Frederick Albert Cook

“ Ma-nee—such was her name—was a descendant of the Eskimos of the American side. A foreign belle, and, although thin, fair to look upon, as Eskimo beauty goes, her hand was sought early by the ardent youths of the tribe, who, truth to tell, look upon utility as more desirable than beauty in a wife. The heart of Ma-nee throbbed to the pleadings of one Ik-wa, a youth lithe and brave, with brawn and sinews as resilient as rubber and strong as steel, handsome, dark, with flashing eyes, yet with a heart as cruel as the relentless wind and cold sea of the North. ”

“ To me it was to be a season of feverish labor in which every hand at work and every hour employed counted in the problem of success. While the hands of the entire tribe would be busy, and while I should direct and help in the making of sleds, catching of game, preparing of meat, I knew that my mind would find continual excitement in dreams of my quest, in anticipating and solving its difficulties, in feeling the bounding pulse of the dash over the ice of the Polar sea, with dogs joyously barking, whips cracking the air, and the reappearing sun paving our pathway with liquid gold. ”

“ The stillness adds a charm, with which the imagination plays. It is not the music of silence, nor the gold solitude of summer, nor the deathlike stillness of the winter blackness. It is the stillness of zero's lowest, which has a beauty of its own.
The ice pinnacles are lined with hoar frost, on which there is a play of rainbow colors. The tread of one's feet is muffled by feathery beds of snow. The mountains, raised by the new glow of light or outlined by colored shadows, stand against the brightened heavens in sculptured magnificence. ”

“ A subtle sadness tinctures their life, and they are possessed by an impulse to weep. At this season, hour by hour, the darkness thickens; the cold increases and chills their igloos; the wind, exultant while the sun shines, now whines and sobs dolorously—there is something gruesome, uncanny, supernatural, in its siren sorrow. Outside, the snow falls, the sea closes. Its clamant beat of waves is silenced. Sea animals mostly disappear; land animals are rare. Their source of physical supply vanished, the Eskimos unconsciously feel the grim hand of want, of starvation, which means death, upon them. ”

“ Beyond the eighty-third parallel life is devoid of any pleasure. The intense objective impressions of cold and hunger assailing the body rob even the mind of inspiration and exhilaration. Even the best day of sun and gentle wind offers no balm.
One awakes realizing the wind has abated and sees the cheerless sun veering about the side of the ice shelter. One kicks the victim upon whom, that morning, duty has fixed the misfortune to be up first—for we tried to be equals in sharing the burdens of life. And upon him to whose lot falls this hardship there is a loss of two hours' repose. ”

“ We were face to face with a spiritual famine. With little recreation, no amusements, no interesting work, no reading matter, with nothing to talk about, the six hours of a watch were spread out to weeks.
We had no sugar, no coffee, not a particle of civilized food. We had meat and blubber, good and wholesome food at that. But the stomach wearied of its never changing carnivorous stuffing. The dark den, with its walls of pelt and bone, its floor decked with frosted tears of ice, gave no excuse for cheer. Insanity, abject madness, could only be avoided by busy hands and long sleep. ”

“ Its shore line had neither the relief of a colored cliff nor a picturesque headland; there was not even a wall of ice; there were only dull, uninteresting slopes of sand and snow separating the frozen sea from the land-ice. The most careful scrutiny gave no indication of a living creature. The rocks were uncovered even with black lichens. A less inviting spot of earth could not be conceived, yet it aroused in us a deep sense of enthusiasm. A strip of tropical splendor could not have done more. The spring of man's passion is sprung by contrast, not by degrees of glory. ”

“ Indeed, the sunbeams by their contrast seemed to cause the frost of the air to pierce with a more painful sting. In marching over the golden glitter, snow scalded our faces, while our noses were bleached with frost. The sun rose into zones of fire and set in burning fields of ice, but, in pain, we breathed the chill of death.
In camp a grip of the knife left painful burns from cold metal. To the frozen fingers ice cold water was hot. With wine-spirits the fire was lighted, while oil delighted the stomach. In our dreams Heaven was hot, the other place was cold. All Nature was false ”

“ I shall never forget that desolate drab scene about us—those endless stretches of gray and dead-white ice, that drab dull sky, that thickening blackness in the west which entered into and made gray and black our souls, that ominous, eerie and dreadful wind, betokening a terrorizing Arctic storm. I shall never forget the mournful group before me, in itself an awful picture of despair, of man's ambition failing just as victory is within his grasp. Ah-we-lah, a thin, half-starved figure in worn furs, lay over his sled, limp, dispirited, broken. ”

