All this time, while the men never ceased their complaint about feeling cold, the heating problem had been solved by fires made of such kindling-wood as the thoughtful ocean had carried across from the Siberian co ast and deposited upon the shore. Finally, however, in despair at ever feeling really warm again, if only for a short while, it was decided, as an extra treat, to have a coal fire. There was some coal on board the ship, but it had been saved for use upon the homeward trip in the spring, when the men would be obliged to travel in open boats. The coal was brought to the house. The worst cracks in the walls were carefully filled with tar and rope, and somebody climbed to the roof and closed the chimney; not an ounce of the valuable heat must be lost. As a result the men felt comfortable for the first time in many months; they also came very near losing their lives. Having dozed off in the pleasant heat they had not noticed that their cabin was filling with coal-gas until finally some of them, feeling uncomfortable, tried to get up, grew dizzy, and fainted. Our friend the barber, possessed of more strength than any of the others, managed to creep to the door. He kicked it open and let in the fresh air. The men were soon revived, and the captain treated them all to a glass of wine to celebrate the happy escape. No further experiments with coal were made during that year.
December was a month of steady blizzards. The snow outside piled up in huge drifts which soon reached to the roof. The hungry foxes, attracted by the smell of cookery wafted abroad through the barrel-chimney, used to gallop across the roof, and at night their dismal and mean little bark kept the men in their bunks awake. At the same time their close proximity made trapping easier, and the skins were now doubly welcome; for the shoes, bought in Holland, had been frozen so often and had been thawed out too near the fire so frequently that they were leaking like sieves and could no longer be worn. New shoes were cut out of wood and covered with fox-fur. They provided comfortable, though far from elegant, footwear.
New Year's day was a dreary feast, for all the men thought of home and were melancholy and sad. Outside a terrible snow-storm raged. It cont inued for an entire week. No one dared to go outside to gather wood, fearing the wind and cold would kill them. In this extremity they were obliged to burn some of their home-made furniture. On the fifth of January the blizzard stopped. The door was opened, the cabin was put in order, wood was brought from the woodpile, and then one of the men suddenly remembered the date and how at home the feast of the Magi was being celebrated with many happy and innocent pastimes. The barber decided to organize a little feast. The first officer was elected to be "King of Nova Zembla." He was crowned with due solemnity. A special dinner of hot pancakes and rusks soaked in wine was served, and the evening was such a success that many imagined themselves safely home in their beloved fatherland. A new blizzard reminded them that they were still citizens of an Arctic island.
On the sixteenth of January, however, the men who had been sent out to look after the traps and bring in wood suddenly noticed a glimmer of red on the horizon. It was a sign of the returning sun. The dreary months of imprisonment were almost over. From tha t moment the heating problem became less difficult. On the contrary, the roof and the walls now began to leak, and the expedition had its first taste of the thaw which would be even more fatal than the cold weather had proved to be. As has been remarked, these men had been leading a very unhealthy life. While it was still light outside they had sometimes played ball with the wooden knob of the flagpole of the ship, but since early November they had taken no exercise of any sort. A few minutes spent out of doors just long enough to kill the foxes in the traps was all the fresh air they ever got. Out of a barrel they had made themselves a bath-tub, and once a week every man in turn had climbed through the little square opening into that barrel (see the pictu re) to get steamed out. But this mode of living, combined with bad food, brought half a year before from Holland, together with the large quantity of fox-meat, now caused a great deal of scurvy, and the scurvy caused more dangerous illness. Barendsz, the man upon whom they depended to find the way home, was already so weak that he could not move. He was kept near the fire on a pile of bearskins. On the twenty-sixth of January another man who had been ill for some time suddenly died. His comrades had done all they could to save him. They had cheered him with stories of home, but shortly after midnight of that day he gave up the ghost. Early the next morning he was buried near the carpenter. A chapter of the Bible was read, a psalm was sung, and his sorrowful companions went home to eat breakfast.
