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A MAN'S WOMAN

by

FRANK NORRIS

1904







The following novel was completed March 22, 1899, and sent to the
printer in October of the same year. After the plates had been made
notice was received that a play called "A Man's Woman" had been written
by Anne Crawford Flexner, and that this title had been copyrighted.

As it was impossible to change the name of the novel at the time this
notice was received, it has been published under its original title.

F.N.

New York.




A MAN'S WOMAN




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. Forward they
must and would go until they dropped in the harness or he gave the word
to pause.

At four o'clock in the afternoon Bennett halted. Two miles had been made
since the last camp, and now human endurance could go no farther.
Sometimes when the men fell they were unable to get up. It was evident
there was no more in them that day.

In his ice-journal for that date Bennett wrote:

"... Two miles covered by 4 p.m. Our course continues to be south,
20 degrees west (magnetic). The ice still hummocky. At this rate we
shall be on half rations long before we reach Wrangel Island. No
observation possible since day before yesterday on account of snow
and clouds. Stryelka, one of our best dogs, gave out to-day. Shot
him and fed him to the others. Our advance to the southwest is slow
but sure, and every day brings nearer our objective. Temperature at
6 p.m., 6.8 degrees Fahr. (minus 14 degrees C). Wind, east; force, 2."

The next morning was clear for two hours after breakfast, and when
Ferriss returned from his task of path-finding he reported to Bennett
that he had seen a great many water-blinks off to the southwest.

"The wind of yesterday has broken the ice up," observed Bennett; "we
shall have hard work to-day."

A little after midday, at a time when they had wrested some thousand
yards to the southward from the grip of the ice, the expedition came to
the first lane of open water, about three hundred feet in width. Bennett
halted the sledges and at once set about constructing a bridge of
floating cakes of ice. But the work of keeping these ice-blocks in place
long enough for the transfer of even a single sledge seemed at times to
be beyond their most strenuous endeavour. The first sledge with the
cutter crossed in safety. Then came the turn of number two, loaded with
the provisions and whaleboat. It was two-thirds of the way across when
the opposite side of the floe abruptly shifted its position, and thirty
feet of open water suddenly widened out directly in front of the line of
progress.

"Cut loose!" commanded Bennett upon the instant. The ice-block upon
which they were gathered was set free in the current. The situation was
one of the greatest peril. The entire expedition, men and dogs together,
with their most important sledge, was adrift. But the oars and mast and
the pole of the tent were had from the whaleboat, and little by little
they ferried themselves across. The gap was bridged again and the
dog-sleds transferred.

But now occurred the first real disaster since the destruction of the
ship. Half-way across the crazy pontoon bridge of ice, the dogs,
harnessed to one of the small sleds, became suddenly terrified. Before
any one could interfere they had bolted from Muck Tu's control in a wild
break for the farther side of the ice. The sled was overturned;
pell-mell the dogs threw themselves into the water; the sled sank, the
load-lashing parted, and two medicine chests, the bag of sewing
materials--of priceless worth--a coil of wire ropes, and three hundred
and fifty pounds of pemmican were lost in the twinkling of an eye.

Without comment Bennett at once addressed himself to making the best of
the business. The dogs were hauled upon the ice; the few loads that yet
remained upon the sled were transferred to another; that sled was
abandoned, and once more the expedition began its never-ending battle to
the southward.

The lanes of open water, as foreshadowed by the water-blinks that
Ferriss had noted in the morning, were frequent; alternating steadily
with hummocks and pressure-ridges. But the perversity of the ice was all
but heart-breaking. At every hour the lanes opened and closed. At one
time in the afternoon they had arrived upon the edge of a lane wide
enough to justify them in taking to their boats. The sledges were
unloaded, and stowed upon the boats themselves, and oars and sails made
ready. Then as Bennett was about to launch the lane suddenly closed up.
What had been water became a level floe, and again the process of
unloading and reloading had to be undertaken.

That evening Big Joe and two other dogs, Gavriga and Patsy, were shot
because of their uselessness in the traces. Their bodies were cut up to
feed their mates.

"I can spare the dogs," wrote Bennett in his journal for that
day--a Sunday--"but McPherson, one of the best men of the command,
gives me some uneasiness. His frozen footnips have chafed sores in
his ankle. One of these has ulcerated, and the doctor tells me is
in a serious condition. His pain is so great that he can no longer
haul with the others. Shall relieve him from work during the
morrow's march. Less than a mile covered to-day. Meridian
observation for latitude impossible on account of fog. Divine
services at 5:30 p.m."

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