Nothing else happened that day. Our dogs, which in the face of disaster
we had rounded up and penned inside the bulwarks, where they relieved
themselves by staging a continuous battle, we now let loose and they
joyously celebrated their freedom in chasing each other over the broken
ice. Watching their antics was some relief, little though it might be,
to frayed nerves and helped take our imaginations off what that broken
ice threatened to our ship.
As a further distraction, we had a clear day and far to the southward
sighted mountains, which we made out to be the familiar north coast of
Wrangel Land, some sixty miles away.
And that was all. The day which for us had dawned in imminent peril,
ended quietly with the _Jeannette_ still frozen in that two months old
cradle of ice, still uncomfortably heeled well over to starboard. We
began to breathe more freely.
We took no more meteorological observations, but so far as I was
concerned, I had more to do than before. Though the fires were out
in my boilers and all the machinery laid up, at De Long’s direction
I spent a great part of my time below during this period continually
scanning the sides and the trusses for any signs of giving way, and
inspecting the bilges to see if the ship was making any water. Of such
troubles there were no indications, but I had constantly while below
to be wary of my head, for I found that the banging of the ice shook
down a good deal of loose matter in the holds, and particularly in the
bunkers.
November 13, one week from the day the pack first opened up on us
and inaugurated our reign of terror, brought new excitement. Sleeping
as before in my clothes, I was wakened at 2 A.M. by a loud crack
which seemed to come directly from our keel. I slid from my bunk, in
the passage outside bumped into the captain, and together we ran on
deck, there to meet Collins who, on the midwatch taking the hourly
temperature readings, had rushed over the side and now was coming
back aboard. He reported that there was nothing new except a crack
in the ice not over an inch wide running out from our stem. This
was disquieting, but nothing else happened during the night and the
daylight hours passed quietly enough without further disturbance; so
much so that by afternoon the skipper (full of scientific zeal and
expecting apparently some days of peace) ordered our meteorological
instruments reinstalled in a temporary observatory. This we accordingly
erected on one of the newly-formed hills of ice as far from the ship as
we dared but still, fairly close aboard our starboard side.
From the grumbling of the seamen at this task as they dug into the
flintlike ice for anchorage for the guys holding down the canvas tent
over the instruments, I would say that the captain’s optimism was
hardly shared by his crew, but that was neither here nor there and by 5
P.M. when the twilight faded and night fell, the job was done.
Chipp took the first sets of readings. At eight o’clock, after supper,
I relieved him, to trek over the broken ice and by the dim light of
an oil lantern inside that flapping tent, read the dip circle, the
barometer, the anemometer, and a varied assortment of thermometers.
All the time as I struggled for footing on the rough ice pinnacle I
wondered what earthly good it all was, considering the negligible
chances of any of this data ever being returned home for scientific
minds to study.
At 10 P.M., I turned the job over to the captain (who, staying up
anyway the while he wrote in his journal, ordinarily took the readings
till midnight when Collins relieved him), and as was now my habit after
a week of alarms, I turned in with my fur boots on, earnestly hoping to
get some sleep to make up for the past week’s wear and tear.
Till 11 P.M., De Long in his cabin scratched away industriously at his
journal. Then six bells struck, he dropped his pen, drew on his parka,
and went over the side to take the hourly observations.
Being the commanding officer, and not one of his subordinates (in
whom such an appreciation of the beauties of nature at the expense of
punctuality in observations might have seemed a fault), De Long on his
way to the observatory paused a few moments to stand on an ice hummock
and admire a splendid auroral exhibition, a magnificent prismatic arch
to the northward, filling the sky from east to west and reaching almost
to the zenith. The beauty of this phenomenon was no longer a novelty to
any of us, but still he stood awestruck in the silent night drinking in
that soundless electrical play of colored light, when he heard behind
him a crisp crackling as one of our dogs walking on the snow. Turning,
he saw to his surprise no dog but instead two men, our so-called
“anchor watch,” racing down the starboard gangway and over the ice to
our stern.
Both the aurora and the still unread instruments were forgotten as the
captain ran immediately for the bow. To his astonishment, there he
found the ice pack peaceably floating away from our port side, leaving
it completely exposed with open water lapping our hull for the first
time in months!
And as he watched in dazed amazement, the gap opened so that in a few
minutes we had alongside the _Jeannette_ thirty fathoms of rippling
water in which was gorgeously reflected the northern lights (a detail
the beauty of which I think our captain now took little note). The
split in the pack was as clean and as straight along our fore and aft
centerline as if a giant hand had cut the ice with our keel, leaving
the ship still imbedded in the starboard floe toward which she heeled.
