Continuing his program for dodging scurvy, De Long followed up his
exercise order by another calling for a thorough monthly medical
examination of all hands. In this I believe he had two objects—the main
one, of course, to give the surgeon a chance to catch and deal with
the first symptom of disease and especially scurvy, before it had any
opportunity to get out of bounds; the other, by maintaining a record at
frequent intervals of our physical condition, to study the effect of
the long Arctic night and of Arctic conditions generally on the human
body, and to learn perhaps the best method of combating these effects.
I read the order absent-mindedly, made a mental note that at ten next
morning I was due for examination, and in the midst of my engrossment
over the urgent problem of how to save some coal, promptly put the
matter out of my thoughts. An hour later, Charley Tong Sing touched my
shoulder and announced in a singsong voice,
“Captain wantee you, chief, in cabin allee samee light away.”
More discussions about coal economy, I presumed.
But that idea was quickly knocked out of my head when stepping into the
cabin I found myself facing not the captain alone but also Mr. Collins.
A little surprised at this unexpected situation, I looked enquiringly
from one to the other. Both men were on their feet, both were angry,
and evidently trouble was in the offing. Not being invited to take a
seat, naturally I remained standing also, looking quizzically from
Collins to the captain, wondering what was up.
I found out soon enough. De Long, waiting only till he was sure that
the steward was out of the room and the door firmly closed behind me,
with an evident effort to maintain an even tone broke the silence.
“Melville, I’ve sent for you as the officer aboard with longest
experience in Service customs to get from you an independent opinion
on the propriety of my medical examination order before I proceed to
enforce it. It seems that Mr. Collins here objects.”
So that was it.
I swore inwardly. Here was Collins heading for trouble again, and
unfortunately for me, here I was dragged into the muddle, evidently by
the captain this time, and from the nature of the case, bound to offend
our meteorologist if I even opened my mouth. What ailed Collins anyway?
I had never seen a man on shipboard with such an unholy penchant for
getting himself into difficulties.
Apparently the wrinkling of my bald brow and the way I fingered my
beard as the situation hit me, gave Collins an inkling of my feelings,
for without giving me a chance to speak, he burst out heatedly,
“You’re absolutely correct, I do object! And regardless of what
Melville or anybody else you bring in here may say, I’m going to keep
on objecting! I never liked that exercise order you’ve already issued,
even though I’m obeying it. I’m a grown man, and I was before ever I
saw this ship, and I’ve got sense enough to decide for myself how much
exercise I need to keep my health and when I need to take it, without
anybody telling me. I don’t need to be ordered out like a schoolboy
for supervised play, nor have my steps dogged like a poor man’s cur to
see I take it. Nevertheless, I swallowed that. But this is too much!
I’ve got some rights and I’ve got some pride! Even if I am down on the
shipping articles as a seaman, I’m not a damned guinea pig, to be
stripped naked every few weeks for the doctor to experiment on!”
This time I guess my jaw did drop in open-mouthed astonishment. That
_seaman_ business again. How it must be rankling in Collins’ soul!
I looked from Collins’ overwrought face to De Long’s, flushing a
fiery red. Had he been any other skipper I had ever sailed with, I
should have seen Collins immediately clapped into the brig for gross
insubordination. But of the scholarly De Long’s reactions I was not so
certain. Prudently I closed my mouth without uttering a word. There was
nothing I could say anyway that wouldn’t make a bad situation worse.
De Long’s blue eyes, a startling contrast to his burning cheeks,
blinked queerly through his glasses as he stood there, struggling
inwardly to control himself the while regarding Collins.
“The scholar in him’s going to win out over the sailor,” I thought to
myself. “There’ll be no arrest.”
And so it proved. For what seemed an oppressive length of time under
that strain, the captain, without speaking, glared at Collins and
Collins unflinchingly glared back. Finally in an unbelievably mild
tone, the captain broke the tension.
“Will you please be seated, chief? I should have asked you before.” I
sat down. “And that will do for you, Mr. Collins; you may go now. I see
that Mr. Melville and I will get along much more rapidly discussing
this subject without your presence.”
Like an animal suddenly uncaged Collins, still glaring, turned his
back on us, and broke from the cabin, leaving the door wide open. The
captain closed it, then sank into an armchair facing me, nervously
chewing the twisted ends of his mustaches. Still breathing heavily from
his repressed emotions, he turned to me,
“Melville, it seems that everything I do for the discipline and safety
of my crew, that man takes as a personal affront! And now over this
examination matter, he’s positively insubordinate! I sent for you
that we might all discuss that order in a reasonable manner, and find
out what’s wrong with it, if anything is. But you saw what happened
instead! Nevertheless, chief, I want your frank opinion. Is there
anything wrong with that order?” De Long paused, looked anxiously at me.
