My Attainment of the Pole Part 36

We started. We were as thin as it is possible for men to be. The sc.r.a.ps of meat, viscera, and skin of the seal, buried for a year, was now our sole diet. We traveled the first two days northward over savage uplifts of hummocks and deep snows, tripping and stumbling over blocks of ice like wounded animals. Then we reached good, smooth ice, but open water forced us northward, ever northward from the cheering cliffs under which our Greenland homes and abundant supplies were located. No longer necessary to lift the feet, we dragged the ice-sheeted boots step after step over smooth young ice. This eased our tired, withered legs, and long distances were covered. The days were prolonged, the decayed seal food ran low, water was almost impossible. Life no longer seemed worth living. We had eaten the strips of meat and frozen seal cautiously. We had eaten other things--our very boots and leather las.h.i.+ngs as a last resort.

So weak that we had to climb on hands and knees, we reached the top of an iceberg, and from there saw Annoatok. Natives, who had thought us long dead, rushed out to greet us. There I met Mr. Harry Whitney. As I held his hand, the cheer of a long-forgotten world came over me. With him I went to my house, only to find that during my absence it had been confiscated. A sudden bitterness rose within which it was difficult to hide. A warm meal dispelled this for a time.

In due time I told Whitney: "I have reached the Pole."

Uttering this for the first time in English, it came upon me that I was saying a remarkable thing. Yet Mr. Whitney showed no great surprise, and his quiet congratulation confirmed what was in my mind--that I had accomplished no extraordinary or unbelievable thing; for to me the Polar experience was not in the least remarkable, considered with our later adventures.

Mr. Whitney, as is now well known, was a sportsman from New Haven, Connecticut, who had been spending some months hunting in the North. He had made Annoatok the base of his operations, and had been spending the winter in the house which I had built of packing-boxes.

The world now seemed brighter. The most potent factor in this change was food--and more food--a bath and another bath--and clean clothes. Mr.

Whitney offered me unreservedly the hospitality of my own camp. He instructed Pritchard to prepare meal after meal of every possible dish that our empty stomachs had craved for a year. The Eskimo boys were invited to share it.

Between meals, or perhaps we had better call meals courses (for it was a continuous all-night performance--interrupted by baths and breathing spells to prevent spasms of the jaws)--between courses, then, there were washes with real soap and real cleansing warm water, the first that we had felt for fourteen months. Mr. Whitney helped to sc.r.a.pe my angular anatomy, and he volunteered the information that I was the dirtiest man he ever saw.

From Mr. Whitney I learned that Mr. Peary had reached Annoatok about the middle of August, 1908, and had placed a boatswain named Murphy, a.s.sisted by William Pritchard, a cabin boy on the _Roosevelt_, in charge of my stores, which he had seized. Murphy was anything but tactful and considerate; and in addition to taking charge of my goods, had been using them in trading as money to pay for furs to satisfy Mr. Peary's hunger for commercial gain. Murphy went south in pursuit of furs after my arrival.

For the first few days I was too weak to inquire into the theft of my camp and supplies. Furthermore, with a full stomach, and Mr. Whitney as a warm friend at hand, I was indifferent. I was not now in any great need. For by using the natural resources of the land, as I had done before, it was possible to force a way back to civilization from here with the aid of my Eskimo friends.

Little by little, however, the story of that very strange "Relief Station for Dr. Cook" was unraveled, and I tell it here with no ulterior notion of bitterness against Mr. Peary. I forgave him for the practical theft of my supplies; but this is a very important part of the controversy which followed, a controversy which can be understood only by a plain statement of the incidents which led up to and beyond this so-called "Relief Station for Dr. Cook," which was a relief only in the sense that I was relieved of a priceless store of supplies.

When Mr. Peary heard of the execution of my plans to try for the Pole in 1907, and before he left on his last expedition, he accused me of various violations of what he chose to call "Polar Ethics." No application had been filed by me to seek the Pole. Now I was accused of stealing his route, his Pole, and his people. This train of accusations was given to the press, and with the greatest possible publicity. A part of this was included in an official complaint to the International Bureau of Polar Research at Brussels.

