Evening Star Newspaper, March 23, 1930, Page 102

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 23, 1930. Along the Edge of Chaos to the Arctic A Gay Expedition to the Grim Shores of Greenland—Threading Through Vast Ice Packs to a Land of Mystery and Paradox. BY DANIEL W. STREETER. OST expeditions about to follow what is known as the “American route” to the Pole stop at Syd- ney, Nova Scotia. It is the first leg of the journey; the natural place to pick up such items of the Arctic trous- seau as have been forgotten, and it has a rail connection with New York. At this point the explorer may either abandon hope and dive into the unknown, or take the train back to the flesh pots. We abandoned hope, chantied up the anchor and headed for Holstenborg, Green- land, 1,500 miles away. > The weather, as we wallowed out of Sidney Harbor, must have been of the brand known as “dirty,” for it consisted of equal parts of drizzling rain and clammy fog. A few hours after starting, the engine was stopped while the chief tore off the air pump and removed an accumulation of foreign matter. Then we wallowed with a vengeance—four directions at once. “I move we make this motion unani- mpus,” suggested the cowboy. There were no seconders. At sundown we were cutting across Cabot Strait, through which the St. Lawrence finds its way into the North Atlantic. We must have traveled through some kind of tide rip, for the waves reared many feet above our low deck and pursued us like hungry satyrs. Yet in every case, experienced nymph that she was, our schooner, the Effie M. Morrissey, eluded them successfully. F:vERY time we inquired our position the an- swer was, “Just off the Bay of Islands.” We were hours passing it. The thing seemed more ~like a serious ingerruption than a bay. There was only one consolation. We now found time to catch up on our reading. There was rather a ‘complete Arctic library aboard into which we recklessly plunged. ° It turned out to be cheery material. There was the Last Cruise of the Karluk. She was erushed in ice, The Last Cruise of the Miranda. She ran onto a rock. From the Deep of the Sea was the story of a total loss. Moby Dick was a disaster set to the music of mysticism. Dr. Kane’s Arctic Explorations were filled with descriptions of scurvy so realistic a few pages of it gave one the feeling his teeth were about o drop out. This course of reading definitely established two points—the successful explorer apparently always swims home, and arrives in @ lisping condition of toothlessness. We passed through one storm and felt we had every right to peace and quiet when the operator burst in with a radio message: “Belle 1Isle Straits clear of ice, but plenty of growlers,” it read. What was a “growler”? That was the problem that concerned us now. We were get- ting down to realities. The authorities were econsulted. Growlers it seemed were nothing but small half-submerged bergs of blue ice. Blue ice was as tough as steel. While they sounded harmless, it was just as unpleasant to collide with a growler as a large, majestic iceberg. In either case apparently the results were identical «~their size became only a matter of academic interest. The North was closing in on us. At noon next day we weathered Cape Fer- rolle and entered the Straits of Belle Isle. The wind whist! into our teeth, and there was a snap to it Suggestive of vast frozen solitudes. “¥ smell ice,” Sailor Joe remarked, drawing abcut a cubic yard of the gale in through dilated nostrils, like a connoisseur. The strait is only 11 miles wide just here, which gives one a vague feeling of being land- locked until he notices the wreck of a large steamer just off the cape when the vagueness entirely disappears and the feeling becomes definite. It was a very suggestive traffic signal. A~ short distance from its rusty hull lay a stranded iceberg—our first. It was small, ugly and smeared with mud, yet to us it seemed a crystalline marvel. ‘With land on either hand we ran on until twilight. Then suddenly huge bergs towered. all about us. We seemed to be wending our way through the silent deserted streets of a floating city, the architecture of which was the result of a deranged intellect. They had weathered into an infinite variety of shapes and their coloration was a delirlum. A Byzan- tine palace covered with pinnacles, minarets and domes might rub elbows with.a severe Greek temple of white marble set off with fluted columns. HER.E was a fair replica of Grant’s Tomb and the Albert Memorial, squeezing between thern the Taj Mahal done with a mother-of- pearl finish. Brown-stone fronts jostled Jap- anese pagodas that glistened as though stuccoed - with' jewels. Everything was done on a grand ’. scale, regardless of expense, Aside from their poetic significance these bergs rose 50 to 75 feet sbove the water, which gave them an over- all height of from 400 to 600 feet. In bulk they represented millions of tons of ice. That night we lay in our berths and won- dered what the harvest would be. We were forging ahead at full speed through this maze of floating mausoleums, Sooner or later we were bound to smack one. How could we help it? - Through the three inches of oak planking that separated us from the Labrador current the water thirstily gurgled and lapped. It sounded much too frolicsome. “Here's where we wake up and find a mermaid twining sea- weed in our hair,” we promised ourseif. Yet the next thing we knew Billy the cook was standing in the doorway applying saliva to his forelock. It was breakfast time. We were still afloat. The sea nymph had been cheated by the telescopi: eyesight of the Newfound- land Jookouts. A heavy fog surrounded us. Now when we passed a berg it was within a few yards. Faintly