The People of the Polar North/Chapter 7
Our sick comrade, Count Harald Moltke, was by this time so far on the road to recovery that he could take a walk every day on the big flat outside our tent on Saunders Island. But in spite of the steady progress he was making, we dared not expose him to another winter in this harsh climate and under these primitive conditions, if we could possibly avoid it.
Two Scottish captains, whom we had met on June 27, would not undertake the responsibility of transporting him by vessel, but they had told us that not far behind them was another whaler, the Vega, which would be able to lend us a boat; they themselves could not spare one. If Moltke's health continued to improve, towards the autumn, when the channels were clear of ice, we might make an attempt to penetrate, along the Melville Glaciers, to Upernivik. We waited for the Vega, and went up the hills, on the look-out, whenever it was clear. But the waiting-time grew long. The Vega did not come. As is well known, she was packed in the ice in Melville Bay and lost.
By the middle of July we came to the conclusion that we must seek some other way out of our difficulties, if we wanted to reach Upernivik before the winter. And as an Eskimo, named Sâmik, in the Northern District, possessed a whaling sloop that he had received from Robert Peary, the American, we decided to place ourselves in communication with him and try to induce him to lend us his boat, which could be returned to him later by a whaler from Upernivik.
The time of year was not a favourable one for the journey. Ice still lay over the fjord, and made kayak travelling impossible. The attempt would have to be made with dog-sledges. It was decided, therefore, that Mylius-Erichsen and the Greenlander Gabriel should remain behind with Harald Moltke, while I, with the Greenlandic Catechist Jörgen Brönlund, was to drive north and open negotiations with Sâmik. In addition to Jörgen, I chose, as escorts, two young Eskimos of about twenty years of age, Sitdluk and Qisunguaq.
So two sledges left our encampment in Saunders Island on July 17 at midnight and proceeded north. All the ice on the south side of the island had disappeared, but on the north coast there was still a narrow bridge of ice connecting it with the mainland: we should be able to cross by that. But first we had to get our sledges over the high land, 2000 feet in height and bare of snow, and that was no easy matter, as our way up and down led through ravines where the streams had long since burst their ice covering and rushed down with great force. Foreseeing what the difficulties of our journey would be, we had limited our baggage to our sleeping-bags and a little clothing, all the provisions we had being a handful of biscuits and a little tea and sugar; we should fall in with food enough on the way.
"Men don't drag meat with them in the height of summer!" as the Eskimos said. Nor did we take a tent with us. We owned two, but one had to be left for Moltke; the other had been torn by the dogs, and was consequently unusable in wet weather. We should have to manage Eskimo fashion; if it rained we must seek shelter among the rocks.
Along wretched, half-melted ice, intersected by streams, and after a twelve hours' journey, we reached the mainland, where we had to camp, as the heat was too much for the dogs. Towards midnight we went on, at first on ice. We passed a few small islands, where we collected eider-ducks', terns' and long-tailed ducks' eggs. The first ice came to an end at the islands, and we went on for a little way on floating ice-floes, but at last we were compelled to fall back on the land, though bare of snow. The inland streams gave us a great deal of trouble. We were obliged to pull the sledges ourselves, barelegged, when we wanted to cross them, and, being glacier streams, they were icily cold; our flaming scarlet legs tingled with the freezing water.
July 18.—Towards evening we were awakened by pouring rain and obliged to seek shelter in a cave near by. Here we were protected from the south-west gale and the driving sleet. We remained thirty-six hours in the cave.
July 20.—Towards morning it cleared up; we sprang half-naked about the rocks, and dried our clothes and sleeping-bags. We made a little tea, and boiled some seal's skin—starvation fare. During the storm the dogs broke in and ate our meat. We set out again towards evening. Towards camping time, shot three seals; men and dogs ate what they could. Sweet sleep followed.
July 21.—Rain and storm again; we are sadly wet.