Now, what are Polar ethics? There is no separate code for the Arctic.

The laws which govern men's bearing towards each other in New York are good in any part of the world. One cannot be a democrat in civilized eyes and an autocrat in the savage world. One cannot cry, "Stop thief!"

and then steal the thief's booty. If you are a member of the brotherhood of humanity in one place, you must be in another. In short, he who is a gentleman in every sense of the word needs no memory for ethics. It is only the modern political reformer who has need of the cloak of the hypocrisy of ethics to hide his own misdeeds. An explorer should not stoop to this.

Who had the power to grant a license to seek the Pole? If you wish to invade the forbidden regions of Thibet, or the interior of Siberia, a permit is necessary from the governments interested. But the Pole is a place no nation owned, by right of discovery, occupation, or otherwise.

If pus.h.i.+ng a s.h.i.+p up the North Atlantic waters to the limit of navigation was a trespa.s.s on Mr. Peary's preserve, then I am bound to plead guilty. But s.h.i.+ps had gone that way for a hundred years before Mr.

Peary developed a Polar claim. If I am guilty, then he is guilty of stealing the routes of Davis, Kane, Greely and a number of others. But as I view the situation, a modern explorer should take a certain pride in the advantages afforded by his worthy predecessors. I take a certain historic delight in having followed the routes of the early pathfinders to a more remote destination. This indebtedness and this honor I do now, as heretofore, acknowledge. The charge that I stole Mr. Peary's route is incorrect. For, from the limit of navigation on the Greenland side, my track was forced over a land which, although under Mr. Peary's eyes for twenty years, was explored by Sverdrup, who got the same unbrotherly treatment from Mr. Peary which he has shown to every explorer who has had the misfortune to come within the circle he has drawn about an imaginary private preserve.

The charge of borrowing Peary's ideas, by which is meant the selection of food and supplies and the adoption of certain methods of travel, is equally unfounded. For Mr. Peary's weakest chain is his absolute lack of system, order, preparation or originality. This is commented upon by the men of every one of his previous expeditions. Mr. Peary early charged that my system of work and my methods of travel were borrowed from him.

This was not true; but when he later, in a desperate effort to say unkind things, said that my system--the system borrowed from himself--was inefficient, the charge becomes laughable. As to the Pole--if Mr. Peary has a prior lien on it--it is there still. We did not take it away. We simply left our footprints there.

Now as to the charge of using Mr. Peary's supplies and his people--by a.s.suming a private preserve of all the reachable Polar wilderness of this section, he might put up a plausible claim to it as a private hunting ground. If this claim is good, then I am guilty of trespa.s.s. But it was only done to satisfy the pangs of hunger.

This claim of the owners.h.i.+p of the animals of the unclaimed North might be put with plausible excuses to The Hague Tribunal. But it is a claim no serious person would consider. The same claim of owners.h.i.+p, however, cannot be said of human life.

The Eskimos are a free and independent people. They acknowledge no chiefs among themselves and submit to no outside dictators. They are likely to call an incoming stranger "nalegaksook," which the vanity of the early travelers interpreted as the "great chief." But the intended interpretation is "he who has much to barter" or "the great trader."

This is what they call Mr. Peary. The same compliment is given to other traders, whalers or travelers with whom they do business. Despite his claims Mr. Peary has been regarded as no more of a benefactor than any other explorer.

After delivering, early in 1907, an unreasonable and uncalled for attack, Mr. Peary, two months after the Pole had been reached by me, went North with two s.h.i.+ps, with all the advantage that unlimited funds and influential friends could give. At about the same time my companion, Rudolph Francke, started south under my instructions, and he locked my box-house at Annoatok wherein were stored supplies sufficient for two years or more.

The key was entrusted to a trustworthy Eskimo. Under his protection this precious life-saving supply was safe for an indefinite time. With it no relief expedition or help from the outside world was necessary.

Francke had a hard time as he pushed southward, with boat and sledge.

