CHAPTER XIX

MINING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN

THE steamer _Munroe_ was the first boat this year to penetrate the frozen north, and her departure was looked upon as an event of great importance, for an early season trip was one full of uncertainties. The condition of the sea in the vicinity of North Cape and Spitzbergen was unknown until reported by the first vessel in. A severe winter would mean a difficult voyage, while a mild season would render the passage comparatively easy. The trip from Tromso to Advent Bay, where the company's mines are located, had varied in length, in past years, from three days to five weeks, depending on the amount of ice surrounding the island of West Spitzbergen. We had sailed, therefore, fully provided with supplies for the limit of the time required to make the journey. The _Munroe_ was completely equipped for Arctic Ocean travel, and had been built to meet all conditions encountered in the seas of the Far North. She was a small steamer, being only about two hundred feet long, and resting very low in the water--her stern deck being but four feet above the surface when loaded to her full capacity. She had been especially designed for navigation in the icy seas of this region. Attached to her main mast was a "crow's nest," a sort of barrel-shaped device which looked like a preacher's pulpit. From this point one of the crew constantly kept watch for icebergs and pieces of float ice. Her bow was re-enforced with a solid mass of hard oak, fourteen feet thick, which was covered with a heavy band of steel. By reason of this solid bow she was equipped so that she could ram the ice and loosen large chunks which would float away. Her crew comprised experienced Arctic sailors and her captain was a kind-hearted old Norwegian who had served as skipper on ships of the northern seas for twenty years. In addition the steamer was well provided with sixteen large life-saving boats, each with a capacity of fifteen passengers.

It was bitterly cold the morning we left Tromso, and the trip through the narrow fjords leading to the open sea was calm and peaceful. The early morning hours seemed to lend a stillness to our departure which made one feel as though he were attending a funeral. At noon we were well out to sea, travelling directly north, and, with the exception of the intense cold, there was nothing to indicate that we were not on an ordinary ocean voyage in the temperate zone.

Towards evening the drunken miners down the forward hatch began to sober up and gradually come on deck. With their appearance there was a demand for heavy socks, boots, underwear, shirts, wind-proof coats and trousers. As the handling of these articles belonged to my department I was kept busy for several hours, assisted by my Norwegian clerks, dealing out wearing apparel to the men. The upper deck of the ship was transformed into a temporary store, and as each man filed by he was given what articles he needed, together with a store tag, a duplicate of which was retained in order to charge the amount of the purchase against his account--to be deducted from his first pay-check.

The second morning we sighted Bear Island, a lonely, uninhabited piece of land rising abruptly out of the ocean about midway between Norway and Spitzbergen. We saw an occasional chunk of float ice which had broken loose from the ice pack farther north and was drifting carelessly towards the south only to melt away when it came in contact with the Gulf Stream. We were awakened the next morning by the crashing of the bow of the ship against the ice. I went up on the bridge and as far as my eye could reach I could see nothing but countless pieces of float ice, varying in area from a few feet to the size of an acre lot. It was an inspiring sight--both fore and aft an endless expanse of white broken here and there by the irregular streaks of the blue water. For two days the patient ship ploughed her way through this creaking and cracking mass. Occasionally she would sail into a space of open sea, and in a few minutes would again be completely surrounded by an ocean of ice which rubbed and knocked against her sides with the wheezing sound of the ice-man's saw.

The captain said that we were making fine progress, and if nothing unforeseen occurred should arrive in Ice Fjord in the morning. All on board were aroused early by the fearful charging of the ship. We were now well within the fjord alongside of the fast ice. The boat would get up steam, proceed ahead at full speed, plunge into the ice, draw back and plunge again at a little distance away. By this process a large piece of ice would be loosened and would slowly drift off. All the morning the _Munroe_ battered the ice in this manner. Finally we reached a point where the captain considered that the ice was secure enough to tie to. Stakes were driven, lines extended and the ship made fast.

