CHAPTER XXIV 

AN AIRSHIP STRUGGLE OVER THE ICE-PACK 

     Our ears were ringing with the rapidity of our ascent. It was growing colder at this great alti­tude. Vaniman jumped for the valve line and pulled it far down to let enough hydrogen out of the top of the balloon to prevent us going to still greater heights. Before the America stopped climbing we had the whole northern part of Spitzbergen spread out in one great frozen pic­ture before our eyes, and I imagined that away in the east I could see Walden Island where the old Ragnvald Jarl had been crushed in the ice in 1894. Would the Arctics never bring me anything but bad luck? 

     And whilst Vaniman was working to stop our flight into the cloud I sat there wondering if I had the right to take the lives of my crew in my hand by holding her head to the north, equili­brator or no equilibrator. My own life, yes; theirs, no. And in bitterness inexpressible, I told Popoff at the wheel to turn her around and steer for Spitzbergen. 

     Then ensued a struggle which none of us engaged in it will ever forget. At the higher al­titude the wind was strong from the southwest. We were carried so far over the ice-pack that the Spitzbergen coast began to fade away in the distance, sixty or seventy miles away. At the lower altitude to which the America was pres­ently brought down by letting out gas, the wind was not so strong, and, the motor still working well, we were able to make headway to the southward. 

     In addition to her equilibrator the America carried a similar serpent of leather covered with. steel points designed to serve as a retarder or drag-anchor against adverse winds. I asked Vaniman and Loud th let this down to take the place in part of the lost equilibrator when the ship was to descend to the earth. -With almost infinite trouble they managed to effect the maneuver, and we had the weight of the retarder, 400 pounds, to protect the ship from touching the ice. 

     Unfortunately, this improvised equilibrator had a loop of steel cable dragging from its lower end, and every ten or fifteen minutes this loop caught fast upon the sharp edge of an ice floe. Popoff and I soon became quite expert in swing­ing the ship about with her helm, describing full or half circles, till that pesky steel loop would slide off the ice hook in which it had made fast. 

     Thus we fought our way south, mile by mile and hour by hour, often delayed by the cable loop fouling anew in the ice below, but still mak­ing headway, the America giving a right good account of herself as a ship of the air under un­favorable circumstances. 

     Once we heard strange, uncanny sounds from the aft of the ship, near where the sledge dogs lay in their kennel. We recognized Popoff's voice, and knew he was there. But the sounds were unearthly Afterward, we three compared notes and found all had had the same experience. The blood had seemed to run cold and clammy from our hearts, for each of us felt sure our comrade from Russia had lost his reason and become a jibbering maniac up there in the air over the polar sea. 

     Ten minutes later the mystery was explained. Popoff had gone back to feed the dogs. One had snapped at him, and the unearthly sounds we had heard with dismay were only Popoff's remonstrance in his native tongue, talking to the dogs, trying to quiet them. 

     Poor, brave Popoff ! He survived the perils of that day, won his spurs as an aviator, was in­vited to fly before the Czar, but fell one day to the earth and was broken and battered till the wonder was life still remained within him. For months he has been in a hospital, and as we hear nothing from him, fear his reason may have been lost, after all. 

     Soon we saw a little steamer working her way out from the coast of Spitzbergen, headed toward us. We knew she was the Farm, a Norwegian government vessel, which Captain Isachsen had at Red Bay, where he was carry­ing on survey work. 

     For several hours the Farm steamed toward us, and we motored toward the Farm. We met at the edge of the ice-fields, beyond which line, of course, the Farm could not come. 

     Without much doubt the America could have made her way back to our camp under her own power, but we wished to do everything prudence could suggest to make sure of saving our ship. So we gave a tow line to the Farm, and the re­mainder of the afternoon was spent in steaming homeward in this strange manner, a little steamer towing our airship twenty times her size, we up aloft hallooing down to the men on the boat as if they were pigmies of the earth. 