“ My impression was that I was in a land of the sorrowful dead, some mid-strata of the spirit world, where, in this gray-green twilight, formless things in the distance moved to and fro.
There is, I believe, in the heart of every man, an instinctive respect for sorrow. With muffled steps, I left the igloo and paced the dreariness of ice, treading slowly, lest, in the darkness, I slip into some unseen crevasse of the open sea. ”

“ Both Christmas day and Christmas night are black. Only the stars keep their endless watch in the cold skies.
Standing outside my igloo on the happy night, I gazed at the Pole Star, the guardian of the goal I sought, and I remembered with a thrill the story of that mysterious star the Wise Men had followed, of the wonders to which it led them, and I felt an awed reverence for the Power that set these unfaltering beacons above the earth and had written in their golden traces, with a burning pen, veiled and unrevealed destinies which men for ages have tried to learn. ”

“ The fields of ice without reflected the warm light of the rising sun in running waves of tawny color. The ice was undisturbed. An unearthly quiet prevailed. Concluding that the ice was merely cracking under the sudden change of temperature, in quite the usual harmless manner, I turned over again, reassuring my companions, and promptly fell asleep.
Out of the blankness of sleep I suddenly wakened again. Half-dazed, I heard beneath me a series of echoing, thundering noises. I felt the ice floor on which I lay quivering. I experienced the sudden giddiness one feels on a tossing ship at sea. ”

“ As a man's mental force is the result of yesteryears' upbuilding, so his strength of to-day is the result of last week's eating. With the surge of ambition which had been formulating for twenty years, and my body in best physical shape for the supreme test, the Pole now seemed almost near.
As the great cliffs of Svartevoeg rose before us my heart leaped. I felt that the first rung in the ladder of success had been climbed, and as I stood under the black cliffs of this earth's northernmost land I felt that I looked through the eyes of long experience. ”

“ The ice moved; the sea began to breathe. The snows sparkled with the promise of double days and midnight suns.
Life's buds had opened to full blossom. On the opposite shores, which now seemed near, Nature's incubators had long worked overtime to start the little ones of the wilds. Tiny bears danced to their mothers' call; baby seals sunned in downy pelts. Little foxes were squinting at school in learning the art of sight. In the wave of germinating joys our suppressed nocturnal passions rose with surprise anew. We were raised to an Arctic paradise. ”

“ Nature seemed to sing with exultation. Approaching a highland of emerald green and seal brown, I heard the wild shouting of hawks from the summit, and from below the shrill chattering of millions of auks with baby families. And nearer, from the life enraptured waters, the minor note of softly cooing ducks and mating guillemots. From the interior land of ice, rising above the low booming of a sapphire glacier moving majestically to the sea, rang the bark of foxes, the shrill notes of the ptarmigan, and from an invisible farther distance the raucous wolf howl of Eskimo dogs. ”

“ I could see, in my mind, the gigantic globe of my world swinging in cloud-swept emerald spaces, and far in the remote, vast, white regions in the north of it, far from the haunts of men, thousands of miles from its populous cities, beyond the raging of its blue-green seas, myself, alone, a wee, small atom on its vast surface, striving to reach its hitherto unattained goal. I felt, as I thought of my anticipation and lonely quest, a sense of the terrible overwhelming hugeness of the earth, and the poignant loneliness any soul must feel when it embarks upon some splendid solitary destiny. ”

“ Its expenditure of muscular energy is so economical that it can continue its run for an almost indefinite time. Shooting along a few hundred paces, it then rises to rest in an erect posture. With its black-tipped ears in line with its back it makes a fascinating little bit of nature's handiwork. Again, when asleep, it curls up its legs carefully in the long fur of its body, and its ever-active nose, with the divided lip, is then pushed into the long soft fur of the breast where the frost crystals are screened from the breath when storms carry drift snow. ”

“ Yet men never felt more proud than we did, as we militantly strode off the last steps to the world's very top!
Camp was pitched early in the morning of April 20. The sun was northeast, the pack glowed in tones of lilac, the normal westerly air brushed our frosty faces. Our surprising burst on enthusiasm had been nursed to its limits. Under it a long march had been made over average ice, with the usual result of overpowering fatigue. Too tired and sleepy to wait for a cup of tea, we poured melted snow into our stomach and pounded the pemmican with an axe to ease the task of the jaws. ”

“ Beyond, the central pack glittered in moving lines and color, like quicksilver shot with rainbow hues.
The Big Lead was mottled and tawny colored, like the skin of a great constrictor. As we stood and looked over its broad expanse to the solid floes, two miles off, there came premonitions to me of impending danger. Would the ice bear us? If it broke, and the life line was not quickly jerked, our fate would almost certainly be sure death. Sontag, the astronomer of Dr. Hay's Expedition, thus lost his life. Many others have in like manner gone to the bottomless deep. ”