The Man Without a Country and Other Tales by Edward E. Hale

E >> Edward E. Hale >> The Man Without a Country and Other Tales

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

Some thirty or forty parties, thus equipped, set out from the "Resolute"
while she was under Captain Kellett's charge, on various expeditions. As
the journey of Lieutenant Pim to the "Investigator" at Banks Land was
that on which turned the great victory of her voyage, we will let that
stand as a specimen of all. None of the others, however, were undertaken
at so early a period of the year, and, on the other hand, several others
were much longer,--some of them, as has been said, occupying three
months and more.

Lieutenant Pim had been appointed in the autumn to the "Banks Land
search," and had carried out his depots of provisions when the other
officers took theirs. Captain McClure's chart and despatch made it no
longer necessary to have that coast surveyed, but made it all the more
necessary to have some one go and see if he was still there. The chances
were against this, as a whole summer had intervened since he was heard
from. Lieutenant Pim proposed, however, to travel all round Banks Land,
which is an island about the size and shape of Ireland, in search of
him, Collinson, Franklin, or anybody. Captain Kellett, however, told him
not to attempt this with his force, but to return to the ship by the
route he went. First he was to go to the Bay of Mercy; if the
"Investigator" was gone, he was to follow any traces of her, and, if
possible, communicate with her or her consort, the "Enterprise."

Lieutenant Pim started with a sledge and seven men, and a dog-sledge
with two under Dr. Domville, the surgeon, who was to bring back the
earliest news from the Bay of Mercy to the captain. There was a relief
sledge to go part way and return. For the intense cold of this early
season they had even more careful arrangements than those we have
described. Their tent was doubled. They had extra Mackintoshes, and
whatever else could be devised. They had bad luck at starting,--broke
down one sledge and had to send back for another; had bad weather, and
must encamp, once for three days. "Fortunately," says the lieutenant of
this encampment, "the temperature arose from fifty-one below zero to
thirty-six below, and there remained," while the drift accumulated to
such a degree around the tents, that within them the thermometer was
only twenty below, and, when they cooked, rose to zero. A pleasant time
of it they must have had there on the ice, for those three days, in
their bags smoking and sleeping! No wonder that on the fourth day they
found they moved slowly, so cramped and benumbed were they. This morning
a new sledge came to them from the ship; they got out of their bags,
packed, and got under way again. They were still running along shore,
but soon sent back the relief party which had brought the new sled, and
in a few days more set out to cross the strait, some twenty-five to
thirty miles wide, which, when it is open, as no man has ever seen it,
is one of the Northwest Passages discovered by these expeditions.

Horrible work it was! Foggy and dark, so they could not choose the road,
and, as it happened, lit on the very worst mass of broken ice in the
channel. Just as they entered on it, one black raven must needs appear.
"Bad luck," said the men. And when Mr. Pim shot a musk-ox, their first,
and the wounded creature got away, "So much for the raven," they croaked
again. Only three miles the first day, four miles the second day, two
and a half the third, and half a mile the fourth; this was all they
gained by most laborious hauling over the broken ice, dragging one
sledge at a time, and sometimes carrying forward the stores separately
and going back for the sledges. Two days more gave them eight miles
more, but on the seventh day on this narrow strait, the dragging being a
little better, the great sledge slipped off a smooth hummock, broke one
runner to smash, and "there they were."

If the two officers had a little bit of a "tiff" out there on the ice,
with the thermometer at eighteen below, only a little dog-sledge to get
them anywhere, their ship a hundred miles off, fourteen days' travel as
they had come, nobody ever knew it; they kept their secret from us, it
is nobody's business, and it is not to be wondered at. Certainly they
did not agree. The Doctor, whose sled, the "James Fitzjames," was still
sound, thought they had best leave the stores and all go back; but the
Lieutenant, who had the command, did not like to give it up, so he took
the dogs and the "James Fitzjames" and its two men and went on, leaving
the Doctor on the floe, but giving him directions to go back to land
with the wounded sledge and wait for him to return. And the Doctor did
it, like a spirited fellow, travelling back and forth for what he could
not take in one journey, as the man did in the story who had a peck of
corn, a goose, and a wolf to get across the river. Over ice, over
hummock the Lieutenant went on his way with his dogs, not a bear nor a
seal nor a hare nor a wolf to feed them with: preserved meats, which
had been put up with dainty care for men and women, all he had for the
ravenous, tasteless creatures, who would have been more pleased with
blubber, came to Banks Land at last, but no game there; awful drifts;
shut up in the tent for a whole day, and he himself so sick he could
scarcely stand! There were but three of them in all; and the captain of
the sledge not unnaturally asked poor Pim, when he was at the worst,
"What shall I do, sir, if you die?" Not a very comforting question!

