A Man''s Woman

A Man's Woman





By

Frank Norris




Web-Books.Com





A Man's Woman


Chapter I 3

Chapter II 18

Chapter III 35

Chapter IV 53

Chapter V 71

Chapter VI 84

Chapter VII. 105

Chapter VIII 127

Chapter IX 150

Chapter X 165

Chapter XI 185
Chapter I.

At four o'clock in the morning everybody in the tent was still asleep, exhausted by
the terrible march of the previous day. The hummocky ice and pressure-ridges
that Bennett had foreseen had at last been met with, and, though camp had been
broken at six o'clock and though men and dogs had hauled and tugged and
wrestled with the heavy sledges until five o'clock in the afternoon, only a mile and
a half had been covered. But though the progress was slow, it was yet progress.
It was not the harrowing, heart-breaking immobility of those long months aboard
the Freja. Every yard to the southward, though won at the expense of a battle
with the ice, brought them nearer to Wrangel Island and ultimate safety.
Then, too, at supper-time the unexpected had happened. Bennett, moved no
doubt by their weakened condition, had dealt out extra rations to each man: one
and two-thirds ounces of butter and six and two-thirds ounces of aleuronate
bread—a veritable luxury after the unvarying diet of pemmican, lime juice, and
dried potatoes of the past fortnight. The men had got into their sleeping-bags
early, and until four o'clock in the morning had slept profoundly, inert, stupefied,
almost without movement. But a few minutes after four o'clock Bennett awoke.
He was usually up about half an hour before the others. On the day before he
had been able to get a meridian altitude of the sun, and was anxious to complete
his calculations as to the expedition's position on the chart that he had begun in
the evening.
He pushed back the flap of the sleeping-bag and rose to his full height, passing
his hands over his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He was an enormous
man, standing six feet two inches in his reindeer footnips and having the look
more of a prize-fighter than of a scientist. Even making allowances for its coating
of dirt and its harsh, black stubble of half a week's growth, the face was not
pleasant. Bennett was an ugly man. His lower jaw was huge almost to deformity,
like that of the bulldog, the chin salient, the mouth close-gripped, with great lips,
indomitable, brutal. The forehead was contracted and small, the forehead of men
of single ideas, and the eyes, too, were small and twinkling, one of them marred
by a sharply defined cast.
But as Bennett was fumbling in the tin box that was lashed upon the number four
sledge, looking for his notebook wherein he had begun his calculations for
latitude, he was surprised to find a copy of the record he had left in the
instrument box under the cairn at Cape Kammeni at the beginning of this
southerly march. He had supposed that this copy had been mislaid, and was not
a little relieved to come across it now. He read it through hastily, his mind
reviewing again the incidents of the last few months. Certain extracts of this
record ran as follows:
Arctic steamer Freja, on ice off Cape Kammeni, New Siberian Islands, 76 deg. 10
min. north latitude, 150 deg. 40 min. east longitude, July 12, 1891 We
accordingly froze the ship in on the last day of September, 1890, and during the
following winter drifted with the pack in a northwesterly direction On Friday,
July 10, 1891, being in latitude 76 deg. 10 min. north; longitude 150 deg. 10 min.
east, the Freja was caught in a severe nip between two floes and was crushed,
sinking in about two hours. We abandoned her, saving 200 days' provisions and
all necessary clothing, instruments, 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 tent, awoke the cook, and while breakfast was
being prepared completed his calculations for latitude, wrote up his ice-journal,
and noted down the temperature and the direction and velocity of the wind. As he
was finishing, Richard Ferriss, who was the chief engineer and second in
command, awoke and immediately asked the latitude.
"Seventy-four-fifteen," answered Bennett without looking up.
"Seventy-four-fifteen," repeated Ferriss, nodding his head; "we didn't make much
distance yesterday."
"I hope we can make as much to-day," returned Bennett grimly as he put away
his observation-journal and note-books.
"How's the ice to the south'ard?"
"Bad; wake the men."
After breakfast and while the McClintocks were being loaded Bennett sent
Ferriss on ahead to choose a road through and over the ridges. It was dreadful
work. For two hours Ferriss wandered about amid the broken ice all but
hopelessly bewildered. But at length, to his great satisfaction, he beheld a fairly
open stretch about a quarter of a mile in length lying out to the southwest and not
too far out of the expedition's line of march. Some dozen ridges would have to be
crossed before this level was reached; but there was no help for it, so Ferriss
planted his flags where the heaps of ice-blocks seemed least impracticable and
returned toward the camp. It had already been broken, and on his way he met
the entire expedition involved in the intricacies of the first rough ice.
