The following excerpt is from The Last Voyage of the Karluk An Epic of Death and Survival in the Arctic, 1913-1916 as related by her captain, Robert A. Bartlett and here set down by Ralph T. Hale (published in 1916 by Small, Maynard and Company, Inc.; unabridged audio edition narrated by Frank Holden published by Rattling Books)."...Murray lost his dredge again on the eighteenth when it caught on the ice and parted the line; the chief engineer started work at once on another.
December 21 was the Arctic midnight, the day of days in the Arctic, the day that we all looked forward to, for now the sun was coming towards us every day, and every day the daylight would lengthen. We were not, of course, getting real daylight but at midday we got a kind of twilight that was good enough to get about by, out of doors. Mr. Hadley and I experimented with the acetylene lights but found that outside of the ship they would not work because the water froze.
On the twenty-second much of the twilight time was used in clearing away the huge banks of snow that had drifted about the ship. The chess tournament was decided on that day. The men had been playing it for a good while and now the winner of the most games received the first prize, a box of fifty cigars, and the next man the second prize, a box of twenty-five cigars. Mamen took the first prize and the mate, Mr. Anderson, the second.
The dogs, which we had been keeping all together in the box-house, broke their chains on the twenty-third, and some of them got into a fight; our best, Jack, was so badly bitten that he could not walk. I took him on board and down into the carperter's shop where Mr. Hadley sewed up his wounds with surgical needle and silk cord. Poor Jack was in bad shape and at first refused all food. He received constant attention from Mr. Hadley but could not bear a harness until the latter part of February. The fight in which he was hurt warned us that we must not keep too many dogs together, so I had the Eskimo build several snow kennels in a large snowbank near the ship. They sprinkled ashes on the floor of the kennels and chained up the nine most quarrelsome dogs, each in his separate kennel.
With the approach of Christmas all hands began to make plans for the proper celebration of that good old holiday. The spirits of the whole party were excellent; now that they were in the neighborhood of the place where Santa Claus came from they seemed determined to observe the day in a manner worthy of the jolly old saint..."
