THE FIRST STRANGE FACES—THE ESQUIMAUX.

The week that followed has left me nothing to remember but anxieties and sorrow. Nearly all our party, as well the rescuers as the rescued, were tossing in their sick-bunks, some frozen, others undergoing amputations, several with dreadful premonitions of tetanus. I was myself among the first to be about; the necessities of the others claimed it of me.

Early in the morning of the 7th I was awakened by a sound from Baker’s throat, one of those the most frightful and ominous that ever startle a physician’s ear. The lock-jaw had seized him—that dark visitant whose foreshadowings were on so many of us. His symptoms marched rapidly to their result; he died the next day. On the 9th we placed him in his coffin, and, forming a rude, but heart-full procession, bore him over the broken ice and up the steep side of the ice-foot to Butler Island; then, passing along the snow-level to Fern Rock, and climbing the slope of the Observatory, we deposited his corpse upon the pedestals which had served to support our instruments. We read the service for the burial of the dead, sprinkling over him snow for dust, and repeated the Lord’s Prayer; and then icing up again the opening in the walls we had made to admit the coffin, left him in his narrow house.

We were watching in the morning at Baker’s death-bed, when one of our deck-watch, who had been cutting ice for the melter, came hurrying down into the cabin with the report, “People holloaing ashore!” I went up, followed by as many as could mount the gangway; and there they were, on all sides of our rocky harbour, dotting the snow-shores and emerging from the blackness of the cliffs,—wild and uncouth, but evidently human beings.

As we gathered on the deck, they rose upon the more elevated fragments of the land-ice, and distributing themselves around almost in a half-circle. They were vociferating as if to attract our attention, or perhaps only to give vent to their surprise; but I could make nothing out of their cries, except “Hoah, ha, ha!” and “Ka, kaah! ka, kaah!” repeated over and over again.

There was light enough for me to see that they brandished no weapons, and were only tossing their heads and arms about in violent gesticulations. A more unexcited inspection showed us, too, that their numbers were not as great nor their size as large as some of us had been disposed to fancy at first. In a word, I was satisfied that they were natives of the country; and, calling Petersen from his bunk to be my interpreter, I proceeded unarmed, and waving my open hands, toward a stout figure who made himself conspicuous, and seemed to have a greater number near him than the rest. He evidently understood the movement, for he at once, like a brave fellow, leaped down upon the floe and advanced to meet me fully half-way.

He was nearly a head taller than myself, extremely powerful and well-built, with swarthy complexion and piercing black eyes. His dress was a hooded capÔte or jumper of mixed white and blue fox-pelts, arranged with something of fancy, and booted trousers of white bear-skin, which at the end of the foot were made to terminate with the claws of the animal.

I soon came to an understanding with this gallant diplomatist. Almost as soon as we commenced our parley, his companions, probably receiving signals from him, flocked in and surrounded us; but we had no difficulty in making them know positively that they must remain where they were, while Metek went with me on board the ship. This gave me the advantage of negotiating with an important hostage.

Although this was the first time he had ever seen a white man, he went with me fearlessly; his companions staying behind on the ice. Hickey took them out what he esteemed our greatest delicacies,—slices of good wheat bread and corned pork, with exorbitant lumps of white sugar; but they refused to touch them. They had evidently no apprehension of open violence from us. I found afterward that several among them were singly a match for the white bear and the walrus, and that they thought us a very pale-faced crew.

Being satisfied with my interview in the cabin, I sent out word that the rest might be admitted to the ship; and, although they, of course, could not know how their chief had been dealt with, some nine or ten of them followed with boisterous readiness upon the bidding. Others in the meantime, as if disposed to give us their company for the full time of a visit, brought up from behind the land-ice as many as fifty-six fine dogs, with their sledges, and secured them within two hundred feet of the brig, driving their lances into the ice, and picketing the dogs to them by the seal-skin traces. The animals understood the operation perfectly, and lay down as soon as it commenced. The sledges were made up of small fragments of porous bone, admirably knit together by thongs of hide; the runners, which glistened like burnished steel, were of highly-polished ivory, obtained from the tusks of the walrus.

The only arms they carried were knives, concealed in their boots; but their lances, which were lashed to the sledges, were quite a formidable weapon. The staff was of the horn of the narwhal, or else of the thigh-bones of the bear, two lashed together, or sometimes the mirabilis of the walrus, three or four of them united. This last was a favourite material also for the cross-bars of their sledges. They had no wood. A single rusty hoop from a current-drifted cask might have furnished all the knives of the party; but the flame-shaped tips of their lances were of unmistakable steel, and were riveted to the tapering bony point with no mean skill. I learned afterward that the metal was obtained in traffic from the more southern tribes.

They were clad much as I have described Metek, in jumpers, boots, and white bear-skin breeches, with their feet decorated like his, en griffe. A strip of knotted leather worn round the neck, very greasy and dirty-looking, which no one could be persuaded to part with for an instant, was mistaken at first for an ornament by the crew: it was not until mutual hardships had made us better acquainted that we learned its mysterious uses.

When they were first allowed to come on board, they were very rude and difficult to manage. They spoke three or four at a time, to each other and to us, laughing heartily at our ignorance in not understanding them, and then talking away as before. They were incessantly in motion, going everywhere, trying doors, and squeezing themselves through dark passages, round casks and boxes, and out into the light again, anxious to touch and handle everything they saw, and asking for, or else endeavouring to steal, everything they touched. It was the more difficult to restrain them, as I did not wish them to suppose that we were at all intimidated. But there were some signs of our disabled condition which it was important they should not see; it was especially necessary to keep them out of the forecastle, where the dead body of poor Baker was lying; and, as it was in vain to reason or persuade, we had at last to employ the “gentle laying-on of hands,” which, I believe, the laws of all countries tolerate, to keep them in order.