We were now about twenty miles from shore. The little black ship was nestled in a bed of snowy down. Ice Fjord was a solid mass of ice. The steep and snow-clad mountains of Spitzbergen surrounded us like a cluster of marble cathedral spires, and the glacier-choked valleys looked like frozen and motionless rivers. It was a dream in snow. At first there appeared to be no signs of life, and the death-like silence made one sure that it was a new world. In the midst of this dreary expanse of ice and snow the little veteran ship of the Arctic, hugging its frozen wharf, stood like a messenger from another planet, bearing greetings to the bleak and uninhabited land around us. The first signs of life shortly came into sight. Here and there, at irregular intervals, we saw seals and sea lions dotting the ice like flies on a white ceiling. A flock of geese flew overhead and as soon as our advent had been heralded to the inhabitants of the air, droves of reaper hovered about the ship to welcome us to their frigid home. Thousands of these fearless birds, to whom the report of a gun was unknown, gathered about us and formed a sea of blackness in the open space at the stern of the ship.

There was no time to lose, and once the ship was made fast two men were detailed to proceed to the mine and notify the winter superintendent of our arrival. The hundred and fifty men were getting their belongings together for their march to the camp. In a short time one could see this small army of men creeping like a huge caterpillar over the twenty-mile stretch of ice to the mine. Superintendent Gilson and I remained with the ship, making preparations for the unloading of the cargo and awaiting the arrival of the sleds from the camp.

We couldn't resist the temptation, and towards evening we went hunting. From the deck of the ship we landed a goodly bag of reaper for our evening meal. We would shoot into the black mass of these trim little ducks that clustered about the boat, and with each shot the innocent creatures would momentarily flutter and then close up the gap. Every time we fired we killed half-a-dozen birds and shortly we had a sufficient number to feed the ship's crew. It was like slaying little babes, and as soon as we had enough for dinner we stopped the heartless slaughter.

There are no barbers on Spitzbergen. Seated on a stool on the stern of the ship I allowed Superintendent Gilson to shingle my rustry locks with a pair of clippers provided by the company. I didn't realise how intensely cold it was until the sharp currents of the Arctic began to circulate around my ears in the paths made by the moving hand of the superintendent. One complete run of the clippers up the back of my head was all I could stand at one time, and in I would run to warm myself by the stove in the mess-room. In a minute I would return to let the work continue, only to speed back to the stove again. Dinner was on the table and the little mess-room could not be turned into a barber-shop. After half an hour the job was finished. It was Gilson's first attempt at anything in the tonsorial line. On gazing into the mirror to inspect the work I concluded that he should have been a winding stair-maker. The most skilled mechanic could not have made a more perfect set of steps.

In the morning half-a-dozen sleds drawn by horses could be seen making their way towards the ship. Occasionally one of the horses would step on a soft or melted spot in the ice and sink in for several feet. Finally one of the poor animals disappeared beneath the ice and was completely submerged in the freezing water. After a twenty-minute struggle, aided by its team-mate which had been hitched in such a manner as to render assistance, the brave beast was brought to the surface of the ice.

The sleds reached the ship and the place became a scene of great activity, discharging the cargo and loading it again for transportation across the ice to the mine.

Gilson and I left the work in charge of the captain and about noon set out across the ice to the camp. Gilson went in the lead a few paces to select the way and avoid the soft and treacherous-looking water holes. Distance on the ice was very deceiving. We had walked for two hours, and the mountains seemed to be as far away as ever. We proceeded on for two hours more and still our destination seemed no nearer. However, we knew we were making progress, for the _Munroe_, in the rear, looked like a small row boat and became smaller and smaller as we continued until she disappeared from view. We tramped on over this vast expanse of ice. At eight o'clock in the evening we reached the shore. We walked over the hill about a mile, and in a few minutes were in the little camp. Turner and the other members of the American staff had arrived the day before and had prepared a big dinner for us. Gilson and I sat down at the table in the little cottage which served as headquarters for the Americans, and ate one of the finest meals of our lives. Roast reindeer, killed by a member of the camp the day before, made a great filling for two hungry and frozen men.

The Spitzbergen archipelago is another "No-Man's Land." It belongs to no country. The Arctic Coal Company, incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts, owns about forty-five thousand acres on the island of West Spitzbergen, which it acquired by staking out claims and which it holds by the moral protection of the United States. A British company has several thousand acres of coal lands on the same island which it abandoned a number of years ago. There is a marble quarry on the east coast operated by an English concern. At Green Harbour, near the entrance of Ice Fjord, the Norwegian government conducts a wireless plant, and near by there is a Swedish whaling station. There are no native inhabitants of Spitzbergen, and its population, numbering about three hundred and fifty in the summer season and two hundred in the winter, is made up of those engaged at the several places I have enumerated.