All of the eighteen dogs had been harnessed to the number two sledge, that
carried the whaleboat and the major part of the provisions, and every man of the
party, Bennett included, was straining at the haul-ropes with the dogs. Foot by
foot the sledge came over the ridge, grinding and lurching among the ice-blocks;
then, partly by guiding, partly by lifting, it was piloted down the slope, only in the
end to escape from all control and come crashing downward among the dogs,
jolting one of the medicine chests from its lashings and butting its nose heavily
against the foot of the next hummock immediately beyond. But the men
scrambled to their places again, the medicine chest was replaced, and Muck Tu,
the Esquimau dog-master, whipped forward his dogs. Ferriss, too, laid hold. The
next hummock was surmounted, the dogs panting, and the men, even in that icy
air, reeking with perspiration. Then suddenly and without the least warning
Bennett and McPherson, who were in the lead, broke through some young ice
into water up to their breasts, Muck Tu and one of the dogs breaking through
immediately afterward. The men were pulled out, or, of their own efforts, climbed
upon the ice again. But in an instant their clothes were frozen to rattling armor.
"Bear off to the east'ard, here!" commanded Bennett, shaking the icy, stinging
water from his sleeves. "Everybody on the ropes now!"
Another pressure-ridge was surmounted, then a third, and by an hour after the
start they had arrived at the first one of Ferriss's flags. Here the number two
sledge was left, and the entire expedition, dogs and men, returned to camp to
bring up the number one McClintock loaded with the Freja's cutter and with the
sleeping-bags, instruments, and tent. This sledge was successfully dragged over
the first two hummocks, but as it was being hauled up the third its left-hand
runner suddenly buckled and turned under it with a loud snap. There was nothing
for it now but to remove the entire load and to set Hawes, the carpenter, to work
upon its repair.
"Up your other sledge!" ordered Bennett.
Once more the expedition returned to the morning's camping-place, and,
harnessing itself to the third McClintock, struggled forward with it for an hour and
a half until it was up with the first sledge and Ferriss's flag. Fortunately the two
dog-sleds, four and five, were light, and Bennett, dividing his forces, brought
them up in a single haul. But Hawes called out that the broken sledge was now
repaired. The men turned to at once, reloaded it, and hauled it onward, so that by
noon every sledge had been moved forward quite a quarter of a mile.
But now, for the moment, the men, after going over the same ground seven
times, were used up, and Muck Tu could no longer whip the dogs to their work.
Bennett called a halt. Hot tea was made, and pemmican and hardtack served
out.
"We'll have easier hauling this afternoon, men," said Bennett; "this next ridge is
the worst of the lot; beyond that Mr. Ferriss says we've got nearly a quarter of a
mile of level floes."
On again at one o'clock; but the hummock of which Bennett had spoken proved
absolutely impassable for the loaded sledges. It was all one that the men lay to
the ropes like draught-horses, and that Muck Tu flogged the dogs till the goad
broke in his hands. The men lost their footing upon the slippery ice and fell to
their knees; the dogs laid down in the traces groaning and whining. The sledge
would not move.
"Unload!" commanded Bennett.
The lashings were taken off, and the loads, including the great, cumbersome
whaleboat itself, carried over the hummock by hand. Then the sledge itself was
hauled over and reloaded upon the other side. Thus the whole five sledges.
The work was bitter hard; the knots of the lashings were frozen tight and coated
with ice; the cases of provisions, the medicine chests, the canvas bundle of sails,
boat-covers, and tents unwieldy and of enormous weight; the footing on the
slippery, uneven ice precarious, and more than once a man, staggering under his
load, broke through the crust into water so cold that the sensation was like that of
burning.
But at last everything was over, the sledges reloaded, and the forward movement
resumed. Only one low hummock now intervened between them and the longed-
for level floe.
However, as they were about to start forward again a lamentable gigantic sound
began vibrating in their ears, a rumbling, groaning note rising by quick degrees to
a strident shriek. Other sounds, hollow and shrill—treble mingling with
diapason—joined in the first. The noise came from just beyond the pressure-
mound at the foot of which the party had halted.
"Forward!" shouted Bennett; "hurry there, men!"
Desperately eager, the men bent panting to their work. The sledge bearing the
whaleboat topped the hummock.
"Now, then, over with her!" cried Ferriss.
But it was too late. As they stood looking down upon it for an instant, the level
floe, their one sustaining hope during all the day, suddenly cracked from side to
side with the noise of ordnance. Then the groaning and shrieking recommenced.
The crack immediately closed up, the pressure on the sides of the floe began