Meanwhile the port side pack, intact even to the bank of snow which
had built up above our gunwales, was sliding noiselessly away to the
northward, carrying with it, still asleep, three of our dogs who had
bedded themselves down in its white crust!
A glimpse at our heeled over clipper bow and at our bowsprit thrusting
forward over his head, quickened De Long into action. Nothing visible
now remained to hold that tilted ship from sliding any second out of
her bed and into open water! Back aboard he rushed, and once more the
quiet of the night was torn by the whistling of the bosun’s pipe and
Cole’s hoarse cry,
“All hands! Shake a leg! On deck wid yez!”
And again no sleep, as hastily in the darkness we hurried our
meteorological instruments back aboard, struck the observatory we had
so laboriously rigged only a few hours before, chased on board all the
dogs we could catch, rigged out our dinghies and our other boats for
immediate lowering, dug our steam-cutter out of the ice alongside and
hoisted it aboard, ran in our gangway, and lastly rigged out a fall for
lowering provisions over the side and into the boats.
That all this, on the sloping deck of the _Jeannette_, was done in the
darkness at fifteen below zero and completed by midnight in less than
an hour, indicates what speed and strength fear gave to our fingers and
our feet. For the men tumbling up from below had to look but once at
the precarious perch to which the _Jeannette_ clung to send them flying
to their tasks.
Midnight came.
Our work done, we stood by in the inhuman cold momentarily expecting to
feel the ship lurch under our feet, slide suddenly off into the water,
and without rudder, without steam, and without sails go adrift in the
darkness in that ever widening rift in the parted pack.
After an hour of this, with nothing happening to relieve the strain,
the tension became almost unbearable. De Long, looking over the silent
groups of fur-clad seamen clustered there on deck alongside the boats,
ordered Ah Sam to fire up the galley range and serve out hot coffee to
the men, hot tea to the officers. He then told Cole to pipe down, but
with all hands to stay in their clothes, ready for any call. So we lay
below, but I doubt if anyone had much better luck than I getting to
sleep again.
There was no need for reveille in the morning. The first streaks of
light found the whole crew from Irish bosun to Chinese cook lining the
bulwark, staring off to port. I climbed the bridge to get clear of the
snarling dogs. There before me, already ensconced in the port wing was
the skipper, rubbing his glasses to clear them of frost for a better
view.
“What do you make of it, chief?” asked De Long, nodding in the
direction of the distant pack.
I squinted off to port. A thin skin of young ice, possibly four inches
thick, had formed over the exposed water. Across that, perhaps five
hundred to a thousand yards away, was the bank of snow which the day
before had been piled up against our bulwark.
“Well, captain, it’s a quarter of a mile off anyway,” I answered.
“Maybe more.” From the overhanging wing of the bridge I glanced
curiously down on our inclined side, exposed now for the first time in
months. Near the waterline, still looking fresh and bright, were those
gouges in our elm doubling we had received in early September while
butting and ramming a way through that twisting lead into the pack.
Looking at those battle scars, I wished fervently that we had had
less luck that day in battering our way in. But that was a subject the
rights and wrongs of which were now never discussed among the officers.
Instead, scanning our listed masts and our unsupported port side, I
asked,
“What in the name of all that’s holy is keeping us from sliding clear?”
“God knows, I don’t,” replied De Long solemnly. “I just can’t figure
it out. When one side of our ice cradle slides away from us without
so much as taking with it any splinters from our hull, it makes my
theory that our planking’s solidly frozen to the ice on our starboard
side seem crazy. For why should the ice attach itself so firmly to the
planking on one side, and to the other side not at all? It’s beyond
me, Melville, why we don’t slide off.” He adjusted the furry edge of
the hood of his parka around his eyeglasses, peered down a second at
the scarred side below him, then while his glasses were still bright
and clear, stared off toward the wall of snow topping the edge of
the departed pack and finally nodded his head as if agreeing with my
estimate of its distance.