He did not die. He got a few hours' sleep, felt better and started
again, but had the discouragement of finding such tokens of an open
strait the last year that he felt sure that the ship he was going to
look for would be gone. One morning, he had been off for game for the
dogs unsuccessfully, and, when he came back to his men, learned that
they had seen seventeen deer. After them goes Pim; finds them to be
_three hares_, magnified by fog and mirage, and their long ears
answering for horns. This same day they got upon the Bay of Mercy. No
ship in sight! Right across it goes the Lieutenant to look for records;
when, at two in the afternoon, Robert Hoile sees something black up the
bay. Through the glass the Lieutenant makes it out to be a ship. They
change their direction at once. Over the ice towards her! He leaves the
sledge at three and goes on. How far it seems! At four he can see people
walking about, and a pile of stones and flag-staff on the beach. Keep
on, Pim; shall one never get there? At five he is within a hundred
yards of her, and no one has seen him. But just then the very persons
see him who ought to! Pim beckons, waves his arms as the Esquimaux do in
sign of friendship. Captain McClure and his lieutenant Haswell are
"taking their exercise," the chief business of those winters, and at
last see him! Pim is black as Erebus from the smoke of cooking in the
little tent. McClure owns, not to surprise only, but to a twinge of
dismay. "I paused in my advance," says he, "doubting who or what it
could be, a denizen of this or the other world." But this only lasts a
moment. Pim speaks. Brave man that he can. How his voice must have
choked, as if he were in a dream. "I am Lieutenant Pim, late of
'Herald.' Captain Kellett is at Melville Island." Well-chosen words,
Pim, to be sent in advance over the hundred yards of floe! Nothing about
the "Resolute,"--that would have confused them. But "Pim," "Herald," and
"Kellett" were among the last signs of England they had seen,--all this
was intelligible. An excellent little speech, which the brave man had
been getting ready, perhaps, as one does a telegraphic despatch, for the
hours that he had been walking over the floe to her. Then such shaking
hands, such a greeting. Poor McClure could not speak at first. One of
the men at work got the news on board; and up through the hatches poured
everybody, sick and well, to see the black stranger, and to hear his
news from England. It was nearly three years since they had seen any
civilized man but themselves.

The 28th of July, three years before, Commander McClure had sent his
last despatch to the Admiralty. He had then prophesied just what in
three years he had almost accomplished. In the winter of 1850 he had
discovered the Northwest Passage. He had come round into one branch of
it, Banks Straits, in the next summer; had gladly taken refuge on the
Bay of Mercy in a gale; and his ship had never left it since. Let it be
said, in passing, that most likely she is there now. In his last
despatches he had told the Admiralty not to be anxious about him if he
did not arrive home before the autumn of 1854. As it proved, that autumn
he did come with all his men, except those whom he had sent home before,
and those who had died. When Pim found them, all the crew but thirty
were under orders for marching, some to Baffin's Bay, some to the
Mackenzie River, on their return to England. McClure was going to stay
with the rest, and come home with the ship, if they could; if not, by
sledges to Port Leopold, and so by a steam-launch which he had seen left
there for Franklin in 1849. But the arrival of Mr. Pim put an end to all
these plans. We have his long despatch to the Admiralty explaining them,
finished only the day before Pim arrived. It gives the history of his
three years' exile from the world,--an exile crowded full of effective
work,--in a record which gives a noble picture of the man. The Queen
has made him Sir Robert Le Mesurier McClure since, in honor of his great
discovery.

Banks Land, or Baring Island, the two names belong to the same island,
on the shores of which McClure and his men had spent most of these two
years or more, is an island on which they were first of civilized men to
land. For people who are not very particular, the measurement of it
which we gave before, namely, that it is about the size and shape of
Ireland, is precise enough. There is high land in the interior probably,
as the winds from in shore are cold. The crew found coal and dwarf
willow which they could burn; lemmings, ptarmigan, hares, reindeer, and
musk-oxen, which they could eat.

