Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow [27]
The next day the expedition set out due north across the polar ice. They were arranged in separate parties consisting of a white man or two, a group of Esquimo boys, a pack of dogs and four or five sledges. Each party except Peary’s was to serve for a week as pioneer or trailbreaker to the rest of the expedition. Eventually, each of them was to peel off and head back to land, leaving Peary and his boys to make the last hundred miles or so in fresh, relatively rested condition. That was the system. The big work was in breaking trail. This was hazardous and backbreaking labor. Ridges of ice had to be hacked away with a pickax, heavy sledges had to be hauled and pushed up ice inclines and then held against precipitous descents. Each sled carried over six hundred pounds of tools and provisions. When it broke, it had to be unloaded and repaired by lashing the broken parts together—work that required an ungloved hand. There were leads of water that had to be crossed or waited out. The ice floes came together with great cracks, like the sound of cannon, and rumbled underfoot like the voice of the ocean itself. Inexplicable fogs blocked out the sun. Sometimes there was nothing to do but crawl across thin sheets of forming ice; no one wanted to be caught on a drifting ice floe. The weather was a constant torment, the wind blowing so sharply at fifty or sixty degrees below zero that the air itself seemed to have changed its physical nature, being now unassimilable crystals in one’s lungs. Each breath left its solid residue in the beard or on the frozen edges of the fur hoods. Everyone wore the prescribed soft sealskin shoes, the bear fur trousers and the hooded caribou jackets, but even these indigenous materials turned brittle in the frost. The sun now stood above the horizon twenty-four hours a day. At the end of a day’s travel, perhaps fifteen miles of arduous effort, the pioneer group would make camp, build igloos for the pursuing expedition, feed the dogs, untangle their iced-up traces, light the alcohol cooker to brew tea, and fall to a meal of frozen pemmican and crackers. Slowly through the month of March the Peary expedition made its way due north. One by one a party would turn back, its obligations now to beat the return trail as thoroughly as possible to make it easier for the parties who would follow. Peary would bring up the lag each day on the outgoing run and immediately occupy one of the igloos built for him by Henson. In the meantime Henson took care of Peary’s dogs, repaired broken sledges, made supper, dealt with the Esquimos, many of whom were now becoming difficult. Peary defined the virtues of Esquimos as loyalty and obedience, roughly the same virtues one sought in the dogs. When the time came for the final run for the Pole, now only a hundred miles away, Peary did indeed choose Henson to go with him; and Henson chose the Esquimos who in his judgment were the best boys, the most loyal and devoted to the Commander. The balance of the party was turned around and sent home.
Father had long since gone back. He had pioneered the very first week. He had proven not the sturdiest member of the expedition. This was from no lack of heart, as Peary told him before sending him home, but from the tendency of his extremities to freeze easily. Father’s left heel, for instance, froze every day, no matter what he did to protect it. Each evening in camp he would thaw it out painfully and treat it as best he could, and each morning it would freeze up again. So too with one of his knees and a small area on the top of his hand. Pieces of Father froze very casually and Peary said this was the fate of some men in the North and nothing could be done about it. Peary was not an unkind commander, and he liked