Looking worn and haggard, for if possible our captain had had even
less sleep than any of us during the past week, De Long finished his
examination, eyed for a long time his crew stretched out below us along
the rail, then turned to me,
“Melville, you’re older than I. In the late war you were at sea
fighting the rebels when I was still a midshipman, and you’ve been
through lots besides. So I feel I can talk to you, and lean on you as
on no one else on this ship, and God above us knows, I need someone
here to lean on! Every morning I pray to Him for our safety, every
night I give thanks to Him for our escapes during the day. But here in
the Arctic, God seems so distant, and this steady strain on my mind is
fearful! Look at my men below there, look at my ship! Neither my men
nor my ship are secure for a second, and yet I can’t take a single
step for their security. A crisis may come any moment to bring us face
to face with death—and all I can do is to be thankful in the morning
that it has not come during the night, and at night that it has not
come since the morning! And that’s the Arctic exploration I’ve brought
them on! Living over a powder keg with the fuse lighted, waiting for
the explosion, would be a similar mode of existence! Melville, it’s
hardly bearable!” And then looking down again at the crew, he muttered
wearily,
“But I’ve got to keep on bearing it. Call me if anything happens,
chief. So long as we’re still hanging on here, I’ll try to get some
sleep now.” With sagging shoulders eloquently proclaiming his utter
exhaustion, he slumped down the ladder and off the bridge, leaving me
alone, figuratively to add an “Amen” to his estimate of our situation.
For over a week, the listing _Jeannette_, which looked as if the
pressure of a little finger would send her tumbling out of her inclined
bed, nevertheless clung to her half cradle in the pack, defying
apparently all the principles of physical force so far as I as an
engineer understood them.
On the third day after the pack separated, we had a bad southeast
gale blowing all night and all day, with terrific squalls at times
reaching a velocity of fifty miles an hour. Although that wind hit us
squarely on the starboard bow, its most favorable angle for casting us
adrift, the _Jeannette_ held grimly to her berth and nothing happened.
Then on the fifth day, urged on by a northerly blow, the floebergs
again got underway, broke up the young ice to port of us, and jammed
themselves under our bows with heavy masses of ice pressing directly
on the stem. We confidently looked to see the ship knocked clear this
time, but evidently other floebergs jammed against our exposed side
exerted such a heavy beam pressure that we stayed in place, though the
poor _Jeannette_, squeezed both ahead and abeam, groaned and creaked
continuously under the stresses on her strained timbers. The sixth
day, the seventh day, and the eighth day, we had more of the same,
with streams of floebergs bombarding our exposed port side, and on the
starboard side our floe steadily dwindling under the impact of the
bergs hurtling through the canal there.
Life on the _Jeannette_ became almost impossible. Sleeping with our
clothes on, jumping nervously from our bunks at every sudden crackling
in the ship’s timbers, at each unexpected crash of the bergs outside,
we got slight rest for our bodies and none at all for our nerves. And
in the middle of all this, the sun disappeared below the horizon for
good, leaving us to face what might come in the continuous gloom of the
long Arctic night. According to Danenhower’s calculations, we could
expect the sun to rise again in seventy-one days, unless meanwhile we
drifted farther to the northward, in which case of course our night
would be still further prolonged.
On the ninth day since the separation of the pack, the wind rose once
more, blowing directly on our starboard beam, and the never-ceasing
stream of bergs began again to pile up across our stem, for us an
ominous combination.
On the tenth day, fearing the worst, we rounded up all our dogs, and
waited. The pressure ahead increased, with floating ice piling up along
the port side higher than our rail, finally starting the planking
in our bulging bulwarks. Under the bowsprit, the rising ice blotted
from sight our figurehead. Then an upended floeberg crashed violently
into the pack under our starboard bow and wedged its way relentlessly
toward our side. The pressure became tremendous. Beneath our feet
the _Jeannette’s_ tortured ribs groaned dismally. On deck we looked
silently at one another, waiting. Something was going to collapse this
time. Which would give way first, ship or ice?
Suddenly the _Jeannette_ lifted by the stern, shifted a little in her
cradle. Instantly the floeberg under our starboard bow drove forward,
split our floe, and with a lurch and a heavy roll to port we slid into
open water, afloat and undamaged, on an even keel once more!
Intensely relieved at having got clear without being crushed, we
nevertheless looked back sadly, as we drifted off among the floebergs,
at the shattered remnants of the ice cradle which for two and a half
months had sheltered us, to see it now tumbling about in elephantine
masses, no longer a haven of refuge in our trials.
Well, we were afloat. It was at least some consolation to have a level
deck beneath our feet while we waited, sailors with no control whatever
over our ship, for what next the ice pack had in store for us.
But the pack gave us a respite. Idly we drifted about in a wide bay of
broken ice, stopping for a brief time alongside one floe, then drifting
off till stopped by another. The wind moderated, the temperature rose
somewhat till it stood near zero, and finally it began to snow. There
being no signs of imminent danger, the captain ordered the bosun to
pipe down and we went below, permitted at last to eat a meal without
having the plates threaten to slide each instant off the table.