towered in a ring of gray specters, while the crowns turned as green as the enamel in a Mohammedan mosque. The stars that had just peeped through the leafy arches were extinguished, but the grove was flooded with light as for a temple festival, and the smoke ascended like a sacrificial tribute from an incense-burner. I lit my pipe and mused. Another march of conquest was about to begin through Tibet. The long journey through Europe, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, Persia, Seistan and Baluchistan had been completed to Simla, where Viceroy Lord Minto informed me that London had refused permission to use India as a starting-point for a march into the forbidden country. Therefore I had been forced to revise my whole plan. I had gone to Srinagar, whence I would continue to Leh in Ladakh and join the main caravan route to Chinese Turkestan, detour in uninhabited regions and, unnoticed turn eastward. The British residentiary in Srinagar had notified me that the road to Chinese territory was also closed to me, unless I had a Chinese passport. My telegraphic request had been successful, with Swedish diplomatic assistance, and the passport arrived in good time. The first caravan was assembled in Srinagar, led by Kashmirians and escorted by two well armed Afghans and two Rajputs. Robert, a young Eurasian, was to be my secretary and the Hindoo, Manuel, my cook. We purchased thirty six fine asses from the Maharajah of Poonch, but the baggage was to be carried to Leh by hired horses. Our travel fund consisted of gold and silver rupees, current in Tibet.
The horses were loaded in my yard in Srinagar on the sixteenth of July and the long train vanished in a cloud of dust on the road to Ganderbal. Alone I walked to the bank of a canal, where a canoe was in readiness with its oarsmen. I took my place at the rudder. The highly polished boat glided like an eel through the water that seethed around the stern. The broad blades of the oars were bent by sinewy arms. Picturesque houses with any balconies lined the banks. Children played at landings and bridges, while women were washing linen. One
house was built like a bridge across the canal, and the quaint perspectives succeeded each other so rapidly that we could not digest them before new ones were opened up as we could not digest them before new ones were opened up as we traveled on our narrow waterway. Now we were in the shade, and now the sun scorched between groves of trees and houses. Ducks and geese rooted in the slime and gnats were having their evening dance over the water.
The sun sank and twilight spread over the enchanted region. The last houses disappeared, the outlines of parks and groves suggested dark phantoms on both sides of the canal. The night was raven-black as the oarsmen slowed down and the canoe glided toward the landing at Ganderbal.
And here I was by the fire under the plane trees awaiting the caravan. There was a rustling in the bushes. By the light of the fire I recognized one of the Afghans. He whistled shrilly. Robert and Manuel also appeared, accompanied by a long row of Kashmirians.
New fires crackled. A few of the men hurried back with resinous torches in their hands to light up the trail among the trees for the missing ones.
At the midnight hour all were here. What a din, what a buzz of voices and cries! The escorts were shouting their commands, Kashmirians wrangled and quarreled, horses were neighing for their bags of corn, mules kicked and fires crackled. But, gradually, it became comparatively quiet and the white turbans were grouped around the camp fires in front of the tents. Wild faces, browned to a copper color by India’s sun, glistened like metal in the glare of the fire.
The Best Adventure and Exploration Stories Ever Told Page 33