the bergs glimmered through the mist. Whether we hit one or not seemed a matter of fate. Yet always at the last mo- ment the squinting watcher let out a yell “Port” or “Starboard,” the helm was thrown over and we slipped by with a little to spare. These men appeared, to possiss some subtle instinct, some sixth sense that enabled them to see objects long before they were actually visible to the naked eye, and this was just as well, With intermittent patches of clear weather and fog we spent the day dodging - icebergs. The coast of Labrador disappeared. It was not much of a loss. Then we entered a vast field of pack-ice that seemed to stretch indefinitely into the distance. As we poked our nose into a nar- row open lead, the outlook was as gloomy as the portals of the underworld with the fires out. It was foggy, drizzly and cold, 3 The ship was woven like a shuttle through the threadlike openings. At the masthead a lookout selected the line of least resistance. His cry of “Port,” “Starboard” or “Hard over” was echoed by the“helmsman and the wheel whirled accordingly. His voice was never silent. As a result our course ame serpentine, inebriated, zizzag, devious and diabolical. No single min- ute passed without its being changed. The majestic bergs had left us as though con- temptuous of the degenerate pack following at their heels. At times the helm did not respond quickly enough and then we would strike a pan with a thump that made the crockery rattle. It was hard to get used to these shocks, especially after dark. They gave one the feeling that the whole brumal contents of Davis Straits was about to burst through the schooner’s planks. From time to time small isthmuses of rotten ice blocked out progress. These were charged at full speed. The schooner would ride up on them until she was almost out of water before breaking through and proceeding on her way. This q; interesting. Running into a blind pocket was also more or less of a sporting proposition, for as like as not the pans would close in behind us and seal us up in a nice little lagoon. Then the only thing left to do was “crash the gate,” so to speak, and the schooner would shiver to her very keel from the impact. THE helmsman’s job is not only laborious, but exacting. It is not a job for an amateur. On one famous Antarctic expedition a scientist was at the wheel while they were conning the vessel through the pack-ice. “Hard a port,” the hoarse cry came down from the masthead. Nothing happened. The crash that followed almost took the masts out of her. “Why in Paradise didn't you hard a port?” yelled the lookout. “I couldn't,” the scientist answered, “I was blowing my nose.” For 24 hours we wandered around in a laby- rinth of ice like a cat chasing its own tail. The silence was heavy; the sea devoid of motion. Then toward evening the pans, suffused with a soft rosy afterglow, began to heave gently, and a bird or two put in an appearance. The skipper studied these omens like a witch doctor and apparently found them propitious, for he relieved himself of a prophecy. “We're nearing open water,” he said, and, as a testi- monial to the fact that his prophecies rarely miscarried, an hour later we were climbing the pyramidal seas of Davis Strait. For the next four days we continued to climb them and slip down their oily flanks with hypnotic regu- larity. “The dear knows where we are now,” Billy the cook remarked when he came up one day for a breath of air. It was a life of strange contrasts; at times, peaceful, again full of acrobatic activity, but never dull. Twenty-five men crowded into a wooden hull constitute a positive guarantee against dullness. So does spontaneous combus- tion in a cargo of fireworks. The mess room housed 13 of us; 12 in the double-decked bunks and one on a cot. Its dimensions were almost 20 by 25 feet and the mess table, which was screwed to the floor, occupied most of it. There was hardly room enough to flutter an eyelash. The bunks were curtainless, so conscious or unconscious, one’s life story was a matter of public record. The most intimate personal de- tails were subjected to the microscopic scrutiny of 12 pairs of curlous eyes. Speaking roughly, every one from Helen of Troy down has had a private life. They have demanded it as @ natural right, yet nobody in that mess room had one worth writing about. Innocent little habits, considered part of one'’s charm at home, became there bizarre eccen- tricities. Attempting to play the part of the shrinking violet was useless. It was at once noticed and remarked on. If you didn’t like the cut of a man’'s pajamas you told him so and the accepted method of dealing with anye . thing offenisive was the biblical one of destroye ing it root and brasch. No! Life was never dull. If all else failed A jagged Alpine skyline, dour and hard. We seemed to be sailing along the edge of chaos. there was always the food to complain about. Billy the cook made marvelous bread; his soups were a culinary caress and most of his other dishes never failed, but his boiled potatoes were lead—they would kill at 20 paces. His bacon was an oily horror, while his coffee was nothing short of hell-broth. The answer was simple. At 4 am. he arose, boiled his potatoes, fried his bacon and did an incantation over his coffee; then, pushing them back on the stove, let them stew in their own juice until 7:30. The results were no worse than might be expected. But the system could not be varied. It was a timeworn custom of the “Banks.” Scientific duties helped fill in our time. They were not arduous. In fact, they merely con- sisted in throwing hermetically sealed bottles overboard. It might be argued that anybody could do that, and so they could, but not with one hand holding