again, and on the smooth surface of the ice, domes and mounds abruptly reared
themselves. As the pressure increased these domes and mounds cracked and
burst into countless blocks and slabs. Ridge after ridge was formed in the
twinkling of an eye. Thundering like a cannonade of siege guns, the whole floe
burst up, jagged, splintered, hummocky. In less than three minutes, and while the
Freja's men stood watching, the level stretch toward which since morning they
had struggled with incalculable toil was ground up into a vast mass of confused
and pathless rubble.
"Oh, this will never do," muttered Ferriss, disheartened.
"Come on, men!" exclaimed Bennett. "Mr. Ferriss, go forward, and choose a road
for us."
The labour of the morning was recommenced. With infinite patience, infinite
hardship, the sledges one by one were advanced. So heavy were the three
larger McClintocks that only one could be handled at a time, and that one taxed
the combined efforts of men and dogs to the uttermost. The same ground had to
be covered seven times. For every yard gained seven had to be travelled. It was
not a march, it was a battle; a battle without rest and without end and without
mercy; a battle with an Enemy whose power was beyond all estimate and whose
movements were not reducible to any known law. A certain course would be
mapped, certain plans formed, a certain objective determined, and before the
course could be finished, the plans executed, or the objective point attained the
perverse, inexplicable movement of the ice baffled their determination and set at
naught their best ingenuity.
At four o'clock it began to snow. Since the middle of the forenoon the horizon had
been obscured by clouds and mist so that no observation for position could be
taken. Steadily the clouds had advanced, and by four o'clock the expedition
found itself enveloped by wind and driving snow. The flags could no longer be
distinguished; thin and treacherous ice was concealed under drifts; the dogs
floundered helplessly; the men could scarcely open their eyes against the wind
and fine, powder-like snow, and at times when they came to drag forward the last
sledge they found it so nearly buried in the snow that it must be dug out before it
could be moved.
Toward half past five the odometer on one of the dog-sleds registered a distance
of three-quarters of a mile made since morning. Bennett called a halt, and camp
was pitched in the lee of one of the larger hummocks. The alcohol cooker was
set going, and supper was had under the tent, the men eating as they lay in their
sleeping-bags. But even while eating they fell asleep, drooping lower and lower,
finally collapsing upon the canvas floor of the tent, the food still in their mouths.
Yet, for all that, the night was miserable. Even after that day of superhuman
struggle they were not to be allowed a few hours of unbroken rest. By midnight
the wind had veered to the east and was blowing a gale. An hour later the tent
came down. Exhausted as they were, they must turn out and wrestle with that
slatting, ice-sheathed canvas, and it was not until half an hour later that
everything was fast again.
Once more they crawled into the sleeping-bags, but soon the heat from their
bodies melted the ice upon their clothes, and pools of water formed under each
man, wetting him to the skin. Sleep was impossible. It grew colder and colder as
the night advanced, and the gale increased. At three o'clock in the morning the
centigrade thermometer was at eighteen degrees below. The cooker was lighted
again, and until six o'clock the party huddled wretchedly about it, dozing and
waking, shivering continually.
Breakfast at half past six o'clock; under way again an hour later. There was no
change in the nature of the ice. Ridge succeeded ridge, hummock followed upon
hummock. The wind was going down, but the snow still fell as fine and
bewildering as ever. The cold was intense. Dennison, the doctor and naturalist of
the expedition, having slipped his mitten, had his hand frostbitten before he could
recover it. Two of the dogs, Big Joe and Stryelka, were noticeably giving out.
But Bennett, his huge jaws clenched, his small, distorted eyes twinkling viciously
through the apertures of the wind-mask, his harsh, black eyebrows lowering
under the narrow, contracted forehead, drove the expedition to its work
relentlessly. Not Muck Tu, the dog-master, had his Ostiaks more completely
under his control than he his men. He himself did the work of three. On that vast
frame of bone and muscle, fatigue seemed to leave no trace. Upon that
inexorable bestial determination difficulties beyond belief left no mark. Not one of
the twelve men under his command fighting the stubborn ice with tooth and nail
who was not galvanised with his tremendous energy. It was as though a spur
was in their flanks, a lash upon their backs. Their minds, their wills, their efforts,
their physical strength to the last ounce and pennyweight belonged indissolubly
to him. For the time being they were his slaves, his serfs, his beasts of burden,
his draught animals, no better than the dogs straining in the traces beside them.

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