July 22.—Good drying weather. We went on. The ice unfortunately broken up; we had to drive on floes, the ice-foot and on land. At the head of the fjord we made a halt to reconnoitre; from there we had to travel along the glacier. Jörgen, who had gone on in front, saw a reindeer, which he shot. While we were engaged in skinning and cutting up, the rain came on again. At the same time, a storm rose amongst the rocks and glaciers, so violent that it swept sand and stones down with it. We hastily erected a little shelter, constructed of our sledges, covered with blubber, and the freshly flayed seal-skins, and crawled inside.
For the third time we are weather-bound, even before we have our clothes dried from the last wetting.
July 23.—Rain and wind. We sit under an uninviting dripping of blubber. When we are tired of telling tales—and by degrees we have worked through the whole of our childhood and our taste of manhood—we lie down to sleep, or Jörgen begins to read aloud to us from his Bible. I read the Revelation of St. John, which impresses me greatly in its imposing Greenlandic translation. Jörgen clings to St. Paul, and reads me the Epistle to the Romans. Now and again an illusion of comfort visits us, and as we grow absorbed in each other's narrations we manage to forget that we are wet and hungry. It is only when silence has fallen upon us all again that we notice how we are slowly being pickled in the wet. The sleeping-bags are drenched, the reindeer hair on them is beginning to fall off in patches, and our clothes are smelling musty. Our feet are white and swollen from the damp, and we are cold.
Our spirits are on the verge of a breakdown, and we are beginning to talk of our comrades at Agpat, who, on the thorns of expectation, probably think that we have already reached our goal.
When shall we be able to go on? Will it be possible to get through at all? Or is this expedition, which was started upon in such high hopes, to end merely in disappointment—disappointment for us, and for those behind who are waiting?
"Talk, Knud, talk! There will be no standing it, if we are both silent. Tell us something, no matter what!" And Jörgen rolls me over in my sleeping-bag. Sitdluk thrusts his head out and shouts hopelessly into the roaring gale, "qanigtailivdlugo! qanigtailivdlugo!" which in translation means, "Stop the rain! stop the rain!" For he believes that up among the rocks there live powerful spirits who can command the wind and stop the downpours of rain.
And Qisunguaq begins to reproach me with avarice. "You are so strange, you white men! You collect things you will never require, and you cannot leave even the graves alone. All this calamity is the revenge of the dead. Perhaps we shall die of hunger. Just because you took those stupid things!"
A few days before I had taken a scratching-pin, a needle-case and a curved knife from an old grave. I console him by saying that the corpse would certainly have been satisfied with my exchange gifts to the soul. It had had tea, matches, blubber and meat, just as they had stipulated. But Qisunguaq would not be appeased.
"The thoughts of the dead are not as our thoughts; the dead are incomprehensible in their doings!" he sighed.
"Stop, stop the rain!" calls Sitdluk despairingly up to the rocks.
"Tell us about Marianne, or Ellen, or Sara. Tell tales, and do not stop till we have forgotten where we are and think we are with them," demands Jörgen.
And memory hypnotises us back to experiences that lie behind; and fancy draws us ever in the same direction—back to vanished well-being, when we knew no privations; back to the delicacies of the Danish-Greenlandic kitchen, to the magnificent splendour of the shops. And thus, when one of us gets well under way with his narrative, we succeed in forgetting for a moment where we are, and friends, who perhaps think of us no more, Danes and Greenlanders, file past us, while the roaring stream outside thunders and swells with the rain.
The dogs, lying drenched in the wet, whine plaintively now and again; but the hills merely play with their yelping, and the echo of it rings across and across the fjord head.
July 24.—Rained all night. Towards morning the storm gave over, the clouds parted and the sun streamed down upon us. We attempted at three different places to cross the stream separating us from the drive up the glacier leading to Itivdleq on the other side of the mainland, but in vain.