The islands of Spitzbergen are coveted by the three Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Russia is also desirous of adding them to her vast domain. Each year a council, made up of representatives from each of these nations, meets in Stockholm, Christiania or Copenhagen and discusses ways and means to settle the question of their disposal. Nothing definite has ever been accomplished, and without the approval of Great Britain and America, whose properties make them big factors, the problem bids fair to remain undecided for some time. As a result of this situation Spitzbergen does not possess a local government of any kind. It is a land where might is right. There are no laws, no police and no means to enforce order. Manager Turner was the ruler and executive in our part of the island, and any regulations that existed had been instituted by him.

Eight months of the year the islands are entirely frozen in; their steep mountains are covered with snow, their valleys filled with immense glaciers and their interior is one endless waste of ice. During the summer months the fjords and bays of the southern part are freed of ice, the mountains shed their white mantles and the hillsides burst forth with the bloom of millions of little wild flowers of many varieties, which, with the abundant fresh green grass, present a most beautiful picture. I once read a booklet descriptive of Spitzbergen in which the trees were stated to be only two inches high. This is literally true. None of the vegetation attains a greater height than two inches, but it is doubtful whether these miniature plants should be dignified to the extent of being called trees.

Advent Bay, on whose shores the camp of the company is situated, is a small body of water and is on the northeastern side of Ice Fjord, of which it is a part. The company has a wharf with coal bunkers which is not accessible for steamers until the ice breaks and flows out--about the first of July each year. The camp consists of a store, a mess pavilion, a power plant, four warehouses, the manager's cottage and about a dozen bunk-houses for the men. This little settlement is called Longyear City, being named after the president of the company, and its inhabitants proudly boast that it is the most northerly city in the world, thus cold-heartedly snatching this distinction from Hammerfest, on the northern coast of Norway. Hammerfest is a town of five thousand people and is described in tourist literature as being the nearest municipality to the North Pole. Longyear City is seven hundred and twenty-five miles from the Pole, and therefore has Hammerfest beaten for the honour by nearly a thousand miles!

Twenty small frame buildings comprised the total number of dwellings that the little snow-clad village could muster, and these were all the property of the Arctic Coal Company. On the sides of the small houses were nailed the hides of polar bears, killed by the miners during the winter, and the walls inside were decorated with the skins of the white fox, an animal whose fur is as white as snow and as soft as a baby's cheek. The mine was about fifteen hundred feet above the camp on the side of a hill and was connected from below by a zig-zag trail. The coal was conveyed to the stock pile on the shore of the bay by means of an aerial tramway about one mile in length. Supplies were transported from the store to the mine by an incline. The mine was simply a horizontal hole in the ground, about two thousand seven hundred feet long, and an elevator was an unknown device to this dark tunnel. The roofs of the drifts were frozen and numerous icicles hung down in such a manner that the huge cavern looked like a grotto in fairy land.

On the arrival of the summer crew the winter superintendent turned the direction of the camp over to Manager Turner. The one hundred men who had spent the eight months of the winter at the mine immediately started across the ice to the _Munroe_, which, the following day, was to take them back to Norway. There was no end of work to be done. I organised the office, instructed the German bookkeeper to open a set of accounts and started the "Mulligan" to feed the two hundred and fifty men. My biggest job was taking an inventory of all supplies in the camp. The stock in the store had to be listed first, and this task was begun and completed the night of my arrival; in the morning we were open for business. This little mercantile establishment was a grocery store, hardware store, butcher shop, dry goods store, boot shop and haberdashery all in one. Everything was displayed on its shelves, from a needle to a miner's drill. Hairpins and cheese, socks and salmon, nails and raisins, boots and bacon, leather vests and condensed milk, shovels and cold storage eggs, were all piled together like an assortment in an American junk shop. The morning its doors opened nearly the whole camp of two hundred and fifty men made a run on the place, crowding before its counter and scrambling to be waited on by the two Norwegian clerks. Each man wanted to outfit himself so that he could go to work the next day. Much confusion resulted because of the many duplications of names, and many accounts were charged to the wrong man. There were a score of Ole Olesens, a dozen Johan Jensens, a half-dozen Johan Johnsens and several each of Johnsons, Johannesens and what not. We finally had to rename each man whose customary designation caused confusion with those of his fellow workers.

