CHAPTER XV

THE BITTER RETREAT

     For a man with red blood in his veins it is easy to fight, to work, to suffer, to endure. The hardest thing in the world to do is to surrender. But in this case there was nothing else to be done. The bitterest hours of my life were these which immediately followed realization of the fact that our journey was at an end. It was a crushing disappointment. I am not ashamed to say that I wept—trying to conceal my woe from my com­rades. But there is not much privacy in a sleep­ing-bag occupied by four men. 

     Next morning we started back to Cape Tege­thoff with our now sadly broken-up outfit, thank­ful to be alive after the frightful night we had passed, thankful to have a sleeping-bag to crawl into when the day's march was over. What would have become of us if we had lost our bags in the ice-quake, as we came so near doing, the good Lord only knows. Men cannot live without sleep; to try to sleep in that temperature without a bag for shelter is to slumber without waking; and we were ten days or a fortnight from our camp. 

     They were pretty hard days, that march in re­treat. The cold was bitter-45 to 50 below most of the time. The Norwegians managed the sledges and dogs, and I attempted to go ahead and pick the road in the rough ice, and it was nearly all rough. Sometimes I got far ahead of the sledges, and was trudging on alone in the flying, drifting snow, little caring what hap­pened to me. More than once my men warned me I might at any moment meet a bear, and as I carried no weapon of any sort, such a meet­ing as that could have but one ending. To please them I tried to stay nearer the little car­avan. 

     One stormy day we stopped and put up the tent for midday luncheon in order that we might have some shelter from the cruel wind. As we stood in the tent waiting for the coffee to boil, I chanced to see a big bear about twenty yards from us, and coming straight toward us. I called to Daniel Johansen, who was at the tent door, to get a gun, and be quick about it. Our rifles were packed in the sledge-loads, a little dis­tance away. Would Daniel be able to get his gun before the beast plunged in upon us? It was pretty doubtful. Now bruin has the scent good and strong; now he is leaping for us; now—a crack of Daniel's rifle, and the bear fails over almost at the door of the tent. 

     It is nice to have fresh meat walk right into your kitchen that way. And we proceeded to make good use of that which the gods had sent us. There was no more sledge-travel that day. We flensed the bear, filled the pot full, gave the hungry dogs all they could eat, and lay in our bags all afternoon and night, every one of us consuming amazing quantities of steak, liver and heart. I really believe the bear's heart and liver are the finest delicacies this world produces. 

     As the days wore on and we worked our way southward, my injured leg got worse and worse. It was filled with inflammatory product from toes to trunk, and was swollen much beyond its natural size. Two or three times I fainted and fell down in the snow, going on again after the men had picked me up and set me on my pins. They urged me to give up walking and ride on the sledge. But I was too proud for that. Thinking something might be done in the way of treatment, I got out the "Hints to Travelers," looked over the medical pages, and finally found what one should do in case of bruise to a leg: 

     "The patient should lie perfectly quiet. The injured member should be constantly bathed in hot water and be permitted to rest upon soft pil­lows." 

     Somehow the contrast between these gentle things and the icy actuality I faced angered me; and with an exclamation, "Hot baths and soft pillows be blowed!" I threw the book as far as I could out in the snow. 

     My comrades rescued it. They also took me bodily the next morning and placed me in a sleeping-bag on one of the sledges, and calmly informed me that if I dared to climb out they would put me back again. A nice bit of mutiny! But I had just sense enough to realize it was no longer a case for pride, but one of getting out alive, if I could. And if it had not been for my comrades, I shouldn't. 

     Pretty soon we arrived at Fort McKinley and spent a night there. I believe this was the cold­est night I ever saw. You would think it might be warm in the hut. But it seemed colder there than in the tent. By this time the circulation in my hurt leg must have been virtually stopped by suffusion of inflammatory matter. I felt the leg freezing, and told my comrades about it. They cut open my trousers and underwear, and with their rough, frost-nipped hands—we were all much frost-bitten—they rubbed me hour after hour till a semblance of blood circulation was restored. That was a close call to having a leg frozen—and whatever that was sure to mean.

     Finally we reached our winter hut—I riding on a sledge—and found our three Americans there all well. Dr. Hofma did all he could for me; but there was not much that could be done. My leg was a sight; my nervous system was a wreck under the physical strain, the low, constant fever which the inflammation produced. Nearly four months I lay flat on my back on the floor of the hut, tormented with the most agonizing itching, weak, feverish, despondent, sleepless. I had never been and am not a teetotaller. Yet throughout this long ordeal it was a matter of pride with me not to drink. Bottles and demi­johns of liquor were within reach of my right hand—and in the 15 weeks of imprisonment I took about four swallows! 

     After a short rest in Harmsworth House, our Norwegians took the field again, along with Mr. Baldwin, the meteorologist. I had planned to lead this party, but of course was unable to go. Up to this time the eastward extent of the Franz Josef Land archipelago was unknown and was a moot question among geographers. Our party delimited the archipelago to the northeast, dis­covering many new islands. One of them of con­siderable area, beyond Wilscek Land, I named after Alexander Graham Bell, then president of the National Geographic Society. Other is­lands, capes and straits I named in honor of friends who had helped me finance the expedi­tion. Another important part of our geographic work was correction of the earlier maps made by Payer and Jackson. Payer, though an hon­orable and competent explorer, had been de­ceived into placing a great glaciated land and many islands where we found that only ice-cov­ered sea existed. 

     Jackson had mapped two or three islands in the southern part of the group where we found nine or ten. It is easy to err in the deceptive light of the far north in the early part of the year. I felt sure I had seen at some distance, two islands east of Rudolph, and north of the Liv Island of Dr. Nansen, and put them on my map with dotted lines to indicate I had ob­served but not visited them, and named them after two most valued friends, Ben T. Cable and Tom Johnson. The Duke of Abruzzi expedition afterward found that what I had taken for two islands must have been only ice hummocks, in the distance looking like lands in the refraction of March. 

     After a long, long wait, at last a big ship was reported steaming toward us. She proved to be the steamer Capella, chartered by my brother Arthur to come after us. How good it was to get letters and newspapers from home after more than a year of wandering, and to be able to steam away to the south ourselves. On our wayout of Franz Josef Land we met the Stella Polare, the Duke of Abruzzi's ship, coming in. As I was the old settler it fell to me to make the first call upon the newcomer. Crawling down into a boat I was rowed over. The Duke, Capt. Cagni and the other officers and I and my American comrades had a pleasant visit, and I formed a great admiration for the sterling young prince who has done so much for geo­graphic research. Rather a strange meeting, this, between a son of kings and the son of a western farmer who had been a private soldier. But we met on terms of equality—science and adventure level all rank distinctions. 

     The Duke and his party were more fortunate than we had been. Where we had tried in vain to force the Frithjof northward through the ice, they now had open water before them. The Stella Polare actually reached the coast of Ru­dolph Land, and the Duke was able to establish his headquarters almost as far north as we had sledged. From this base, the following summer, Capt. Cagni was able, by a splendid and plucky effort, to beat the record which Dr. Nansen had made from the Fram a few years earlier.