By the time the water was up to our knees, the current was so strong that we almost lost our footing and were in danger of being carried off with it. Originally there were two streams only at the head of the bay, but in the last few days they have multiplied sadly. The terrific downpour has transformed the little valley into a whole network of streamlets. Altogether I counted eighteen, large and small.
An attempt at low water along the beach, leaping from one floe to another, was likewise unsuccessful. And the middle of the bay is now open water; the ice we were driving upon has been broken up by the storm. We are under siege. Seven glaciers shoot down to the head of the bay where we are; on the other side is the valley with the eighteen streams, and below it, the open bay itself.
July 25.—Qisunguaq discovered a way up over a cliff about 2000 feet high, bare of snow. It was no easy matter to get the sledges up. Driving across the glacier was not without danger, either; there were many rushing streams, the passage of which gave plenty of trouble; I fell off twice and got wet through, but as there was a strong wind I soon got dry again. Some of the streams, with soft, deep snow on the sides, we had to cross by hurling ourselves over, to fall flat, rather than on our feet or legs, as otherwise we were in danger of disappearing altogether.
Late in the evening we have reached the place where begins the descent to Itivdleq, whence we were to cross to Qanâ. We are 2400 feet above the level of the sea and there is a superb view; but all our efforts have been wasted; Qanâ, where the boat is, is inaccessible. The ice is all broken up into floes.
It is night, and our journey has been a hard one; our provisions are at an end; we can only fling ourselves down on our sledges and sleep our fatigue away. On the top of the hill, a terrific storm is howling.
July 26.—We cannot get back to Agpat; and we must get into communication with men somewhere as soon as possible. Food we must have, and new foot-gear. We have tried to bind the soles of our kamiks (soft leather boots) together with thread; but they are so worn from the crumbling sandstone rocks and the sharp glacier ice that they are in holes that leave our feet bare. It is painful walking on the rocks, and it is abominably cold travelling on the ice.
We must attempt to reach Natsilivik; perhaps there are men there.
We break up towards midday and drive to the top of the glacier ridge, about 3400 feet up. We drive all day in a glorious sunshine through deep snow. Marvellously lovely glacier landscapes spread themselves out before us; there is a view over the whole of Whale Sound, with its 
The glacier drops gently down to Natsilivik, and we have an enjoyable drive downhill of two to three hours, with, when the snow is not too deep, good going.
We are above the clouds, for there hangs a thick fog down over Natsilivik while we are driving along in sunshine.
Down at the edge of the glacier, where we have to guide our team with great caution, as there is no snow, there are great glacier fountains, and several magnificent red water-springs, which give birth to red streamlets.
"It is the glacier bleeding!" says Qisunguaq of these great red springs, which gush up through narrow openings and rise in a thick stream, till they are scattered by the wind and fall away to the sides, like a waving crown of flowers.
At the edge of the glacier we leave our sledges and baggage behind and walk down to Natsilivik, where we arrive towards midnight.
No one there!
July 27—A dense fog further increases the difficulty of all search. Jörgen and Sitdluk have gone down to the houses at Natsilivik to see if there are meat deposits to be found.
Qisunguaq and I cross a ridge and make our way down to a creek, Narssaq, where there used to be tents.
We advance through the fog, seeing nothing and hoping for no more, our feet sore and our stomachs empty. After a few hours' toilsome march, we reach a rapid stream which we cannot cross; and we lie down under a great boulder, discuss the position, and decide which of the dogs we shall be obliged to shoot, if we do not meet with people. We have eaten nothing for forty hours, and the last few days' travelling have been exhausting. Just as we are dropping asleep the fog lifts suddenly and we are inspired with fresh hope. We fling large stones into the stream, but the current carries them with it. At last one stone remains in place and we dare the crossing.
We are over; we run up the opposite bank, which is steep and high, and both utter wild cries of delight at a distance of about 200 yards there are five tents . . . people!—and food . . . food!
