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Page 3
"Bear off to the east'ard, here!" commanded Bennett, shaking the icy,
stinging water from his sleeves. "Everybody on the ropes now!"
Another pressure-ridge was surmounted, then a third, and by an hour
after the start they had arrived at the first one of Ferriss's flags.
Here the number two sledge was left, and the entire expedition, dogs and
men, returned to camp to bring up the number one McClintock loaded with
the Freja's cutter and with the sleeping-bags, instruments, and tent.
This sledge was successfully dragged over the first two hummocks, but as
it was being hauled up the third its left-hand runner suddenly buckled
and turned under it with a loud snap. There was nothing for it now but
to remove the entire load and to set Hawes, the carpenter, to work upon
its repair.
"Up your other sledge!" ordered Bennett.
Once more the expedition returned to the morning's camping-place, and,
harnessing itself to the third McClintock, struggled forward with it for
an hour and a half until it was up with the first sledge and Ferriss's
flag. Fortunately the two dog-sleds, four and five, were light, and
Bennett, dividing his forces, brought them up in a single haul. But
Hawes called out that the broken sledge was now repaired. The men turned
to at once, reloaded it, and hauled it onward, so that by noon every
sledge had been moved forward quite a quarter of a mile.
But now, for the moment, the men, after going over the same ground seven
times, were used up, and Muck Tu could no longer whip the dogs to their
work. Bennett called a halt. Hot tea was made, and pemmican and hardtack
served out.
"We'll have easier hauling this afternoon, men," said Bennett; "this
next ridge is the worst of the lot; beyond that Mr. Ferriss says we've
got nearly a quarter of a mile of level floes."
On again at one o'clock; but the hummock of which Bennett had spoken
proved absolutely impassable for the loaded sledges. It was all one that
the men lay to the ropes like draught-horses, and that Muck Tu flogged
the dogs till the goad broke in his hands. The men lost their footing
upon the slippery ice and fell to their knees; the dogs laid down in the
traces groaning and whining. The sledge would not move.
"Unload!" commanded Bennett.
The lashings were taken off, and the loads, including the great,
cumbersome whaleboat itself, carried over the hummock by hand. Then the
sledge itself was hauled over and reloaded upon the other side. Thus the
whole five sledges.
The work was bitter hard; the knots of the lashings were frozen tight
and coated with ice; the cases of provisions, the medicine chests, the
canvas bundle of sails, boat-covers, and tents unwieldy and of enormous
weight; the footing on the slippery, uneven ice precarious, and more
than once a man, staggering under his load, broke through the crust into
water so cold that the sensation was like that of burning.
But at last everything was over, the sledges reloaded, and the forward
movement resumed. Only one low hummock now intervened between them and
the longed-for level floe.
However, as they were about to start forward again a lamentable gigantic
sound began vibrating in their ears, a rumbling, groaning note rising by
quick degrees to a strident shriek. Other sounds, hollow and
shrill--treble mingling with diapason--joined in the first. The noise
came from just beyond the pressure-mound at the foot of which the party
had halted.
"Forward!" shouted Bennett; "hurry there, men!"
Desperately eager, the men bent panting to their work. The sledge
bearing the whaleboat topped the hummock.
"Now, then, over with her!" cried Ferriss.
But it was too late. As they stood looking down upon it for an instant,
the level floe, their one sustaining hope during all the day, suddenly
cracked from side to side with the noise of ordnance. Then the groaning
and shrieking recommenced. The crack immediately closed up, the pressure
on the sides of the floe began again, and on the smooth surface of the
ice, domes and mounds abruptly reared themselves. As the pressure
increased these domes and mounds cracked and burst into countless blocks
and slabs. Ridge after ridge was formed in the twinkling of an eye.
Thundering like a cannonade of siege guns, the whole floe burst up,
jagged, splintered, hummocky. In less than three minutes, and while the
Freja's men stood watching, the level stretch toward which since morning
they had struggled with incalculable toil was ground up into a vast mass
of confused and pathless rubble.
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