"Farewell to the land where I often have wended
My way o'er its mountains and valleys of snow;
Farewell to the rocks and the hills I've ascended,
The bleak arctic homes of the buck and the doe;
Farewell to the deep glens where oft has resounded
The snow-bunting's song, as she carolled her lay
To hillside and plain, by the green sorrel bounded,
Till struck by the blast of a cold winter's day."

There is a bit of description of Banks Land, from the anthology of that
country, which, so far as we know, consists of two poems by a seaman
named Nelson, one of Captain McClure's crew. The highest temperature
ever observed on this "gem of the sea" was 53 deg. in midsummer. The lowest
was 65 deg. below zero in January, 1853; that day the thermometer did not
rise to 60 deg. below, that month was never warmer than 16 deg. below, and the
average of the month was 43 deg. below. A pleasant climate to spend three
years in!

One day for talk was all that could be allowed, after Mr. Pim's amazing
appearance. On the 8th of April, he and his dogs, and Captain McClure
and a party, were ready to return to our friend the "Resolute." They
picked up Dr. Domville on the way; he had got the broken sledge mended,
and killed five musk-oxen, against they came along. He went on in the
dog-sledge to tell the news, but McClure and his men kept pace with
them; and he and Dr. Domville had the telling of the news together.

It was decided that the "Investigator" should be abandoned, and the
"Intrepid" and "Resolute" made room for her men. Glad greeting they gave
them too, as British seamen can give. More than half the crews were away
when the "Investigator's" parties came in, but by July everybody had
returned. They had found islands where the charts had guessed there was
sea, and sea where they had guessed there was land; had changed
peninsulas into islands and islands into peninsulas. Away off beyond the
seventy eighth parallel, Mr. McClintock had christened the farthest dot
of land "Ireland's Eye," as if his native island were peering off into
the unknown there;--a great island, which will be our farthest now, for
years to come, had been named "Prince Patrick's Land," in honor of the
baby prince who was the youngest when they left home. Will he not be
tempted, when he is a man, to take a crew, like another Madoc, and, as
younger sons of queens should, go and settle upon this tempting
god-child? They had heard from Sir Edward Belcher's part of the
squadron; they had heard from England; had heard of everything but Sir
John Franklin. They had even found an ale-bottle of Captain Collinson's
expedition,--but not a stick nor straw to show where Franklin or his men
had lived or died. Two officers of the "Investigator" were sent home to
England this summer by a ship from Beechey Island, the head-quarters;
and thus we heard, in October, 1853, of the discovery of the Northwest
Passage.

After their crews were on board again, and the "Investigator's" sixty
stowed away also, the "Resolute" and "Intrepid" had a dreary summer of
it. The ice would not break up. They had hunting-parties on shore and
races on the floe; but the captain could not send the "Investigators"
home as he wanted to, in his steam tender. All his plans were made, and
made on a manly scale,--if only the ice would open. He built a
storehouse on the island for Collinson's people, or for you, reader, and
us, if we should happen there, and stored it well, and left this
record:--

"This is a house which I have named the 'Sailor's Home,' under the
especial patronage of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.

"_Here_ royal sailors and marines are fed, clothed, and receive
double pay for inhabiting it."

In that house is a little of everything, and a good deal of victuals and
drink; but nobody has been there since the last of the "Resolute's" men
came away.

At last, the 17th of August, a day of foot-racing and jumping in bags
and wrestling, all hands present, as at a sort of "Isthmian games,"
ended with a gale, a cracking up of ice, and the "Investigators" thought
they were on their way home, and Kellett thought he was to have a month
of summer yet. But no; "there is nothing certain in this navigation from
one hour to the next." The "Resolute" and "Intrepid" were never really
free of ice all that autumn; drove and drifted to and fro in Barrow's
Straits till the 12th of November; and then froze up, without anchoring,
off Cape Cockburn, perhaps one hundred and forty miles from their harbor
of the last winter. The log-book of that winter is a curious record; the
ingenuity of the officer in charge was well tasked to make one day
differ from another. Each day has the first entry for "ship's position"
thus: "In the floe off Cape Cockburn." And the blank for the second
entry, thus: "In the same position." Lectures, theatricals, schools,
&c., whiled away the time; but there could be no autumn travelling
parties, and not much hope for discovery in the summer.