Moving supplies to the limit of his carrying capacity, he fought bravely against storms, broken ice and thundering seas. The route proved all but impossible, but at last his destination at North Star was reached, only for him to find that he was too late for the whalers he had expected.

Impossible to return to our northern camp at that time, and having used all of his civilized food en route, he was now compelled to accept the hospitality of the natives, in their unhygienic dungeons. For food there was nothing but the semi-putrid meat and blubber eaten by the Eskimos.

After a long and desperate task by boat and sled he returned to Etah but he was absolutely unable to proceed farther. Francke's health failed rapidly and when, as he thought, the time had arrived to lay down and quit life, a big prosperous looking s.h.i.+p came into the harbor. He had not tasted civilized food for months, and longed, as only a sick, hungry man can, for coffee and bread.

Almost too weak to arise from his couch of stones, he mustered up enough strength to stumble over the rails of that s.h.i.+p of plenty. After gathering sufficient breath to speak, he asked for bread and coffee. It was breakfast time. No answer came to that appeal. He was put off the s.h.i.+p. He went back to his cheerless cave and prayed that death might close his eyes to further trouble. Somewhat later, when it was learned that there was a house and a large store of supplies at Annoatok, and that the man had in his possession furs and ivory valued at $10,000, there was a change of heart in Mr. Peary. Francke was called on board, was given bread and coffee and whiskey. Too weak to resist, he was bullied and frightened, and forced under duress to sign papers which he did not understand. To get home to him meant life; to remain meant death. And the s.h.i.+p before him was thus his only chance for life. Under the circ.u.mstances he would naturally have put his name to any paper placed under his feeble eyes. But the law of no land would enforce such a doc.u.ment.

In this way Mr. Peary compelled him to turn over $10,000 worth of furs and ivory, besides my station and supplies, worth at least $35,000, which were not his to turn over. The prized ivory tusks and furs were immediately seized and sent back on the returning s.h.i.+p.

One of the narwhal tusks, worth to me at least $1,000, was polished and sent as Peary's trophy to President Roosevelt. Under the circ.u.mstances has not the President been made the recipient of stolen goods?

When Francke, as a pa.s.senger, returned on the Peary supply s.h.i.+p, _Erik_, a bill of one hundred dollars was presented for his pa.s.sage. This bill was presumably the bill for the full cost of his return. But the priceless furs and ivory trophies were confiscated without a murmur of conscious wrongdoing. This is what happened as the s.h.i.+p went south.

Now let us follow the s.h.i.+p _Roosevelt_ in its piratic career northward.

With Mr. Peary as chief it got to Etah. From there instructions were given to seize my house and supplies. This was done over the signature of Mr. Peary to a paper which started out with the following shameless hypocrisy:

"This is a relief station for Dr. Cook."

According to Mr. Whitney even Captain Bartlett quivered with indignation at the blus.h.i.+ng audacity of this steal. The stores were said to be abandoned. The men, with Peary's orders, went to Koo-loo-ting-wah and forced from him the key with which to open the carefully guarded stores.

The house was reconstructed.

Murphy, a rough Newfoundland bruiser, who had been accustomed to kick sailors, was placed in charge with autocratic powers. Murphy could neither read nor write, but he was given a long letter of instruction to make a trading station of my home and to use my supplies.

Now if Mr. Peary required my supplies for legitimate exploration I should have been glad to give him my last bread; but to use my things to satisfy his greed for commercial gain was, when I learned it, bitter medicine.

Because Murphy could not write, Pritchard was left with him to read the piratic instructions once each week. Pritchard was also to keep account of the furs bought and the prices paid--mostly in my coin. Murphy soon forbade the reading of the instructions, and also stopped the stock-taking and bookkeeping. The hypocrisy of the thing seemed to pinch even Murphy's narrow brain.

This same deliberate Murphy, accustomed to life in barracks, held the whip for a year over the head of Harry Whitney, a man of culture and millions. Money, however, was of no use there. Audacity and self-a.s.sumed power, it seems, ruled as it did in times of old when buccaneers deprived their victims of gold, and walked them off a plank into the briny deep.