None of the men were quite as strong as they had been. Among other things, they hated the eternal bother of keeping the entrance to the door clear of snow. Why should they not abolish the door, and like good Eskimos e nter and leave their dwelling-place through the chimney? Heemskerk wanted to try this new scheme and he got ready to push himself through the narrow barrel. At the same time one of the men rushed to the door to go out into the open and welcome the skipper when he should stick his head through the barrel; but before he espied the eminent leader of the expedition he was struck by another sight: the sun had appeared above the horizon. Apparently Barendsz, who had tried to figure out the day and week of the year after they had lost count of the calendar, had been wrong in his calculation. According to him, there were to be two weeks more of darkness. And now, behold! there was the shining orb, speedily followed by a matutinal bear. The lean animal was at once killed and used to replenish the oil of the odorous little lamp which for more than three months had provided the only light inside the cabin.
February came and went, but as yet there were no signs of the breaking up of the ice. During the first day of Marc h a little open water was seen in the distance, but it was too far away to be of any value to the ship. An attempt was made to push the ship out of its heavy coat of ice, but the men at once complained that they were too weak to do much work. Some of them had had their toes frozen and could not walk. Others suffered from frost-bite on their hands and fingers and were unable to hold an ax. When they went outside only incessant vigilance saved them from the claws of the skinny bears that were ready to make up for the long winter's fast. Once a bear almost ate the commander, who was just able to jump inside the house and slam the door on bruin's nose. Another time a bear climbed on the roof, and when he could not get into the chimney, he got hold of the barrel and rocked that architectural contrivance until he almost ruined the entire house. It was very spooky, for the attack took place in the middle of the night, and it was impossible to go out and shoot the monster.
March passed, and the ship, which had been seventy yards away from the water when it was deserted in the autumn of 1595, was now more than five hundred yards away from the open sea. The intervening distance was a huge mass of broken ice and snow-drifts. It seemed impossible to drag the boats quite so far. When on the first of May the last morsel of salt meat had been eaten, the men appeared to be as far away from salvation as ever. There was a general demand that something be done. They had had enough of one winter in the Arctic, and would rather risk a voyage in an open boat than another six months of cold bunks and tough fox-stew, and reading their Bible by the light of a single oil-lamp.
Fortunately—and this is a great compliment to a dozen men who have been cooped up in a small cabin for six months of dark and cold—the spirit of the sailors had been excellent, and discipline had been well maintained. They did not make any direct demands upon the captain. The question of going or staying they discussed first of all with the sick Barendsz, and he in turn mentioned it to Heemskerk. Heemskerk himself was in favor of waiting a short while. He reasoned that the ice might melt soon, and then the ship could be saved. He, as captain, was responsible for his craft. He asked that they wait two weeks more. If the condition of the ice was still unsatisfactory at the end of that time, they would give up the ship and try to reach home in the boats. Meanwhile the men could get ready for the trip. They set to work at once cleaning and repairing their fur coats, sharpening their tools, and covering their shoes with new skins to keep their feet f
rom freezing during the long weeks in the open boats.
An eastern storm on the last day of May filled their little harbor with more ice, and all hope of saving the ship wa s given up. The return trip must be made in the open boats. There were two, a large and a small one. They had been left on land in the autumn, and were now covered with many feet of frozen snow. A first attempt to dig them out failed. The men were so weak that they could not handle their axes and spades. The inevitable bear attacked them, drove them post-haste back to the safe shelter of the house, and so put an end to the first day's work.
The next morning the men went back to their work. Regular exercise and fresh air soon gave them greater strength, while the dire warning of Heemskerk that, unless they succeeded, they would be obliged to end their days as citizens of Nova Zembla provided an excellent spur to their digging enthusiasm. The two boats were at last dragged to the house to be repaired. They were in very bad condition, but since there was no further reason for saving the ship there was sufficient wood with which to make good the damage. From early to late the men worked, the only interruptions be ing the dinner-hour and the visits of the bears. "But," as De Veer remarked in his pleasant way, "these animals probably knew that we were to leave very soon, and they wanted to have a taste of us before we should have gone for good." Before that happy ho ur arrived the expedition was threatened with a novel, but painful, visitation. To vary the monotonous diet of bearsteak, the men had fried the liver. Three of them had eaten of this dish and fell so ill that all hope was given up of saving their lives. The others, who knew that they could not handle the boats if three more sailors were to die, waited in great anxiety. Fortunately on the fourth day the patients showed signs of improvement and finally recovered. There were no further experiments with scrambled bear's liver.