Our whole force was mustered and kept constantly on the alert; but though there may have been something of discourtesy in the occasional shoulderings and bustlings that enforced the police of the ship, things went on good-humouredly. Our guests continued running in and out and about the vessel, bringing in provisions, and carrying them out again to their dogs on the ice,—in fact, stealing all the time until the afternoon, when, like tired children, they threw themselves down to sleep. I ordered them to be made comfortable in the hold; and Morton spread a large buffalo-robe for them, not far from a coal-fire in the galley-stove.

They were lost in barbarous amaze at the new fuel,—too hard for blubber, too soft for firestone,—but they were content to believe it might cook as well as seals’ fat. They borrowed from us an iron pot and some melted water, and parboiled a couple of pieces of walrus-meat; but the real piÈce de resistance, some five pounds a head, they preferred to eat raw. Yet there was something of the gourmet in their mode of assorting their mouthfuls of beef and blubber Slices of each, or rather strips, passed between the lips, either together or in strict alternation, and with a regularity of sequence that kept the molars well to their work.

They did not eat all at once, but each man when and as often as the impulse prompted. Each slept after eating, his raw meat lying beside him on the buffalo-skin; and as he woke, the first act was to eat, and the next to sleep again. They did not lie down, but slumbered away in a sitting posture, with the head declined upon the breast, some of them snoring famously.

In the morning they were anxious to go; but I had given orders to detain them for a parting interview with myself. It resulted in a treaty, brief in its terms, that it might be certainly remembered, and mutually beneficial, that it might possibly be kept. I tried to make them understand what a powerful Prospero they had had for a host, and how beneficent he would prove himself so long as they did his bidding. And, as an earnest of my favour, I bought all the walrus-meat they had to spare, and four of their dogs enriching them in return with needles and beads, and a treasure of old cask-staves.

In the fulness of their gratitude, they pledged themselves emphatically to return in a few days with more meat, and to allow me to use their dogs and sledges for my excursions to the north. I then gave them leave to go. They yoked in their dogs in less than two minutes, got on their sledges, cracked their two-fathom-and-a-half-long seal-skin whips, and were off down the ice to the south-west at a rate of seven knots an hour.

They did not return. I had read enough of treaty-makings not to expect them too confidently. But the next day came a party of five, on foot—two old men, one of middle age, and a couple of gawky boys. We had missed a number of articles soon after the first party left us, an axe, a saw, and some knives. We found afterward that our storehouse at Butler Island had been entered; we were too short-handed to guard it by a special watch. Besides all this, reconnoitring stealthily beyond Sylvia Head, we discovered a train of sledges drawn up behind the hummocks.

There was cause for apprehension in all this; but I felt that I could not afford to break with the rogues. They had it in their power to molest us seriously in our sledge-travel; they could make our hunts around the harbour dangerous; and my best chance of obtaining an abundant supply of fresh meat, our great desideratum, was by their agency. I treated the new party with marked kindness, and gave them many presents; but took care to make them aware that, until all the missing articles were restored, no member of the tribe would be admitted again as a guest on board the brig. They went off with many pantomimic protestations of innocence; but M’Gary, nevertheless, caught the incorrigible scamps stealing a coal-barrel as they passed Butler Island, and expedited their journey homeward by firing among them a charge of small shot.

Still, one peculiar worthy—we thought it must have been the venerable of the party, whom I knew afterwards as a staunch friend, old Shang-hu—managed to work round in a westerly direction, and to cut to pieces my India-rubber boat, which had been left on the floe since Mr Brook’s disaster, and to carry off every particle of the wood.

A few days after this, an agile, elfin youth drove up to our floe in open day. He was sprightly and good-looking, and had quite a neat turn-out of sledge and dogs. He told his name with frankness,—“Myouk, I am,”—and where he lived. We asked him about the boat; but he denied all knowledge of it, and refused either to confess or repent. He was surprised when I ordered him to be confined to the hold. At first he refused to eat, and sat down in the deepest grief; but after a while he began to sing, and then to talk and cry, and then to sing again; and he kept crying, singing, and talking by turns, till a late hour of the night. When I turned in, he was still noisily disconsolate.

There was a simplicity and bonhommie about this boy that interested me much; and I confess that when I made my appearance next morning—I could hardly conceal it from the gentleman on duty, whom I affected to censure—I was glad my bird had flown. Some time during the morning-watch he had succeeded in throwing off the hatch and escaping. We suspected that he had confederates ashore, for his dogs had escaped with as much address as himself. I was convinced, however, that I had the truth from him, where he lived, and how many lived with him—my cross-examination on these points having been very complete and satisfactory.

It was a sad business for some time after these Esquimaux left us, to go on making and registering our observations at Fern Rock. Baker’s corpse still lay in the vestibule, and it was not long before another was placed by the side of it. We had to pass the bodies as often as we went in or out; but the men, grown feeble and nervous, disliked going near them in the night-time. When the summer thaw came, and we could gather stones enough, we built up a grave on a depression of the rocks, and raised a substantial cairn above it.

“April 19.—I have been out on the floe again, breaking in my dogs. My reinforcement from the Esquimaux makes a noble team for me. For the last five days I have been striving with them, just as often and as long as my strength allowed me; and to-day I have my victory. The Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals would have put me in custody if they had been near enough; but, thanks to a merciless whip freely administered, I have been dashing along twelve miles in the last hour, and am back again; harness, sledge, and bones all unbroken. I am ready for another journey.

“April 22.—Schubert has increasing symptoms of erysipelas around his amputated stump; and every one on board is depressed and silent except himself. He is singing in his bunk, as joyously as ever. Poor fellow! I am alarmed about him: it is a hard duty which compels me to take the field, while my presence might cheer his last moments.”