Murphy and Pritchard, the paid traders, fixed themselves cosily in my camp. Mr. Whitney had been invited as a guest to stay and hunt for his own pleasure. The party lived for a year at my expense, but the lot of Whitney was very hard as an invited guest, a privilege for which I was told he had paid Mr. Peary two thousand dollars or more. His decision to stay had come only after a disappointment in a lack of success of hunting during the summer season. He was, therefore, ill-provided for the usual Polar hards.h.i.+ps. With no food, and no adequate clothing of his own, he was dependent on the dictates of Murphy to supply him. As time went on, the night with its awful cold advanced. Murphy gathered in all the furs and absolutely prohibited Whitney from getting suitable furs for winter clothing. He, therefore, s.h.i.+vered throughout the long winter in his sheepskin shooting outfit. Several times he was at the point of a hand-to-hand encounter with Murphy, but with young Pritchard as a friend and gentlemanly instincts to soften his manner, he grit his teeth and swallowed the insults.

His ambition for a hunting trip was frustrated because it interfered with Murphy's plans for trading in skins. The worst and most brutal treatment was the almost inconceivable cruelty of his not allowing Mr.

Whitney enough food for a period of months, not even of my supplies, although this food was used eventually to feed useless dogs.

All of this happened under Mr. Peary's authority, and under the coa.r.s.e, swaggering Murphy, whom Mr. Peary, in his book, calls "a thoroughly trustworthy man!" Mr. Peary's later contention, in a hypocritical effort to clear himself (see "The North Pole," page 76) that he placed Murphy in charge "to prevent the Eskimos from looting the supplies and equipment left there by Dr. Cook," is a mean, petty and unworthy slur upon a brave, loyal people, among whom thievery is a thing unknown.

Unknown, yes, save when white men without honor, without respect for property or the ethics of humanity, which the Eskimos instinctively have, invade their region and rob them and fellow explorers with the brazenness of middle-aged buccaneers.

ANNOATOK TO UPERNAVIK

ELEVEN HUNDRED MILES SOUTHWARD OVER SEA AND LAND--AT ETAH--OVERLAND TO THE WALRUS GROUNDS--ESKIMO COMEDIES AND TRAGEDIES--A RECORD RUN OVER MELVILLE BAY--FIRST NEWS FROM Pa.s.sING s.h.i.+PS--THE ECLIPSE OF THE SUN--SOUTHWARD BY STEAMER G.o.dTHAAB

x.x.x

ALONG DANISH GREENLAND

A few interesting days were spent with Mr. Whitney at Annoatok. The Eskimos, in the meantime, had all gone south to the walrus hunting grounds at Nuerke. Koo-loo-ting-wah came along with a big team of dogs.

Here was an opportunity to attempt to reach the Danish settlements--for to get home quickly was now my all-absorbing aim. Koo-loo-ting-wah was in my service. He was guarding my supplies in 1908 when the s.h.i.+p _Roosevelt_ had come along. He had been compelled to give up the key to my box-house. He had been engaged to place supplies for us and search the American sh.o.r.es for our rescue. Peary, making a pretended "Relief Station," forced Koo-loo-ting-wah from his position as guardian of my supplies, and forbade him to engage in any effort to search for us, and absolutely prohibited him and everybody else, including Murphy, Prichard and Whitney, from engaging in any kind of succor at a time when help was of consequence. Koo-loo-ting-wah was liberally paid to abandon my interests (by Mr. Peary's orders, from my supplies), but, like Bartlett and Whitney and Prichard later, he condemned Mr. Peary for his unfair acts. When asked to join me in the long journey to Upernavik, he said, "_Peari an-nutu_" (Peary will be mad.) Koo-loo-ting-wah was now in Peary's service at my expense, and I insisted that he enter my service, which he did. Then we began our preparations for the southern trip.

Accompanied by Whitney, I went to Etah, and for this part of the journey Murphy grudgingly gave me a scant food supply for a week, for which I gave him a memorandum. This memorandum was afterwards published by Mr.

Peary as a receipt, so displayed as to convey the idea that all the stolen supplies had been replaced.