The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-04

{ | gale of the year struck us.
 l Back, back, we were driven. There
 was no bucking that bowling, shriek. ing gale. It broke our hearts wher ] we gave the fight up and brought the | old Cluett about. Once more the com. pass needle told US we were headed | north, and how we hated it Ther
 the heavy ice came smashing in on us | with blows like those of huge sledge. hammer. Even our heavy plankine designed for such an emergency couldn't withstand 1t.
 And we put in at Parker Snow
 Bay, having been blown back dis
 tance of some 30 nautical miles. we patched the old Cluett up and
 again headed her south. Nothing do-
 ing! The ice driving up from Baffin Bay was too much for us. Finally we were frozen in.
 Risked Death for Tobacco. "Yes, it was at Parker Snow Bay
 that the incident of the tobacco oc-
 cured. You smoke, eh! We'll, you
 know how it feels when you're off in
 camp somewhere and discover you're out of tobacco. Seems like unbear- able torture to wait until the follow ing morning.
 That's how a sailor named Taylor, who we picked up at Sydney felt-only a thousand times worse-when he found that he had smoked up his whole allotment of tobacco. And he thought himself the luckiest man in the world when he found out that at an Esquimo settlement some 20 miles away there was tobacco to be bought.
 "So he persuaded second mate Nor man, who halls from Lynn, to make the trip with him. Down here now it seems. as though it were the limit of foolishness, but up there you look at things in different aspect.
 Dressed in the polar bearskin trou- sers and moccasins, sealskin coats and blue fox-tail hats we all wore, they were prepared for the 60 below tenn perature outside. And all went well until they struck a seven-mile glacier that lay across their path.
 "You can never tell when the cold will get you up there-even the best fitted man succumbs to it after a short period of exposure. Half way across the glacier Norman was grip ped by it. His arms, his face and his hands became numb. In vain Taylor tried to restore circulation.
 Luckily Taylor didn't lose his head. Half dragging and half beating his frozen companion, the Sydney man started him back toward the ship. The cold had grown more intense all the while. The staggering pair reached the edge of the glacier. Now Taylor could go no further. He, too, was succpmbing to the cold.
 A Race for Life.
 Here it was that Norman dropped and his heavy weight was too much for the tired Taylor to drag further. So the Sydney man made the mate as for the ship. athonsi Taylor fairly flew over the ice and the snow. Never faltering he slipped and slid over wide stretch es of ice as smooth as glass. His feet broke through the web of the snowshoes and every pace left a mark of blood upon the snow as he ran down and over the rolling plain.
 For two whole hours he ran, and at that night he clambered up the ladder of the ship barely able to tell his story. It was the work of min ute to get the entire crew together and we started out with lanterns and sleds.
 Three hours later First Mate Da-' wis found Norman within a foot of a 75-foot cliff to which he had wander ed in a delirium. So stiff was Nor- man that he ha11ooed down to Dr. Hunt and myself that the mate was dead.
 Davis tied a rope around Norman's body and down into the pitchy-black darkness of the sides of the cliff he lowered the supposed dead man. Dr. Hunt and I were waiting below and Norman was put on a sled.
 "We got him back to the ship at o'clock the following morning, and from that time until 2 o'clock the whole crew worked over him in re- lays. It was mighty serious business for we all loved Norman, but you can imagine the relaxation that fol- lowed in a regular gale of laughter ed:
 '''D1d ReC the IODdCCO!
 And next day an Esquimo rubbed It into Norman when he casually re- marked, in the nearest that the Es- quimo language can express, its a very mild winter / "Out a hundred yards from the icy cliffs of the bay it was comfortable, as comfort goes in the Arctic, in a ship banked in with the snow in the five foot thick ice. October averaged 20 above on shipboard; in November it dropped to 1 above: December saw it 3 1-2 below; January registered 13 below; February 4 degrees lower; in March it rose to above; in April it went down again to 4 1-2 below. May was blessed for it was 29 above. The coldest on ship at any one time was 28 Below.
 Trip Full of Action.
 "It was a trip full of action from the very moment the relief ship left Bos- ton Harbor, on the 18th of June, 1915," Cotton went on.
 "We first touched at Sydney, to pick up Dr. Hoven of the museum and Captain Conner, an experienced ice pilot, whom the doctor brought with him. Time passed idly and pleasant y for several weeks out of Sydney. A victro1a that Peary was sending up to Ootah, his old Eskimo companion, furnished splendid entertainment.
 Our first excitement occurred when | ! dog that Peary was sending also to Ootah went mad and ran amuck on