on to the Arctic Circle. We were probably the most northerly bottle-throw- ers of the season. Within them were slips of paper bearing our latitude and longitude, and a request in three languages that the chance finder mall them back to the Hydrographic Bureau, Washington, D. C., at his own expense, All this, of course, was for the purpose of fer- reting out the paths of the ocean currents. . OUR expedition was bone dry, so the “empties” thus employed were ginger ale bottles. To be sure there was a considerable quantity of alcohol for the preservation of specimens, but the Government with great une- tion had rendered it unfit for human consump- tion, as though fearful that the absence of a “sniff and frisk” ordinance above the Arctic Circle might lead us into temptation. No rum rations were allowed for the crew, nor was there any medicinal alcohol even. A little later when we got shipwrecked we would have been glad of both. So we cast our ginger ale bottles into the sea with the hope that they would remain true to us even if they landed in Cuba. One evening there was a spanking breeze blowing from the south, and we tore through the water with everything drawing. Suddenly, far to the east, some one sighted the coast of Greenland. It was nothing but a faint nebu- - lous streak lying at the edge of a heaving bois- terous sea, yet it seemed drenched with ro- mance and rhystery as we stared at it. It was our land fall; the home of aborigines and pre- historic solitudes of ice and snow. Our imagi- nation peopled it with trolls, gnomes and dwerghs, who guarded the secrets of its glaciers, while the kraken slunk about looking for odds and ends. It was a sight to stir one’s blood. But now the argument started, where were we? Of course, we knew it was Greenland, but just what part? There is 1,650 miles of it. The skipper thought we were off Godthaab. The professor, on the other hand, considered that the general conformation indicated a pro- pinquity to Sukkertoppen. Personally, we couldn't see much choice; both places sounded like a gargle. . The skipper took a sounding. No bottom. “You see it can’t be Sukkertoppen,” he announced. Of course we saw. Nobody has ever found bottom off Sukkertoppen. “Well, anyway,” he soethed us, “I know we're about 65 degrees north.” We were just about to slip ‘over the Arctic Circle. In the morning we were in plain sight of the coast, Terrific mountain ranges of black basalt, covered with patches of white snow, lined the shore. It was a jagged, Alpine skyline, dour and hard looking, and entirely devoid of infor- mation as to our whereabouts. We seemed to be sailing along the edge of chaos. Suddenly the attention of every one is riveted on a vast wrinkled glacier front. It’s smoke! How strange it looks! There on the beach, if one uses glasses, are tents surrounded by move ing black dots vaguely resembling people. They wave a large white flag. We heave to. At last we will know where we are. The launch is lowered and bounds off toward land over high combing seas. Almost simultaneously four slender craft detach themselves from the shoreline and paddle toward us. As they ape pear on the summit of each wave they tremble for a moment in bold relief against the Arctic sky, then suddenly vanish into the next hole low as though plunging to the depths of eter= nity. Eskimos! Kayakers, in their skin canoes! How they manage to stay afloat in such a boisterous sea is a mystery, Even the launch is performing the most amazing gyrations. The first kayaker reaches it,” is unceremoniously puiled aboard and with his kayak towing astern they return to the schooner. TENBE with * excitemeént we line the deck. We are about to greet our first aborigine; to stand face to face-with an untamed child of the North, skin garments and all! The launch bumps the vessel’s side. A natty outing cap rises over the rail, then a countenance as round and beaming as a full moon. Follows a plump body garbed in a machine-knit sweater, a pair of cash-and-carry trousers and the kind of shoes guaranteed in the advertisements to. regenerate the erring arch no matter how low it has fallen. The disconcerting thing about our first aborigine was the fact that he was so much better dressed than most of us. He was sare torially impeccable. As far as we knew none of us were that. It threw a slight tinge of embarrassment into the situation. We stood around him in a ring and stared. He stared back. We smiled. He smiled. We looked idiotic. So did he. He was the pilot and the wheel was turned over to him. He spun it until our prow pointed straight for the middle of a large mountain of solid rock. At best, it would be difficult to find a place more sterile of welcome than the foreshore of Greenland. It is sinister, barren, forbidding, tortured; it looks like a steel engraving of a nightmare. But only when one finds himself on a wooden ship heading for the geographical center of a towering granite excrescence does he catch the full significance of this sterility. “What we're going to need is a couple of tons of blasting powder instead of a pilot,” murmured the taxidermist. But after dodging innumerable, round protruding rocks we some- how missed the mountain and suddenly slipped into a narrow channel. A few more twists of the wheel and Holstenborg slowly emerged from behind its geological barbicans. Our anchor chain rattled out. We were above the Arctie Circle, face to face with our destination., Over 2,300 miles to the south lay New York. No- body cared. A The comedy was over. Before us lay Green= land, theme of legend, song and story; yet so little known. Land of mystery and paradox. ‘The spirit of adventure hovered over us; our thoughts wandered in vast virgin solitudes. * (Copyright, 1930.)