After that the work on the two boats proceeded with speed, and by the twelfth of June everything was ready. The boats, now reinforced for the long trip across the open water of the Arctic Ocean, had to be hauled to the sea, and the ever-sh ifting wind had once more put a high ice-bank between the open water and the shore. A channel was cut through the ice with great difficulty, for there were no tools for this work. After two days more the survivors of this memorable shipwreck were ready fo r the last part of their voyage. Before they left the house Barendsz wrote three letters in which he recounted the adventures of the expedition. One of these letters was placed in a powder-horn which was left hanging in the chimney, where it was found two hundred and fifty years later.
On the morning of the fourteenth, Barendsz and another sick sailor who could no longer walk were carried to the boats. With a favorable wind from the south they set sail for the northern cape of Nova Zembla, which was soon reached. Then they turned westward, and followed the coast until they should reach the Siberian continent. The voyage along the coast was both difficult and dangerous. The two boats were not quite as large as the life-boats of a modern liner. Being still too weak to row, the men were obliged to sail between huge icebergs, often being caught for hours in the midst of large ice-fields. Sometimes they had to drag the boats upon the ice while they hacked a channel to open water. After a week the condition of the ice forced them to pull the boats on shore and wait for several days before they could go any farther. Great and tender care was taken of the sick pilot and the dying sailor, but those nights spent in the open were hard on the sufferers. On the mo rning of the twentieth of June the sailor, whose name was Claes Andriesz, felt that his end was near. Barendsz, too, said he feared that he would not last much longer. His active mind kept at work until the last. De Veer, the barber, had drawn a map of the coast, and Barendsz offered suggestions. Capes and small islands off the coast were definitely located, placed in their correct geographical positions, and baptized with sound Dutch names.
The end of Barendsz came very suddenly. Without a word of warning he turned his eyes toward heaven, sighed, and fell back dead. A few hours later he was followed by the faithful Claes. They were buried together. Sad at heart, the survivors now risked their lives upon the open sea. They had all the adventures not uncommon to such an expedition. The boats were in a rotten condition; several times the masts broke, and most of the time the smaller boat was half full of water. The moment they reached land and t ried to get some rest, there was a general attack by wild bears. And once a sudden break in a field of ice separated the boats from the provisions, which had just been unloaded. In their attempt to get these back several men broke through the ice. They caught cold, and on the fifth of July another sailor, a relative of Claes, who had died with Barendsz, had to be buried on shore.
During all this misery we read of a fine example of faithful performance of duty and of devotion to the interest of one's employers. You will remember that this expedition had been sent out to reach China by the Northeast Passage and to establish commercial relations with the merchants of the great heathen kingdom. For this purpose rich velvets and other materials agreeable to the eyes of Chinamen had been loaded onto the ship when they left Amsterdam. Heemskerk felt it his duty to save these goods, and he had managed to keep them in safety. Now that the sun shone with some warmth, the packages were opened and their contents dried. When Heemskerk came back to Amsterdam the materials were returned to their owners in good condition.
On the eleventh of June of the year 1597 the boats were approaching the spot where upon previous voyages large colonies of geese had been found. They went ashore and found so many eggs that they did not know how to take them all back to the boats. So two men took down their breeches, tied the lower part together with a piece of string, filled them with eggs, and carried their loot in triumph back to the others on board.
That was almost their last adventure with polar fauna, except for an attack by infuriated seals whose quiet they had disturbed. The seals almost upset one of the boats. The men had no further difficulties, however. On the contrary, from now on everything was plain sailing; and it actually seemed to them that the good Lord himself had taken pity upon them after their long and patient suffering, for whenever they came to a large ice-field it would suddenly separate and make a clear channel for th eir boats; and when they were hungry they found that the small islands were covered with birds that were so tame that they waited to be caught and killed.