     But the America did not tow well. She ran up alongside of the Farm, now on one side, now on the other, and then came around with a jerk and shock which threatened to tear in pieces the steel framework of our car. 

     An hour or so of this and then the wind strengthened. The danger of a smashup of the car was so great we resolved to let the airship down till it just touched the surface of the sea, hoping she would tow more easily and safely there. So we let out more gas, and soon were wallowing about in the trough of the sea. The Farm sent her boats to us, and we managed to get the instruments and dogs over to the steamer. The dogs had been quiet during their voyage in the air. The moment they were put in the boat they fell to fighting one another. Captain Isachsen has written in a Norwegian magazine that he and his officers were every moment ex­pecting to see the frail car of the America break up in the sea, and were wondering if it would be practicable to save the crew. 

     "We were reassured," he writes, "when we saw Mr. Wellman take out a big cigar, light it, and sit there calmly smoking while he gave orders to his men, which were as calmly obeyed." 

     After a great deal of trouble we saved all valuables from the America and then the Farm towed her back to camp. Here she got away from us. In putting her up on the beach a gust of wind upset the gas bag, spilled off the car and engines, while the envelope, relieved of the weight, blew high in the air and then exploded. It was recovered, not seriously damaged. The steel car was partly destroyed; but that was small loss, as we should not have used it again in any event. All the motors, machinery, and instruments were saved. 

     The America had done pretty well, and but for the loss of her trailer could probably have gone straight to the Pole or its vicinity. As it has been already pointed out, we had not put all our eggs in one basket, but were prepared, if nec­essary, to abandon the airship at the farthest north, and continue the journey to the Pole and back therefrom to our headquarters or some other land, by traveling over the ice with sledges and dogs. In the two hours before the trailer broke we had made about forty miles northward from our headquarters, or to the edge of the ice-fields. After our involuntary ascent into the clouds we motored and drifted about twenty miles north-northeast. It took us two hours to work back against the wind to the ice edge, where we met the Farm. Thus the voyage of the America under her own power before she took tow from the steamer was about eighty miles, with and against the wind. We left camp at ten in the morning, August 15, 1909, and it was late in the evening before we returned after a voyage totaling 120 miles and a day of most extraordinary adventures. 

     Captain Isachsen, aboard the Farm, had been able to get a remarkable series of photographs of the America—first while she was far distant from the little steamer, next while working her way southward over the ice fields against the wind, then near at hand at the edge of the ice, and finally while she was being towed in the air and through the water after our intentional descent into the sea. 

     Captain Isachsen and his skipper, Captain Hermansen of the Norwegian navy, told us they had never had any faith in the airship method of reaching the Pole; "but when we saw the America so swiftly and majestically sailing straight northward from Spitzbergen we changed our minds and realized that with a little luck you were sure to get there." 

     I wish to make public acknowledgment of the splendid service these Norwegian sailors ren­dered us, and to thank them for it. Also to add that the little luck we had was of the wrong sort.

Our two voyages by airship over the Arctic Sea had in nowise diminished our confidence in the practicability of our plan. The second voy­age, in particular, reassured us. The airship it­self was all right. But for the accident to the auxiliary device, the equilibrator, due to an un­detected flaw in the leather, the America might easily have reached the Pole or its vicinity in from 25 to 30 hours after we left Spitzbergen. 

     In our three campaigns and two voyages we had learned much; and we were so determined to continue the quest for the Pole with a new and enlarged America that before leaving our camp we lengthened the balloon house so that it might accommodate the new America, with which we had intended going on in the early summer of 1910. 

     But, as it turned out, the Pole had been reached already. Commander Peary, with ad­mirable pluck and persistence, had kept at it with the old or brute strength method, and had so perfected his organization and equipment that he was at last able to win the prize. 

     In the recent few years the race for the Pole was really a struggle between the old and the new methods—the sledge versus the airship—and the former won, after nearly a century of use. I am convinced that if the airship had had one or two years more in which to be perfected and developed the victory would have perched on its banner.