A Mans Woman | Page 2

etc....
"I shall now attempt a southerly march over the ice to Kolyuchin Bay
by way of Wrangel Island, where provisions have been cached, hoping
to fall in with the relief ships or steam whalers on the way. Our party
consists of the following twelve persons: ... All well with the exception
of Mr. Ferriss, the chief engineer, whose left hand has been badly
frostbitten. No scurvy in the party as yet. We have eighteen Ostiak dogs
with us in prime condition, and expect to drag our ship's boat upon
sledges.
"WARD BENNETT, Commanding Freja Arctic Exploring
Expedition."
Bennett returned this copy of the record to its place in the box, and
stood for a moment in the centre of the tent, his head bent to avoid the
ridge-pole, looking thoughtfully upon the ground.
Well, so far all had gone right--no scurvy, provisions in plenty. The
dogs were in good condition, his men cheerful, trusting in him as in a
god, and surely no leader could wish for a better lieutenant and

comrade than Richard Ferriss--but this hummocky ice--these
pressure-ridges which the expedition had met the day before. Instead of
turning at once to his ciphering Bennett drew the hood of the wolfskin
coat over his head, buttoned a red flannel mask across his face, and,
raising the flap of the tent, stepped outside.
Under the lee of the tent the dogs were sleeping, moveless bundles of
fur, black and white, perceptibly steaming. The three great McClintock
sledges, weighted down with the Freja's boats and with the expedition's
impedimenta, lay where they had been halted the evening before.
In the sky directly in front of Bennett as he issued from the tent three
moons, hooped in a vast circle of nebulous light, shone roseate through
a fine mist, while in the western heavens streamers of green, orange,
and vermilion light, immeasurably vast, were shooting noiselessly from
horizon to zenith.
But Bennett had more on his mind that morning than mock-moons and
auroras. To the south and east, about a quarter of a mile from the tent,
the pressure of the floes had thrown up an enormous ridge of shattered
ice-cakes, a mound, a long hill of blue-green slabs and blocks huddling
together at every conceivable angle. It was nearly twenty feet in height,
quite the highest point that Bennett could discover. Scrambling and
climbing over countless other ridges that intervened, he made his way
to it, ascended it almost on hands and knees, and, standing upon its
highest point, looked long and carefully to the southward.
A wilderness beyond all thought, words, or imagination desolate
stretched out before him there forever and forever--ice, ice, ice, fields
and floes of ice, laying themselves out under that gloomy sky, league
after league, endless, sombre, infinitely vast, infinitely formidable. But
now it was no longer the smooth ice over which the expedition had for
so long been travelling. In every direction, intersecting one another at
ten thousand points, crossing and recrossing, weaving a gigantic,
bewildering network of gashed, jagged, splintered ice-blocks, ran the
pressure-ridges and hummocks. In places a score or more of these
ridges had been wedged together to form one huge field of broken slabs
of ice miles in width, miles in length. From horizon to horizon there
was no level place, no open water, no pathway. The view to the
southward resembled a tempest-tossed ocean suddenly frozen.
One of these ridges Bennett had just climbed, and upon it he now stood.

Even for him, unencumbered, carrying no weight, the climb had been
difficult; more than once he had slipped and fallen. At times he had
been obliged to go forward almost on his hands and knees. And yet it
was across that jungle of ice, that unspeakable tangle of blue-green
slabs and cakes and blocks, that the expedition must now advance,
dragging its boats, its sledges, its provisions, instruments, and baggage.
Bennett stood looking. Before him lay his task. There under his eyes
was the Enemy. Face to face with him was the titanic primal strength of
a chaotic world, the stupendous still force of a merciless nature, waiting
calmly, waiting silently to close upon and crush him. For a long time he
stood watching. Then the great brutal jaw grew more salient than ever,
the teeth set and clenched behind the close-gripped lips, the cast in the
small twinkling eyes grew suddenly more pronounced. One huge fist
raised, and the arm slowly extended forward like the resistless moving
of a piston. Then when his arm was at its full reach Bennett spoke as
though in answer to the voiceless, terrible challenge of the Ice. Through
his clenched teeth his words came slow and measured.
"But I'll break you, by God! believe me, I will."
After a while he returned to the