Through a light breeze and a smooth sea we steamed out in the darkness.
The _Fanny A. Hyde_, ordered to follow us at dawn, we expected to reach
port in Siberia even ahead of our own arrival since she was now very
light while we, heavily laden once more, were nearly awash.
A new note in seagoing came into our lives upon departing from St.
Michael’s—our forty dogs. They quickly proved to be the damnedest
nuisances ever seen aboard ship, roaming the deck in carefree fashion,
snarling and fighting among themselves every five minutes, and unless
one was armed with a belaying pin in each hand, it was nearly suicide
to enter a pack of the howling brutes to stop them. They fought for
pure enjoyment so it seemed to me, immune almost from any harm, for
their fur was so thick and tangled, they got nothing but mouthfuls
of hair from snapping at each other. In spite of fairly continual
fighting, we got the ship along for after all my engines drove her on,
but how we should ever fare under sail alone I wondered, unless each
seaman soon got the knack of disregarding half a dozen pseudo-wolves
leaping at him each time he rushed to ease a sheet or to belay a
halliard or a brace. Meanwhile we let the dogs severely alone, it being
the duty of Aneguin and Alexey to feed and water them, and apparently
also to beat them well so that their fighting was not one continuous
performance.
We had expected to make the three hundred miles across Behring Sea to
St. Lawrence Bay in Siberia in two and a half days, but we did not. Our
second day out, the wind freshened, there was a decided swell from the
northward, and all in all the weather had a very unsettled look. With
most of our sail set, we logged five knots during the morning, but as
the seas picked up, the ship began to pitch heavily, and in the early
afternoon a green sea came aboard that carried away both our forward
water-closets, fortunately empty at the time. At this mishap, we furled
most of our canvas and slowed the engines to thirty revolutions,
greatly easing the motion.
But as the night drew on it became evident we were in for it. The ocean
hereabouts is so shallow that an ugly sea quickly kicks up under even a
fresh breeze, and we were soon up against a full gale, not a pleasing
prospect for a grossly overloaded ship. There was nothing for it,
however, except to heave to, head to the wind, and ride it out under
stormsails only. Accordingly in the first dog watch, I banked fires,
stopped the engines, and the _Jeannette_ lay to on the starboard tack
under the scantiest canvas we dared carry—stormsail, fore and aft sail,
and spanker only, all reefed down to the very last row of reef-points.
For thirty hours while the gale howled, we rode it out thus, the
overloaded _Jeannette_ groaning and creaking, submerged half the time,
with confused seas coming aboard in all directions. Every hatch on deck
was tightly battened down; otherwise solid water, often standing two
and three feet deep on our decks, would have quickly poured below to
destroy our slight buoyancy and sink us like a rock.
But even so, in spite of lying to, we took a terrific battering, and
time after time as we plunged into a green sea, it seemed beyond belief
that our overloaded hull should still remain afloat.
In the middle of this storm, worn from a night of watchfulness, with
Chipp on the bridge temporarily as his relief, Captain De Long sat
dozing in his cabin chair, not daring even to crawl into his bunk lest
he lose a second in responding to any call. Suddenly a solid sea came
over the side, with a wild roar broke on board, and in a rushing wall
of water carrying all before it, hit the poop bulkhead, smashed in the
windows to the captain’s stateroom, and in an instant flooded the room.
Our startled skipper coming out of his doze found himself swimming for
his life in his own cabin, all his belongings afloat in a tangle about
him!
For the first hour of that gale, the howling of our forty Eskimo dogs
was a fair rival to the howling of the wind through the rigging, but as
the waves began to break aboard, the poor dogs, half-drowned, quieted
to a piteous whimper, and with their tails between their legs, sought
shelter from the rushing seas in the lee of the galley, the bulwarks,
the hatch coamings even—anything that would save them from the impact
of those swirling waves. For once there was no fighting, each dog being
solely absorbed in keeping his nose above water, and when possible on
that heaving deck, in keeping his claws dug into the planking to save
himself from being flung headlong into the lee scuppers.
But the gale finally blew itself out, and thankfully spreading our
reefed canvas, we arrived four days out of St. Michael’s in lonely
St. Lawrence Bay, to find the little _Jeannette_, a tiny symbol of
civilization, dwarfed in that vast solitude by snow-capped mountains
rising precipitously from the water, a magnificent spectacle of nature
in her grandest mood.
