What next?
I had thought that our experiences so far had sufficiently numbed my
nerves to enable me to stand anything further with comparative calm,
but I had underestimated the ice pack.
During the night after our going afloat nothing happened as we drifted,
but by early morning of the next day, November 25, we were once more in
action, fighting the pack for our existence.
At six a.m., as a preliminary, drifting ice pressed us against the edge
of the pack and piled high up against our side, nipping our port bow.
An hour or so later, this developed into a heavy squeeze which started
more of our bulwark planking, and listed us sharply to port. At this,
coming while we were at breakfast, things commenced to look bad and we
began to shuffle nervously in our chairs, all hands eyeing the exit to
the poop, but Danenhower tried to ease the mental strain for us when,
bending down to retrieve his spoon which for the third time had rolled
off the sloping table to the deck, he remarked,
“Well, mates, if you’ve been itching for the good old days, now’s your
chance to cheer. With this heel, the _Jeannette’s_ beginning to feel to
me like the old home again!”
But nobody laughed, and when after an hour of that ticklish heel, the
pressure slacked and we leveled off, no one regretted the missing list,
unnatural as its absence now felt to us.
Coming up on deck after a hasty breakfast, we found ourselves adrift
again near one end of a narrow lead of water perhaps a couple of miles
long, at the far end of which appeared a sizeable open bay. De Long
debated earnestly with both Chipp and Dunbar, whether he ought to
attempt to run out an ice-anchor and make fast to a floe, though the
question was largely academic for never did a large enough floe come
near us.
In the late afternoon with still no decision, the question was settled
for us when a strong current springing up for some unknown reason, the
rudderless ship began to drift stern first down that canal in the pack.
At the same time the broken ice behind us also got underway and started
to follow, bearing down ominously for our bows.
We moved along with increasing speed, to our deep relief steadily
gaining on the broken floes pursuing us, till unfortunately at a bend
in the canal, our stern took the bank and stopped us dead. At this,
with our rudder post anchored in the floes, it seemed as if we were
caught, when De Long sang out happily,
“Look! Her bow is paying round as prettily as if she were casting
under jibs!” and to our surprise, it was so. Our stem swung through a
complete arc of 180°, our stern drifted clear of the ice, and there we
were, wholly without effort on our part, properly headed downstream
with the current!
But even that slight delay while coming about promptly put us in
difficulties. As our stern drifted free of the bank, the oncoming ice
struck us and we were jammed through that canal to an accompaniment
of tumbling and shrieking masses of ice awful to contemplate. Huge
hummocks, tons in weight, overhung our bulwarks, threatening to break
off and crash down on our decks; floebergs large as churches bobbed
up and down alongside like whales, seemingly about to come aboard
and overwhelm us, time after time leaving us breathless as huddled
inboard round the mainmast we watched, not daring to go near the rail,
even more afraid to seek shelter below. Helpless, the _Jeannette_ was
pushed, rammed, squeezed, and hammered along amidst the screeching
of the floes. Just as helpless, we stood in the Arctic night thankful
nevertheless for the bright moonlight which at mid-afternoon was
flooding the scene, for had we without that moon been in darkness
forced to stand by and listen to that shrieking ice without being able
to see, God alone knows what effect terror would have had on us!
This hair-raising passage lasted half an hour. Then as suddenly as our
ordeal had started, it ended in the midst of an eruption of ice cakes
by our being spewed from a final jam blocking the canal into a large
open bay where the current, with room to spread at last, quickly lost
speed, and the terrifying floebergs, no longer constricted, fell slowly
away from our sides!
With fervent sighs of relief at our deliverance we saw the battered
_Jeannette_ lose headway, float gently toward the wide floe forming
the southerly bank of the bay, and quietly ram her blunt nose into the
young ice there, bringing up without a tremor and holding fast. So
ended our day.
It was getting along toward the end of November. For three days after
that, we lay against the edge of the bay while the young ice thickened
about us and a heavy southeast gale kicked up. Our useless masts and
spars whipped and rattled in the squalls, our rigging, swollen to two
or three times natural size by coatings of frost, sang in the wind in
a deep bass pitch wholly new to us, and the ship shook in the gusts
as if her sticks were going to be torn clean out of her. But to us as
sailors none of this was wholly novel; our only anxiety was what effect
this gale, the worst we had yet seen in the Arctic, would have on the
pack. We chopped a hole in the young ice alongside, got a lead line
down, and soon observed that the whole pack was drifting to leeward
with the wind, moving to the northwest apparently into a large water
space temporarily existing unseen by us somewhere there in the Arctic
Sea. These drift observations gave us cause for sober thought. What
would happen if, with the gale still blowing to urge the ice northwest,
something across its path brought the pack to a stand?
We soon found out. On the third day of the storm, in the dim light of
a moon just rising in the morning, we saw the leeward ice commence
to move past the ship, paradoxically going to windward. Whatever it
was, something _had_ brought the drifting pack to a sudden halt, but
the gale still howled on, driving to the northwest, and unfortunately
for us as we lay broadside to it, driving the ice to windward fairly
onto our port beam, dead against our framing. We were in for another
squeezing by the pack.
Before long the _Jeannette_, with the pressure squarely on her ribs,
caught now between opposing floes extending her entire length, was
quivering and snapping worse I think than ever in our experience. Our
spar deck arched up under the strain, pitch and oakum were squeezed out
of the seams, and a bucket full of water standing on a hatch on the
poop was half emptied of its contents by the constant agitation.
To leeward of us, where the ice appeared weaker, one sheet rode up over
another and against this double thickness of ice our starboard side
jammed, while the port floe (which for some reason seemed stronger than
the ice to leeward) pressed fiercely against us there. The _Jeannette_
thus gripped, shivered and groaned dismally and her decks bulged
upwards till the heavy athwartship trusses in her hull below came into
play and took the squeeze directly. When the ship was able to give no
further, the noise ceased, and for half an hour perhaps with only the
trembling of the decks to indicate the struggle, the pack pressed and
the _Jeannette_ resisted while we as helpless spectators waited the
outcome.
Suddenly the port floe humped and crumbled, relieving the thrust. Our
sprung decks flattened out to normal; we gasped in relief. But our
thankfulness was premature as it turned out, for piling its broken
edges higher against our side, the port floe, driven in by the wind,
pushed up for another nip and the whole performance was immediately
repeated with the _Jeannette_ in a few minutes as badly squeezed as
before.
For eight solid hours the _Jeannette_ fought the pack, over a dozen
times seemingly compressed to the point of collapse, only to have the
floe ice crumple up first and let her spring back into shape each time.
There was nothing we could do to aid her—as De Long put it, it was
simply a question of the ice going through her or of her being strong
enough to stand it. She was strong enough, which was all we could say,
and when at last in the late afternoon the gale died down, the pressure
ceased and she was still intact, we said it fervently. A good ship, the
Arctic Steamer _Jeannette_.