The inventory of the supplies in the four warehouses was the big task. Before we could even get possession of the articles to tabulate and price them we were compelled to dig them out of the ice with picks and shovels. I had a crew working for nearly a week excavating dynamos, engines, barrels of oil, mine implements and so forth, before it was possible to know what we had in stock. Then there were supplies in the mine, transformer houses with electrical appliances, powder sheds and three dynamite houses, which all had to be listed and priced. The new supplies, as they arrived from Tromso, had to be inventoried and placed away. With the fresh fish and meat which the company's boats brought from Norway, the fifty mine cars from America, the hundreds of steel rails for new tracks about the camp, the thousands of feet of lumber for construction of buildings, the fixtures for the wireless plant the company was to install, the hundreds of packages of cheese, sacks of flour, beans, potatoes, canned goods and other provisions--my assistants and I were kept busy from six o'clock in the morning until eleven each evening. We were installing a new warehouse card system, and each article in the camp had to be entered and priced. We took no time off at noon except to eat; we worked Sundays, and only laid off for a half hour on the Fourth of July to play baseball.

The miners were paid six _kroner_ a day, and from this amount a _krone_ and a half was deducted for their board. One _krone_ is equal to twenty-seven cents of American money. These wages were nearly double what they were accustomed to receiving in Norway for the same sort of work. However, this comparatively generous pay did not satisfy them, and at the end of the first week they all went on a strike. A walk-out was a serious thing. The company was under contract to deliver coal to several concerns in Norway, and it was paying one hundred and twenty-five dollars a day rental for each of its seven ships and could not afford to permit any of them to be idle. Advent Bay was now clear of ice, and there were three chartered steamers at anchor taking on coal for transportation to Norwegian ports.

The miners demanded that they be paid six _kroner_ a day and free board. After a day's conference with two representatives from the men, the management agreed to the raise on the condition that they would be satisfied for the rest of the summer season. The men accepted these terms and returned to work.

The _Munroe_ arrived on her second trip from Tromso, bringing the remainder of the summer crew. This lot of men consisted of about seventy-five Norwegians, several Russians, Laplanders and Finns. Among the Finns were three labour agitators. These men immediately set to work to stir up trouble and in a short time were successful in again causing dissatisfaction among the miners. The result was a second strike, in which the men demanded a raise of two _kroner_ a day. This would bring their wages up to eight _kroner_ and board. Such an advance was out of the question. The management absolutely refused the demands and discharged every striker in the camp. A complete walk-out followed.

The next three days were exciting ones. The manager instructed me to have the office prepare the accounts of all the men and issue them pay checks which they were to present to the Tromso office for their money. It was his plan to ship the whole crowd back to Norway. There was not a ship in the harbour, and it would be several days before one returned from Norway. In the meantime the work of the accounts went on. The German bookkeeper and I, assisted by two Americans, worked forty-eight hours without a wink of sleep.

Manager Turner expected violence, and each one of the eight Americans was provided with a pistol. There being no policemen on the island, each man had to become an officer. Watches were formed and two men remained up all night to see that no trouble was started. One man was assigned to guard a batch of supplies down the coast about five miles, where they had been unloaded from the _Munroe_, and another was delegated to keep an eye on the several dynamite houses. The two hundred and fifty Norwegians, Swedes, Russians, Laplanders and Finns gathered in groups about the camp or paraded up and down the main road carrying red flags, shouting and jeering. The little camp was in a state of high tension, and we eight Americans didn't know when the minute might arrive that would force us to battle for our lives.

The company each year took precautions for such an uprising, and it was a regulation that no firearms be allowed on the island. The men were searched as they boarded the steamer at Tromso. But in spite of this inspection a number of pistols were always smuggled in by the miners. It was not the fear of the guns that caused the Americans so much apprehension, but the thought that the strikers might storm the dynamite sheds. With each man armed with a twenty-five pound box of nitro-glycerine, they could attack the staff house and blow us all into eternity in one minute, swear themselves to secrecy and the world would never know a thing about it.

The strikers would gather about the manager's cottage, and it would seem that the crisis was about to take place. From a staff on the cottage an American flag was flying, and this was a continual source of temptation to the miners. Turner had decided, in case they pulled down the Stars and Stripes, to go quietly out in their midst and calmly hoist it up again. In the event of their insulting it the second time he would instruct the Americans to fight--and it would have been a fight to the death.