But our isolation was broken soon enough by two large baideras which
pushed out to meet us, crowded with natives who without leave clambered
over our rails, eagerly offering in broken English to engage themselves
as whalers, which naturally enough they assumed was the purpose of our
cruise.
But we welcomed them gladly enough for another reason. What did they
know of Nordenskjöld?
From their chief, a tall, brawny fellow calling himself “George,”
after much cross-examination De Long elicited the information that a
steamer, smaller even than the _Jeannette_, had been there apparently
three months before, and that during the previous winter he, Chief
George, had on a journey across East Cape to Koliutchin Bay on the
north coast of Siberia, seen the same ship frozen in the ice there.
This seemed to check with our last news on Nordenskjöld’s _Vega_. If
indeed she had reached St. Lawrence Bay and passed south, she was of
course safe now and we need no longer concern ourselves. But was it
really the _Vega_?
Patiently, like a skilled lawyer examining an ignorant witness, De Long
worked on George to find that out. Who was the _Vega’s_ captain? An
old man with a white beard who spoke no English. Who then had George
conversed with? Another officer, a Russian, who spoke their tongue, the
Tchuchee dialect, like a native. Who was he? On this point, George,
uncertain over nearly everything else, was absolutely positive, and
answered proudly,
“He name Horpish.”
But to De Long’s great disappointment, on consulting the muster roll
of the _Vega_ with which we had been furnished, no “Horpish” appeared
thereon. Again and again, Chipp, De Long, and I pored over that list
of the Swedish, Danish, and Russian names of the men and officers
accompanying Nordenskjöld, while George, leaning over our shoulders,
repeated over and over, “Horpish, he Horpish,” obviously disgusted at
our inability to understand our own language.
Finally De Long put his finger on the answer. There, a few lines down
from Nordenskjöld on that list was the man we were looking for—
“Lieutenant Nordquist, Imperial Russian Navy.”
I pronounced it a few times—Nordquist, Horpish—yes, it must be he.
Phonetically in Tchuchee that was a good match for Nordquist.
And this was all we learned. The steamer, whatever her name, had
stayed only one day, then departed to the southward, loaded according
to George with “plenty coals.”
With some bread and canned meat in return for this sketchy information,
we eased George and his followers, greatly disappointed at not being
signed on as whalers, over the side before we lost anything. For while
these Tchuchees appeared dirty, lazy, and utterly worthless, their
unusual size made them potentially dangerous enemies when in force, and
we posted an armed watch on deck as a precaution.
Our schooner arrived soon after we did, and we finished hoisting out
of her all the coal down to the last lump, ending up with 132 tons
stowed in our bunkers, which was their total capacity, and with 28 tons
more as a deckload, giving us a total of 160 tons with which to start
into the Arctic, nearly twice the amount of coal the _Jeannette_ was
originally designed to carry.
On August 27 we finished coaling and steamed out towing the schooner
astern of us, for it seemed unsafe with her little crew of only six
to leave her to get underway in desolate St. Lawrence Bay amidst
that ugly-looking crowd of brawny Tchuchees, all experts at handling
harpoons and looking none too scrupulous over what they chose to hurl
them at.
Once clear of the harbor, we headed north for Cape East, while the
lightened _Fanny A. Hyde_, carrying now as cargo only the last mail we
ever sent back, spread her sails and with (for her but not for us) a
fair wind was soon hull down to the southward, our last link with home
finally severed.
Steaming steadily into a strong head wind, we stood on through Behring
Strait and during the night passed between East Cape and the Diomede
Islands, three barren rocks jutting from the sea, forming stepping
stones almost between the continents of Asia and America, over which
may very well have passed ages ago that immigration at the time of the
dispersion of the human race which brought man first to North and then
to South America.
But this human migration of former ages, even if so, interested us
little in comparison with what the migratory waters of the ocean might
be doing now. At the captain’s orders, Collins prepared a set of
thermometers and dropped them overboard strung out on a line. If the
Kuro-Si-Wo Current actually flowed northward into the Arctic Sea as
we hoped, through this narrow funnel it must pass, and as we steamed
slowly northward through the strait, Collins periodically read the
thermometers to get the temperatures at varying depths, while Newcomb
tended a dredge towed astern to obtain samples of the marine life at
the bottom.