“To tell you the truth, captain,” I said, “I read it only once
hurriedly and then never gave it a second thought. The Navy Regulations
require us all to stand an annual physical examination; what difference
it makes to anyone, except to the doctor who has to do the work, if
it’s monthly, I can’t see. But so long as Dr. Ambler isn’t complaining,
what’s Collins blowing up about it for?”
De Long shook his head wearily.
“I don’t know, unless he can’t get it out of his head that I’m
persecuting him. That hallucination of his about being a seaman started
him off on it long ago. Congress wrote the law commissioning the
_Jeannette_ under which he shipped—I didn’t. He had to ship that way or
not at all, but Heaven knows I’ve treated him as an officer in spite
of it! A lot of good it’s done. I try to make every allowance for his
point of view, but there is a limit. I can’t let him defy me on this
medical examination. Even if I were so derelict in my duty as to allow
discipline to be flouted by such mutinous conduct, I just can’t take
chances on having a sick crew in our desperate situation!”
“Right enough, captain,” I agreed. “I should think even Collins would
see that. He’s an intelligent, educated man. But I think there’s
something in addition to the persecution bug that’s biting him this
time. Did you catch the inflection he put on that word ‘naked’?”
“I’m afraid I was so astounded at his words, I missed his inflections,”
confessed the skipper. “What about it? What’s wrong with ‘naked’ here,
inflected or not? There’s not a woman within a thousand miles of us to
embarrass anybody.”
In spite of the gravity of the situation, I grinned inwardly at that.
“Well, captain,” I said, “so much the worse for us. I just have an
idea that’s one reason this crew’s all so glum. But that’s not what
I was aiming at in Collins’ case. Women don’t enter into his ideas
of embarrassment. It’s all in the way he was brought up. He’s a
sensitive person, almost morbid, I’d say, and the idea of having to
strip before anybody, especially under what he thinks is compulsion,
gripes his ideas of dignity and personal privacy. Now, I’m not excusing
insubordination, sir, but with Collins’ peculiar civilian background in
this expedition, since you’ve asked for it, I’d suggest a modification
of that order that’ll still get the results and not hurt anybody’s
feelings. Of course the change can’t be for him alone; that would never
do—but why not modify it so’s the doctor examines all the officers
stripped to the waist only, and all the crew stripped completely?
That’ll have two good effects. It won’t require anything of Collins
that offends his dignity, and it’ll show him that he’s getting better
treatment than the ‘seamen’ he’s so wrought up about being classed
with. Then if anything’s ever going to clear the cobwebs out of his
brain and stop his bellyaching, that’ll do it.”
To De Long, already overburdened with a sense of failure and the
weight of the Arctic problems menacing us, and sincerely desirous of
maintaining harmony amongst his personnel, this appealed as a sensible
solution. He nodded approvingly.
“A good idea,” he agreed, expansively relaxing in his chair. “I’ll do
it! And much obliged to you for the suggestion, chief. It helps a lot
to feel I can always rely on you to lend a hand when there’s anything
wrong, whether with the machinery or the men.”
“Hey, brother!” I cautioned, “easy on taking in so much longitude in
your thanks. Better wait till you see how it works. I’ll guarantee the
machinery on this ship, but God himself won’t guarantee the men!” and
with that I took my departure and returned to my evaporator, leaving
the captain to redraft his order for the medical examinations.
To a degree, it worked. Collins, who it seems had submitted a written
protest in addition to expressing himself so freely orally, when he
read the revised order asked leave to withdraw his objection, and
submitted himself (though very sullenly) to the examination which Dr.
Ambler carried out in the privacy of his cabin. And the captain, who,
boiling under Collins’ insolence, had been ready to hang him for it,
calmed down despite the fact that in a measure Collins had won, and
accepted the situation, treating Collins as courteously as if nothing
had ever arisen.
Collins, however, not appreciating his luck, failed to reciprocate.
