December was notable mainly for continued low temperatures, down around
-50° F. We thankfully saw it slip away with nothing to remember it by
save a minstrel show given by the crew to mark our second Christmas Eve
in the ice. That this show was in any way memorable was mainly owing
to my coalheaver, comical little Sharvell, who rigged himself out as
an attractive English miss in a sailor-made calico dress, a blond wig
(originally the fibers of a manila hawser), white stockings, and low
shoes. He provided so fair and alluring an imitation of something no
sailor on the _Jeannette_ had for a year and a half been within hail
of, that the show was immediately a howling success, hardly needing the
double ration of rum served out beforehand to make the audience not too
critical of the performance.
Of Christmas Day itself, the less said the better. Our mince pies were
made of pemmican this time, the canned mince meat having been all used
up our first year’s holiday. In spite of the brandy flavoring, there
was probably not one of us who was not wondering with gloomy foreboding
as he bit into his pemmican pie what, if anything, that crafty
Chinaman, Ah Sam, would have left to substitute for the mince meat for
our third Christmas in the pack.
And soon another New Year’s Eve, with more minstrels; a little
more rum; a fine speech to the crew by the captain ending with the
cheerily-expressed hope that before another New Year’s Eve, we would
all be back in our homes, saying to our friends with pardonable pride,
“I, too, was a member of the _Jeannette_ Expedition.”
The only trouble with the speech was that no one, including the
captain himself, in his heart really believed it. Then came midnight,
with eight bells for the old year, eight bells more for the new
one; and we soberly faced the year 1881. 1879 and 1880 had been
heartbreakers for us. What had 1881 in store for the _Jeannette_, there
in the Arctic?
To start with, it had January gales, bitter cold, and the usual
thunderous uproar of the pack in motion, but fortunately never close
enough to endanger us. And wonder of wonders, the discovery that
the gales were mostly easterly, so that both by observation and by
drift lead, we found that at last we were going (when we went at
all) steadily in one direction, northwest, and no longer endlessly
zigzagging to and fro like a _Flying Dutchman_ to the northward of
Wrangel Land. And to lend a little further zest to this pleasing state
of affairs, the month of January closed with the ship in latitude 74°
41′ N., longitude 173° 10′ E., a little farther west and three miles
farther north than any of our previous peregrinations with the pack had
ever got us. We began to take notice. Perhaps we were at last “going
somewhere,” although since the pack was moving with us, our scenery was
changing not the slightest.
February arrived, and with it on February 5 came the SUN—a glorious
sight to us after ninety-one long days of night! And never was he
hailed by sun worshipers in ancient Persian temples with such sincere
joy and enthusiasm as by the sadly bleached and frozen array of
careworn, fur-clad seamen on the _Jeannette_. We streamed out on the
ice with the temperature at 40° below zero to bask in the light, real
daylight! of part of the sun’s disk peeping over the horizon at us at
noon. We thanked God for the sun’s return, bringing to us once more the
light to shine on our ship, still pumping away at our leak but no more
damaged than when he left us in early November.
The rest of February and all of March went by with no signs of letup
in our winter cold. A few more gales, seemingly worse than ever, buried
the ship in fine snow, leaving only the three masts sticking up out of
the white wastes to mark our position, but the winds continued easterly
and we continued our northwest drift with our soundings steadily
increasing also. Were we at last getting off the Siberian continental
shelf into the deeper water of the open Arctic Sea? We hoped so, for
deeper water meant greater opportunity for the ocean to break up the
pack.
We drifted across the 75th parallel of latitude, for us a red letter
event. 75° North! It sounded much better. While not to be compared with
the 83° North already attained along the Greenland coasts by other
explorers, still it looked promising, and what a change from forever
shuttling back and forth between parallels 72° and 74° for twenty weary
months!
In other ways, matters in March were worse. Several times, from the
screeching of the pack, the cracking of the ice, and the severe
shocks to the ship, we feared we were in for a repetition of some of
our hair-raising experiences of the first winter, but each time the
tumbling floes failed to come near us, and we thankfully heard the
distant roarings subside. On top of that, the doctor, who all through
the year had hopefully lanced and probed the abscess in Danenhower’s
left eye, found himself searching his soul as to whether he should
undertake a major operation, but finally in view of all conditions,
concluded he dared not. Dan, wan and emaciated from his long
confinement, could at least see with one eye, his right, and that eye
while weak from sympathetic suffering with its mate, seemed now in less
danger of becoming permanently affected. As a result, Dan with his left
eye blindfolded and his right heavily shielded by a colored lens, was
occasionally allowed to walk over the ship, and even, when the weather
was unusually favorable, permitted to grope his way round the ice
alongside.