Three days under such circumstances seemed like three years. All day the demonstrations on the part of the men kept our little band ready for any emergency. The wives of two of the Americans were in camp on a short visit from Tromso, and they confined themselves to the staff house, where they no doubt served as an element restraining the strikers from violence.

One night I stood at the door of the office along towards twelve o'clock, and by the misty light of the midnight sun I could see several pairs of the miners skulking up the valley towards the giant glacier; others were sneaking quietly along in the vicinity of the mine, and still others were walking slowly along the docks. The strikers were organised and had their night watches as well as the Americans.

The third morning of the strike the accounts were completed. Each man came into the office for his pay-check. In this way we had an opportunity to talk to them apart from their fellow workmen. Fully two-thirds of them stated that they were not in sympathy with the strike, but were afraid to rebel for fear of being injured or killed by the leaders. The strikers kept two men at the office door checking each man as he went in and out. Several of the miners had not worked long enough for their wages to offset their purchases at the store and owed the company money. This, of course, was lost.

Late in the afternoon of the third day of the strike two of the chartered ships arrived in the bay from Norway. Orders were issued for them to get in readiness to transport the whole gang of miners back to Tromso that evening. The crews built bunks in the hatchways and supplies were put on board. By dusk the ships were ready for their unruly passengers.

Before going aboard the strikers paraded about the camp, scouring the place for deserters. They were determined to make a clean-up of every labourer of any kind, and in this way tie us up completely. They threatened to kill one man who attempted to hide himself in the power house. To save this man's life the captain of one of the ships locked him up in a cabin. The strikers finally boarded the two boats. The whistles blew and they were off for Tromso. The camp was almost deserted. Under my instructions the cooks had hidden up the valley in the vicinity of the glacier, and thus the culinary department was kept intact--which was something.

With the strikers shipped out, a feeling of relief descended upon us. The manager had a tremendous burden taken from his shoulders and each man displayed a tired but smiling face instead of the worried expression of the three past days. All the office hands turned to and became miners, rushing the work to load the incoming ships.

If the management had complied with the demands of the strikers the report would have circulated through Norway that the Arctic Coal Company was an easy mark, and the mine would have become the rendezvous for all the labour agitators and riff-raff miners in the country. The day after the departure of the strikers Turner sent a wireless message to the Tromso office advising the Norwegian in charge of the strike and informing him that the whole crew was on its way to Norway to be paid off. Turner anticipated that the advent of this gang might cause a disturbance in Tromso, and that they might raid the company's office. He therefore made arrangements with the government to close the _samlag_, or federal liquor house, and to have the militia in readiness for trouble. He cabled a list of the names of the men who owed the company money for store purchases with instructions to attach their personal possessions and place them under arrest.

The Norwegian in charge of the Tromso office had a difficult situation to handle. However, he carried out Turner's instructions to the letter. The two ships with the strikers arrived in Tromso; twenty of the men were immediately arrested; the militia was on hand to maintain order and the _samlag_ was closed and there was no booze.

Two Norwegian clerks were despatched to Norway to go into the country villages and engage another crew of miners. In two weeks a new set of men began to arrive at the mine, and at the end of a month a complete force was on hand and the work was proceeding as though nothing had happened.

The company's little store occasionally had distinguished customers. I found the Norwegian clerk selling a large consignment of goods one afternoon to two Englishmen. They engaged me in conversation and asked me many questions about the mine and the camp. They were curious to know what brought me to this far-away land, and our talk naturally drifted around to my world trip. They became interested at once.

They were out on a hunting expedition in the vicinity of Spitzbergen. One of the blades of the propeller of their steam yacht had been broken on a piece of float ice and they had come into Advent Bay to get it repaired at the company's machine shop. I invited them to dinner at the staff house. They declined, as the repairs to their boat were nearly complete and they wanted to get under way as soon as possible. They valued my invitation, and as they took their leave asked me to be their guest in England on my return trip to America. They presented me with their cards. "Sir Philip L. Brocklehurst, Swythamley Park, Macclesfield, The Bath Club," was the inscription on one and Sir Something Mitford on the other. I was mingling with two of England's noblemen, young fellows who had acquired their titles by inheritance. The rest of my stay on the island I was known as the "King."

I had now been with the Arctic Coal Company four months and had four hundred dollars saved. I hoped to meet my father in Toronto, Canada, in a few weeks and go with him to California. One morning about four o'clock I boarded one of the company's coal freighters and started for Norway.