changed his own [i.e., dug up and moved them]." *12
Green continued in his journal:
When we finally got out in a lull in the storm I found my team had been buried under about 15 ft. of snow. We dug in vain.... [Green's dogs and sledge were too deeply buried and had died.] The storm came on again. P. and I were both made sick by the fumes [of the stove] in the illy ventilated igloo.
Friday, May 1, 1914. We tried twice before we got away. A lull in the storm was always followed by more wind and snow as before.
P. refused to go south or stay here [i.e., he wanted to return to the base camp instead of continuing on in the face of the storm]. I was forced to follow as I had no dogs or sledge.
We got away finally at seven A.M. In a little while it was as bad as ever. I could not ride as my feet were very wet and several toes seemed to be frosted.
We were both going over the glare ice and P. kept whipping up his dogs. I told him I could not keep up and he advised me to follow his trail. This was impossible. I then snatched the rifle from the load and warned him to keep behind me. A few minutes later I turned and saw him whipping up the dogs away from me.
I shot once in the air. He did not stop. I then killed him with a shot through the shoulder and another through the head.
I had trouble finding the igloo at the Cape.
Saturday, May 2, 1914. The storm abated considerably and I went over to Peary's cairn. I photographed it after removing record. I left a copy of Peary's record and the following of my own. [Green's record, which he copied in his journal, merely repeats why he shot the Eskimo.]
Green later published an account of the killing in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings. "A moment before I had faced the end of everything," Green wrote. "He that had loomed hostile and a deceit between me and safety lay now crumpled and inert in the unheeding snow.
"For once fate was balked ... I had baffled misfortune. The feeling sent red gladness to my anaemic humor ... the present was perfect, ecstatic. To prolong the moment was my impulse. I laughed, not fiendishly, but because I was glad."
He lashed the body to the sledge and carried it through the storm to an abandoned igloo closer to his rendezvous point with MacMillan. He dragged the dead body into the igloo, and fell into an exhausted sleep, which was suddenly interrupted by a nightmare. When he awoke in a cold sweat, he found himself looking at the dead Eskimo. "A horrible sight met my eyes," he wrote. "his eyes were open, glaring and malignant, fixed upon me."
Green leaped up and dragged the body outside behind an ice hummock. "Perhaps the wolves and foxes did not find it for several days," he wrote. "Made little difference I do not write to boast morbid delight in a truly sorrowful experience Let the right combination of circumstances, edged by the pitiless elements, cut a man to the quick and he will turn savage by the very logic he once boasted was his certificate of culture." It took Green two more days of horror battling the storm to return to the dugout camp where MacMillan was waiting for him.
MacMillan has revealed little of his feelings about his assistant's killing the Eskimo. He repeatedly stated that since Green felt it was necessary to take the life of his Eskimo companion, it was not up to MacMillan to pass judgment. In Four Years in the White North, MacMillan touches on the killing and does present a veiled critism of his companion. He wrote:
Green, inexperienced in the handling of Eskimos, and failing to understand their motives and temperament, had felt it necessary to shoot his companion. Pee-a-wah-to was a faithful assistant of Peary for more than two years, his last trip as one of the famous starvation party to the world's record of 87°6'. He had been my traveling companion from the first, and one of the best.
In 1921 the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen learned the truth about the killing of Pee-a-wah-to. He wrote a long letter that
Green continued in his journal:
When we finally got out in a lull in the storm I found my team had been buried under about 15 ft. of snow. We dug in vain.... [Green's dogs and sledge were too deeply buried and had died.] The storm came on again. P. and I were both made sick by the fumes [of the stove] in the illy ventilated igloo.
Friday, May 1, 1914. We tried twice before we got away. A lull in the storm was always followed by more wind and snow as before.
P. refused to go south or stay here [i.e., he wanted to return to the base camp instead of continuing on in the face of the storm]. I was forced to follow as I had no dogs or sledge.
We got away finally at seven A.M. In a little while it was as bad as ever. I could not ride as my feet were very wet and several toes seemed to be frosted.
We were both going over the glare ice and P. kept whipping up his dogs. I told him I could not keep up and he advised me to follow his trail. This was impossible. I then snatched the rifle from the load and warned him to keep behind me. A few minutes later I turned and saw him whipping up the dogs away from me.
I shot once in the air. He did not stop. I then killed him with a shot through the shoulder and another through the head.
I had trouble finding the igloo at the Cape.
Saturday, May 2, 1914. The storm abated considerably and I went over to Peary's cairn. I photographed it after removing record. I left a copy of Peary's record and the following of my own. [Green's record, which he copied in his journal, merely repeats why he shot the Eskimo.]
Green later published an account of the killing in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings. "A moment before I had faced the end of everything," Green wrote. "He that had loomed hostile and a deceit between me and safety lay now crumpled and inert in the unheeding snow.
"For once fate was balked ... I had baffled misfortune. The feeling sent red gladness to my anaemic humor ... the present was perfect, ecstatic. To prolong the moment was my impulse. I laughed, not fiendishly, but because I was glad."
He lashed the body to the sledge and carried it through the storm to an abandoned igloo closer to his rendezvous point with MacMillan. He dragged the dead body into the igloo, and fell into an exhausted sleep, which was suddenly interrupted by a nightmare. When he awoke in a cold sweat, he found himself looking at the dead Eskimo. "A horrible sight met my eyes," he wrote. "his eyes were open, glaring and malignant, fixed upon me."
Green leaped up and dragged the body outside behind an ice hummock. "Perhaps the wolves and foxes did not find it for several days," he wrote. "Made little difference I do not write to boast morbid delight in a truly sorrowful experience Let the right combination of circumstances, edged by the pitiless elements, cut a man to the quick and he will turn savage by the very logic he once boasted was his certificate of culture." It took Green two more days of horror battling the storm to return to the dugout camp where MacMillan was waiting for him.
MacMillan has revealed little of his feelings about his assistant's killing the Eskimo. He repeatedly stated that since Green felt it was necessary to take the life of his Eskimo companion, it was not up to MacMillan to pass judgment. In Four Years in the White North, MacMillan touches on the killing and does present a veiled critism of his companion. He wrote:
Green, inexperienced in the handling of Eskimos, and failing to understand their motives and temperament, had felt it necessary to shoot his companion. Pee-a-wah-to was a faithful assistant of Peary for more than two years, his last trip as one of the famous starvation party to the world's record of 87°6'. He had been my traveling companion from the first, and one of the best.
In 1921 the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen learned the truth about the killing of Pee-a-wah-to. He wrote a long letter that
Similar Books