To our keen chagrin, the most that could be said for the results of
our observations was that they were neutral—they proved or disproved
nothing. The water was about the same in temperature from top to bottom
and did not differ appreciably from the temperature of the air, a
result which certainly did not indicate the presence of any marked warm
current thereabouts. But then on the other hand, as we passed through,
the fresh breeze we encountered from the northwest, blowing down
through the strait, might well on that day have upset or even reversed
the normal flow of water in a channel only twenty-eight fathoms deep.
The thermometers proved nothing. How about the dredge? Eagerly we
awaited a report from Newcomb with respect to his examination of its
contents. Were the specimens in any degree symptomatic of the tropical
waters of the Kuro-Si-Wo Current?
But there also we got scant comfort. The catch in the dredge was
nondescript, and no deductions could safely be drawn. If the Kuro-Si-Wo
Current on which we were banking so heavily for the success of our
expedition flowed into the polar seas, at least we found no evidence of
it.
As the day dawned with the empty horizon widening out before us to
the north, we found ourselves at last in the Arctic Ocean, our gateway
to the Pole. We stood to the northwest with somewhat overcast skies,
coasting along the northern shores of Siberia before striking off for
Wrangel Land, our thorough-going captain determined to steam a little
out of his way to make one more stop at Cape Serdze Kamen to check
Chief George’s story of the _Vega’s_ actually having been there and
left.
In the late afternoon, we made out a headland on our port hand, which
the vigilant Danenhower, fortunately able just then to catch a sight
of the sun to establish our position, pronounced as the desired cape.
We stood in and anchored, but with steam up ready for getting underway
instantly, since we were on a lee shore with none too good a holding
ground.
After supper, the starboard whaleboat was cleared away and lowered, and
the captain, backed up by Chipp, Dunbar, Collins and Alexey, started in
for a collection of native houses on the beach to investigate about the
_Vega_. But when they approached the shore, they found such a heavy sea
rolling over a rapidly moving fringe of pack ice that the whaleboat’s
efforts to get through were wholly ineffectual and after half an hour
were abandoned when it was observed that the natives were getting ready
to come out themselves in a skin boat.
Led by their chief in a bright red tunic, these latter, better
acquainted with the coast than we, managed to make passage through the
ice into the open water off shore, where they followed the whaleboat
back to our ship and then over the side into the _Jeannette’s_ cabin.
But there, in spite of Alexey’s best efforts with native dialects
on the chief, who had all the dignity of a king, we were unable to
make our questions about Nordenskjöld understood, or get anything
understandable out of him except the one word,
“Schnapps?”
But to this De Long shook his head. He was too well acquainted with
the results to pass fire-water out to natives. So with this we were
stalled till the natives pushed forth a decrepit old squaw, who once an
inhabitant of Kings Island, apparently had recognized Alexey’s dialect.
But even on her, neither the name of Nordenskjöld nor of the _Vega_
made any impression till Alexey, remembering Chief George’s reference
to the Russian officer who spoke Tchuchee, mentioned Lieutenant
Nordquist.
Immediately the squaw became all animation and her face lighted with
understanding.
“Horpish?” She nodded her head vigorously and from then on, all was
plain sailing. Alexey had difficulty in getting in a word sideways,
“Horpish” had made such an impression. “Horpish’s” ship had been
there a day, coming from a little further west in Koliutchin Bay,
where she had wintered, a fact very soon verified by Chipp, who going
ashore to visit that spot, came back with a miscellaneous collection
of articles—Swedish coins, buttons from Russian, Danish, and Swedish
uniforms, and prized most of all by the natives and hardest to get from
them, a number of empty tin cans!
This evidence settled conclusively our search for Nordenskjöld and the
_Vega_. Undoubtedly she had been at Cape Serdze Kamen as rumored; she
had passed undamaged through Behring Strait, and must now be on her way
southward through the Pacific to Japan, if indeed she had not already
arrived there. We need no longer concern ourselves over Nordenskjöld
and his crew, their safety was assured.
So on the last day of August, we hoisted in our whaleboat and stood out
to the northward. It being Sunday, at 2 P.M. we rigged ship for church
in the cabin, and our captain, a devoutly religious man, held Divine
Service, attended by all the crew save those on watch.
With heads bowed, we stood while our ship steamed away from that bleak
coast, our anchor hoisted in for the last time, with our thoughts
divided between Nordenskjöld safely homeward bound and ourselves headed
at last into the unknown polar seas.
As Collins rolled the notes solemnly out from the little organ and the
rough voices of our sailors echoed the words, never before had I seen
men at sea so deeply stirred by that heartfelt appeal,
“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!”