At last, on the twenty-seventh of July, they arrived in open water where they discovered a strong eastern current. They decided that they must be near Kara Strait. The next morning they hoped to find out for certain. When the next morning came they suddenly beheld two strange vessels near their own boats. They were fishing-smacks, to judge by their sh ape and size, but nothing was known about their nationality, for they flew no flags, and it was well to be careful in the year of grace 1597. Therefore a careful approach was made. To Heemskerk's great joy, the ships were manned by Russians who had seen t he fleet of Linschoten several years before and remembered some of the Hollanders. There were familiar faces on both sides, and this first glimpse of human beings did more to revive the courage of the men than the doubtful food which the Russians forced with great hospitality upon their unexpected guests. The following day the two fishing-boats set sail for the west, and Heemskerk followed in their wake. But in the afternoon they sailed into a heavy fog and when it lifted no further trace of the Russians could be found. Once more the two small boats were alone, with lots of water around them and little hope before them.
By this time all of the men had been attacked by scurvy and they could no longer eat hard-tack, which was the only food left on board. Divine interference again saved them. They found a small island covered with scurvy-grass ( Cochlearia officinalis ) the traditional remedy for this painful affliction. Within a few days they all recovered, and could row across the current of the straits which se parated them from the continent. Here they found another Russian ship. Then they discovered that their compass, on account of the proximity of heavy chests and boxes covered with iron rings, had lost all track of the magnetic pole and that they were much farther
toward the east than they had supposed. They deliberated whether they should continue their voyage on land or on sea. Finally they decided to stick to their boats and their cargo. Once more they closely followed the coast until they came to the mouth of the White Sea. That meant a vast stretch of dangerous open water, which must be crossed at great risk. The first attempt to reach the other shore failed. The two boats lost sight of each other, and they all worried about the fate of their comrades. On the eighteenth of August the second boat managed to reach the Kola peninsula after rowing for more than thirty hours.
That virtually ends the adventures of the men who had gone out with Barendsz and Heemskerk to discover the Northeast Passage, and who qu ite involuntarily acted as the first polar explorers. After a few days the boats found each other, and together they reached the first Russian settlement, where they found houses and warm rooms and a chance to get a decent bath and eat from a table. Their misery was at once forgotten. At heart they were healthy-minded, simple fellows, and when for the first time after many months they saw some women they were quite happy, although these women were Laplanders and proverbially lacking in those attributes which we usually connect with the idea of lovely womanhood.
News traveled fast even in the dominion of the Lapp. In less than eighty hours a Laplander came running to the Russian settlement with a letter which had been written by De Ryp, who, half a year before, had been blown into the White Sea and was now waiting for a favorable wind to sail home. He was still in Kola, and was delighted at the safe return of his colleague from whom he had separated over a point of nautical difference. He invited the men t o go home with him. The two small boats of Heemskerk's ship were left in the town of Kola as a small souvenir for the kind-hearted Russians, the Arctic costumes were carefully packed away, to be shown to the family at home, and on the sixth of October the y all said farewell to the Russian coast. Twenty-three days later they entered the Maas. By way of Maassluis, Delft, The Hague, and Haarlem they made their triumphant entry into Amsterdam. Dressed in their fox-skins and their home-made wooden shoes, they p araded through the streets of the city. Their High and Mightinesses the mayors received them at the town hall, and the world was full of the fame of this first Arctic expedition. As for the practical results, there were none, unless we except the negative information about the impossibility of the Northeastern Passage. But nobody cared any longer about this route, for just two months before the first Dutch fleet which had tried to reach the Indies by way of the Cape had safely returned to the roads of Texe l. The Portuguese, after all, had proved to be not so dangerous as had been expected. The Indian native was quite willing to welcome the Dutch trader. And the Northeastern route, after the wonderful failures of a number of conscientious expeditions, was g iven up for the well-worn and well-known route along the African coast. The Arctic was all right for the purpose of hunting of the profitable whale, but as a short cut to the Indies it had proved an absolute disappointment.
The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators Page 4