Ever since the bear hunt incident, he had refused to ask the captain’s
permission to go on the ice, staying aboard except when his routine
observatory duties (and now the enforced exercise order) gave him
the opportunity to leave the ship without asking. Instead, he had
ostentatiously paced the deck, indulging in what he was pleased to
inform us was “a silent protest,” which obviously gave him great
satisfaction, though why I don’t know for De Long diplomatically took
the sting out of that performance by totally ignoring it. Now Collins
withdrew still further into his shell, avoiding the captain altogether
except when duty made it impossible, and what was worse for him,
taking to avoiding the rest of us also when he conveniently could,
a proceeding which hardly added to the sociability of the wardroom
mess. He even refused to say “Good morning” to any of us when first
we greeted him in the messroom, and this boorishness soon put him
completely beyond the pale of our little society.
Queerly enough, Collins now began associating almost exclusively with
the very seamen with whom he took such violent objection to being
classed, spending most of his time with my fireman Bartlett, and
retailing to him and thus to the crew generally, practically every bit
of wardroom gossip that he heard. Such a situation was hardly desirable
aboard ship, and De Long endeavored to put an end to it by privately
conveying to our meteorologist the information that such association
was decidedly contrary to naval custom and that it was beneath his
dignity as an officer so to consort with enlisted men. But the
captain’s friendly admonition only drew more black looks from Collins,
leaving De Long more perplexed than ever over Collins who refused to
comport himself either as officer or seaman, and leaving Collins with
his persecution mania flaring up even more fiercely.
December dragged along. The ice around us kept freezing thicker and
thicker under the intense cold. On the surface, the pack held together,
but despite that, kept us uneasy. Night and day (by the clock, that
is, for so far as light went, it was always night for us except for
a semi-twilight around noon) even in calm weather we were likely
to be disturbed by noises like the beating of the paddle wheels of
innumerable steamers and by occasional terrifying shocks on our hull,
all of which kept us jumpy. At first we had no explanation for this
uncanny state of affairs, the pack around us showing no movement and
the ship being solidly enough frozen in.
But Dunbar finally solved it for us. As he pointed it out, evidently
we were now suffering from a bombardment of underrunning floes.
Considerable masses of ice thrust under the pack in the November
breakups were kept constantly in motion by the current beneath the
refrozen surface. They bumped along as best they could under its
ragged contour, giving that paddle wheel effect, and naturally enough
when one collided with our submerged hull, giving us the unpleasant
sensation of having struck a rock.
An understanding of the situation, while removing the mystery, did
not greatly help our peace of mind. None too sure in the light of our
past experiences, of the solidity of the newly frozen pack, we were
forever standing by for an emergency with sledges, boats, knapsacks,
and provisions ready to go over the side. The monotony of continually
expecting trouble with none of the excitement of actually seeing things
happening, had its own peculiar effect on us, making sound sleep
impossible, killing our appetites, and leaving us restless, listless,
and haggard, a condition which the severe physical discomforts of our
situation naturally aggravated.
Still, for all our nervousness, we began to note some strange things,
the results of the intense cold which descended on us. The atmosphere,
practically free of moisture, was startlingly clear, and never have
I seen such brilliant stars as shined down on us from those December
Arctic skies. Then (owing perhaps to the increased density of the
cold air) sounds on the ice traveled unusual distances and boomed and
reverberated as if from an overhead dome or the roof of a mammoth
cave. And the auroras, shimmering across the sky in a dance of vivid
colors, were indescribably beautiful. But what struck us most, around
thirty degrees below zero, was the almost unbelievable effect of the
cold on the ice itself. Subjected to a temperature far below its
freezing point, the ice assumed a flinty hardness and strength entirely
different from its normal state. The floes grating against each other,
instead of crumbling under pressure, gave out an unearthly high-pitched
screech. And when we went out with picks or axes to dig away the ice in
the fire hole under our stern, granite itself could not have been more
effective than that cold ice in turning the edges and blunting the
points of our tools.
Finally there was another effect of the extremely low temperature which
most of all racked our nerves. Standing, sitting, or sleeping, who can
accustom himself to having pistols unexpectedly discharged practically
in his ears? Yet we were constantly exposed to such nervous shocks.
For all over the ship, the iron fastenings of our planking and our
timbers, contracting abnormally from temperatures never expected by the
builders, compressed the wood under the bolt heads as the iron shrank
till the wood, finally able to stand no more, suddenly snapped with a
noise like a pistol shot. And so startling was each such explosion in
one’s ears, so like a pistol discharge, that even the thousandth time
it happened, involuntarily I jumped as badly as the first time I ever
heard it.
Even the poor dogs suffered unexpected trials and I well believe that
to their canine souls, their difficulties were quite as trying as ours.
