CHAPTER XIV

IN WINTER QUARTERS

When the removal of supplies had lightened the _Roosevelt_ so much that
Bartlett got her considerably farther in shore, she lay with her nose
pointing almost true north. It cheered us, for this was her constant
habit. It seemed almost like the purpose of a living creature. Whenever
on the upward voyage--either this time or on her first trip in 1905--the
ship was beset in the ice so that we lost control of her, she always
swung around of her own accord and pointed north. When twisting through
the ice, if we got caught when the ship was headed east or west, it was
only a little while before the pressure would swing her round till once
more she looked northward. Even on the return journey, in 1906, it was
the same--as if the ship realized she had not accomplished her purpose
and wanted to go back. The sailors noticed it, and used to talk about
it. They said the _Roosevelt_ was not satisfied, that she knew she had
not done her work.

When we got the vessel as near the shore as possible, the ship's people
began to make her ready for the winter. The engine-room force was busy
blowing down the boilers, putting the machinery out of commission,
removing every drop of water from the pipes and elbows so the cold of
winter should not burst them; and the crew was busy taking down the
sails, slacking off the rigging, so the contraction from the intense
cold of winter should not cause damage, with a thousand and one details
of like character.

Before the sails were taken down, they were all set, that they might be
thoroughly dried out by sun and wind. The ship was a beautiful sight,
held fast in the embrace of the ice and with her cables out, but with
every sail filled with wind like a yacht in a race.

While this work was going on small hunting parties of Eskimos were sent
to the Lake Hazen region, but they met with little success. A few hares
were secured, but musk-oxen seemed to have vanished. This troubled me,
for it raised a fear that the hunting of the former expedition had
killed off the game, or driven it away. The Eskimo women set their fox
traps all along the shore for five miles or so each way, and they were
more successful than the men, obtaining some thirty or forty foxes in
the course of the fall and winter. The women also went on fishing trips
to the ponds of the neighborhood, and brought in many mottled beauties.

The Eskimo method of fishing is interesting. The fish in that