Spring came. The captain went over ice in his little dog-sled to
Beechey Island, and received his directions to abandon his ships. It
appears that he would rather have sent most of his men forward, and with
a small crew brought the "Resolute" home that autumn or the next. But
Sir Edward Belcher considered his orders peremptory "that the safety of
the crews must preclude any idea of extricating the ships." Both ships
were to be abandoned. Two distant travelling parties were away, one at
the "Investigator," one looking for traces of Collinson, which they
found. Word was left for them, at a proper point, not to seek the ship
again, but to come on to Beechey Island. And at last, having fitted the
"Intrepid's" engines so that she could be under steam in two hours,
having stored both ships with equal proportions of provisions, and made
both vessels "ready for occupation," the captain calked down the
hatches, and with all the crew he had not sent on before,--forty-two
persons in all,--left her Monday, the 15th of May, 1854, and started
with the sledges for Beechey Island.

Poor old "Resolute"! All this gay company is gone who have made her
sides split with their laughter. Here is Harlequin's dress, lying in one
of the wardrooms, but there is nobody to dance Harlequin's dances. "Here
is a lovely clear day,--surely to-day they will come on deck and take a
meridian!" No, nobody comes. The sun grows hot on the decks; but it is
all one, nobody looks at the thermometer! "And so the poor ship was
left all alone." Such gay times she has had with all these brave young
men on board! Such merry winters, such a lightsome summer! So much fun,
so much nonsense! So much science and wisdom, and now it is all so
still! Is the poor "Resolute" conscious of the change? Does she miss the
races on the ice, the scientific lecture every Tuesday, the occasional
racket and bustle of the theatre, and the worship of every Sunday? Has
not she shared the hope of Captain Kellett, of McClure, and of the crew,
that she may _break out well!_ She sees the last sledge leave her. The
captain drives off his six dogs,--vanishes over the ice, and they are
all gone "Will they not come back again?" says the poor ship. And she
looks wistfully across the ice to her little friend the steam tender
"Intrepid," and she sees there is no one there. "Intrepid! Intrepid!
have they really deserted us? We have served them so well, and have they
really left us alone? A great many were away travelling last year, but
they came home. Will not any of these come home now?" No, poor
"Resolute"! Not one of them ever came back again! Not one of them meant
to. Summer came. August came. No one can tell how soon, but some day or
other this her icy prison broke up, and the good ship found herself on
her own element again; shook herself proudly, we cannot doubt, nodded
joyfully across to the "Intrepid," and was free. But alas! there was no
master to take latitude and longitude, no helmsman at the wheel. In
clear letters cast in brass over her helm there are these words,
"England expects each man to do his duty." But here is no man to heed
the warning, and the rudder flaps this way and that way, no longer
directing her course, but stupidly swinging to and fro. And she drifts
here and there,--drifts out of sight of her little consort,--strands on
a bit of ice floe now, and then is swept off from it,--and finds
herself, without even the "Intrepid's" company, alone on these blue seas
with those white shores. But what utter loneliness! Poor "Resolute "!
She longed for freedom,--but what is freedom where there is no law? What
is freedom without a helmsman! And the "Resolute" looks back so sadly to
the old days when she had a master. And the short bright summer passes.
And again she sees the sun set from her decks. And now even her topmasts
see it set. And now it does not rise to her deck. And the next day it
does not rise to her topmast. Winter and night together! She has known
them before! But now it is winter and night and loneliness all together.
This horrid ice closes up round her again. And there is no one to bring
her into harbor,--she is out in the open sound. If the ice drifts west,
she must go west. If it goes east, she must east. Her seeming freedom is
over, and for that long winter she is chained again. But her heart is
true to old England. And when she can go east, she is so happy! and when
she must go west, she is so sad! Eastward she does go! Southward she
does go! True to the instinct which sends us all home, she tracks
undirected and without a sail fifteen hundred miles of that sea, without
a beacon, which separates her from her own. And so goes a dismal year.
"Perhaps another spring they will come and find me out, and fix things
below. It is getting dreadfully damp down there; and I cannot keep the
guns bright and the floors dry," No, good old "Resolute." May and June
pass off the next year, and nobody comes; and here you are all alone out
in the bay, drifting in this dismal pack. July and August,--the days are
growing shorter again. "Will nobody come and take care of me, and cut
off these horrid blocks of ice, and see to these sides of bacon in the
hold, and all these mouldy sails, and this powder, and the bread and the
spirit that I have kept for them so well? It is September, and the sun
begins to set again. And here is another of those awful gales. Will it
be my very last? all alone here,--who have done so much,--and if they
would only take care of me I can do so much more. Will nobody come?
Nobody?.... What! Is it ice blink,--are my poor old lookouts blind? Is
not there the 'Intrepid'? Dear 'Intrepid,' I will never look down on you
again! No! there is no smoke-stack, it is not the 'Intrepid.' But it is
somebody. Pray see me, good somebody. Are you a Yankee whaler? I am glad
to see the Yankee whalers, I remember the Yankee whalers very
pleasantly. We had a happy summer together once.... It will be dreadful
if they do not see me! But this ice, this wretched ice! They do see
me,--I know they see me, but they cannot get at me. Do not go away, good
Yankees; pray come and help me. I know I can get out, if you will help a
little.... But now it is a whole week and they do not come! Are there
any Yankees, or am I getting crazy? I have heard them talk of crazy old
ships, in my young days.... No! I am not crazy. They are coming! they
are coming. Brave Yankees! over the hummocks, down into the sludge. Do
not give it up for the cold. There is coal below, and we will have a
fire in the Sylvester, and in the captain's cabin.... There is a horrid
lane of water. They have not got a Halkett. O, if one of these boats of
mine would only start for them, instead of lying so stupidly on my deck
here! But the men are not afraid of water! See them ferry over on that
ice block! Come on, good friends! Welcome, whoever you be,--Dane, Dutch,
French, or Yankee, come on! come on! It is coming up a gale, but I can
bear a gale. Up the side, men. I wish I could let down the gangway
alone. But here are all these blocks of ice piled up,--you can scramble
over them! Why do you stop? Do not be afraid. I will make you very
comfortable and jolly. Do not stay talking there. Pray come in. There is
port in the captain's cabin, and a little preserved meat in the pantry.
You must be hungry; pray come in! O, he is coming, and now all four are
coming. It would be dreadful if they had gone back! They are on deck.
Now I shall go home! How lonely it has been!"