Like Dunbar, I had little natural sympathy with the vicious brutes and
saw little value in their presence, but having been to some degree a
party to transporting them from their usual habitat, I could not but
feel some responsibility for their new troubles. And queerly enough it
fell to my lot as engineer partly to relieve them.
Aneguin and Alexey, our two Indians, were primarily responsible for our
forty dogs. Each day in the forenoon watch, they fed them, bringing up
from the forehold from the cargo of dried fish we had taken aboard at
Unalaska, the necessary amount for issue, one dried fish per dog per
day being the authorized ration. Ordinarily, the wise dogs immediately
crushed their fish in their powerful jaws and swallowed them in one
gulp; the otherwise dogs (a pun I fear almost worthy of Collins) found
themselves fighting for the remains of their fish with their mates who
were quicker on the swallow, a habit which always made feeding time
alongside ship a bedlam. Without particularly paying any attention as
to why, I noted vaguely that as December drew on, this daily snarling
of the dogs over their food subsided. As a minor blessing I was duly
grateful, until one day coming aboard a little late after my prescribed
exercise period, I saw Alexey on the quarterdeck performing an autopsy
on a dog which following a brief illness the afternoon before had
died during the night. As I approached, Alexey removed from the dog’s
stomach a wad of oakum as big as a baseball, the very evident cause of
his death. I squeezed the ball, incredulous. Oakum, all right. But why
should even an Eskimo dog eat that? I asked Alexey. Between pantomime
and Indian English he explained it to me,
“Fish in hold freeze, chief. Verr hard. Dog chew. Verr hard. Lak iron.
No good chew.” He seized a marlinspike, went through the motions of a
dog trying to chew a fish frozen presumably as hard as iron, and very
plainly breaking his teeth on it. He laid down the marlinspike. “No
good. No chew fish, no swallow. Dog get ongry. Bym bye eat oakum. Bym
bye die.” Sadly he waved at the deceased dog.
That explained the cessation of our daily dog fights at feeding time.
The fish stowed in our hold had frozen so hard there that no dog, no
matter how energetically he chewed, was now able to masticate his own
fish quickly and get it down. As a consequence, all the dogs being in
the same boat, too busily engaged trying to chew their own dinners to
bother about stealing each other’s, there were no fights. But this poor
devil, his teeth apparently unable to make any impression on the fish,
had been driven in desperation to something softer and had unwittingly
committed suicide by gobbling the oakum.
I grunted sympathetically. A dog’s life, all right. But I could fix it.
Motioning Alexey to follow me inside the deckhouse, I had him bring up
from the hold one day’s issue of fish, only thirty-nine now. They were
frozen hard, no question; even with a crowbar, it would take a strong
man to make a visible impression on one of those glaciated fish. Sizing
up their approximate volume, I had Lee make a sheet iron box large
enough to hold the lot, and fit inside it a few turns of pipe which
I connected to the blowdown from our evaporator, the Baxter boiler.
Alexey tossed in the frozen fish, and Lee put on the cover.
“That’ll thaw ’em out, Alexey,” I informed him. “Every time we blow
down the hot brine from that boiler, it’ll heat the fish, and in a few
hours, they’ll be so soft, even a dog with false teeth won’t have any
trouble with ’em. Now don’t forget; fill the box every night, and by
morning dinner for the dogs will be all ready.”
Alexey, a very good Indian and deeply concerned for the well-being of
his charges, thanked me profusely, and judging by the resumption of the
snarling over dinner next day, I guessed the dogs had reason to also.
But the dogs had still one more cross to bear that I could not ease.
Their instinctive habit in cold weather was to bed themselves down at
night in soft snow, keeping themselves as comfortable that way as an
Eskimo inside his igloo of ice. But if we had reason to regret the
absence of snow because it deprived us of a source of fresh water,
the dogs lamented its absence even more because it robbed them of
their natural beds. Night after night they wandered round the ship
disconsolately looking for drifts, and finding none, were forced at
last to turn in on the bare ice. For some time, we had noticed each
morning here and there hair imbedded in the ice, but when the December
cold snap hit us, we were surprised to find several dogs with so much
hair frozen to the ice that they just could not tear themselves free.
There was, however, nothing we could do about that except to make it
Aneguin’s regular detail to go out before feeding time each morning
with a shovel and break out from the floe all the dogs that had been
frozen down the night before, a job which required great finesse with
the shovel on Aneguin’s part lest all our dogs soon become as bald as
Mexican hairless poodles.