It was true enough that when Mr. Quail, the brother of the captain of
the "McLellan," whom the "Resolute" had befriended, the mate of the
George Henry, whaler, whose master, Captain Buddington, had discovered
the "Resolute" in the ice, came to her after a hard day's journey with
his men, the men faltered with a little superstitious feeling, and
hesitated for a minute about going on board. But the poor lonely ship
wooed them too lovingly, and they climbed over the broken ice and came
on deck. She was lying over on her larboard side, with a heavy weight of
ice holding her down. Hatches and companion were made fast, as Captain
Kellett had left them. But, knocking open the companion, groping down
stairs to the after cabin they found their way to the captain's table;
somebody put his hand on a box of lucifers, struck a light, and
revealed--books scattered in confusion, a candle standing, which he
lighted at once, the glasses and the decanters from which Kellett and
his officers had drunk good by to the vessel. The whalemen filled them
again, and undoubtedly felt less discouraged. Meanwhile night came on,
and a gale arose. So hard did it blow, that for two days these four were
the whole crew of the "Resolute," and it was not till the 19th of
September that they returned to their own ship, and reported what their
prize was.

All these ten days, since Captain Buddington had first seen her, the
vessels had been nearing each other. On the 19th he boarded her himself;
found that in her hold, on the larboard side, was a good deal of ice; on
the starboard side there seemed to be water. In fact, her tanks had
burst from the extreme cold; and she was full of water, nearly to her
lower deck. Everything that could move from its place had moved;
everything was wet; everything that would mould was mouldy. "A sort of
perspiration" settled on the beams above. Clothes were wringing wet. The
captain's party made a fire in Captain Kellett's stove, and soon started
a sort of shower from the vapor with which it filled the air. The
"Resolute" has, however, four fine force-pumps. For three days the
captain and six men worked fourteen hours a day on one of these, and had
the pleasure of finding that they freed her of water,--that she was
tight still. They cut away upon the masses of ice; and on the 23d of
September, in the evening, she freed herself from her encumbrances, and
took an even keel. This was off the west shore of Baffin's Bay, in
latitude 67 deg.. On the shortest tack she was twelve hundred miles from
where Captain Kellett left her.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17