Aside from these matters, March brought us two other unusual episodes
to break the monotony of our lives. The first was a bear, a she-bear
as it turned out and recently a mother, which facts may have explained
matters, for this bear, cornered by the dogs on top of a hummock near
the ship, put up such a tremendous fight as we never saw before. The
top of that hummock was a mass of flying fur and snarling dogs, the
heavens resounding with howls, screeches, and roars, dogs leaping in to
attack only to be sent sailing right and left on their backs. Bear and
dogs were out for a finish fight—savage teeth and lunging claws made
a shambles of the ice on that hummock—how it might have ended was a
question, for finally Nindemann, coming up, settled the battle with his
rifle.
For us she turned out to be a very expensive bear; when we took stock
of casualties, we found one dog, Plug Ugly, dead; another, Prince,
ripped open from back to shoulder; three more, Wolf, Tom, and Bingo,
with gashed sides and stomachs; while Snoozer (the captain’s favorite)
had his mouth considerably lengthened as by a razor, and Smike was
badly chewed in two places, not to mention half a dozen other dogs
licking minor injuries. Dr. Ambler put in a busy day with thread and
needle sewing up the wounded. When it was all over, we had a badly
battered pack of dogs who were quite agreeable to crawling quietly off
into the snow, by unanimous consent suspending all hostilities among
themselves.
The other deviation from monotony was the sudden interest taken by
our two Chinamen, Tong Sing and Ah Sam, in flying kites. The steady
and continuous east winds no doubt brought to mind their opportunity,
and soon Chinese kites in all shapes, fashions, and colors—birds,
flies, and dragons—were fluttering in the breeze as tranquilly as if
they were on the green banks of the Yang-Tse-Kiang, instead of in the
Arctic ice at 40° below. The antics of our cook and steward with their
playthings kept the crew, lining the _Jeannette’s_ rail watching them,
in an uproar. But so seriously did Sing and Sam take their pastime that
when imperative routine sent them back to cabin and galley, instead of
winding in their lines, they would tie their kite-strings to whatever
was handiest on the lee side, the shrouds, the davits, or the belaying
pins, till they could emerge again and cast loose; and the captain
believed that had it been necessary, they would cheerfully have torn up
their shirts for kite-tails!
April 1 came, bringing with it by the calendar our spring and summer
routine, but no particular break in the weather, which on April 16 was
still -26° F., much worse than comparable temperatures of the year
before; for us, certainly not a hopeful sign.
We soon had another bit of excitement; a few days later for a while
we feared that we had lost our entire commissary department. Both Ah
Sam and Tong Sing, armed with rifles, in the early afternoon went off
hunting on the pack. When by seven at night they had not returned, we
became not only hungry but alarmed, and sent out a searching party. At
nine o’clock, they met the steward, Charley Tong Sing, coming in alone,
to tell a very involved story. A few miles from the ship, as he related
it, he and the cook had picked up a bear track and with visions of more
fresh bear to work on for dinner, they started eagerly in pursuit,
after some miles coming in sight of the bear, which to their joy they
found was being worried along by two of our best dogs, Wolf and Prince.
The dogs seeing reenforcements at last coming up in the form of our two
Chinamen, and all hunters looking alike to them, promptly brought the
bear to a stand by heading him off and snapping at his nose.
Running forward to get in a shot, Charley unfortunately slipped
amongst some broken ice, and a piece of it fell on his back, holding
him down, or he positively asserted, he would have killed the bear.
Thus _hors de combat_, he lay while the dogs, no doubt thoroughly
disgusted at such inexpert support, let the bear get underway again. By
the time Ah Sam had managed to pry the ice off Charley and release him,
neither bear nor dogs was in sight.
It being now at least six o’clock, both cook and steward came suddenly
to the realization that aboard ship, chow was way past due and held a
council of war, the upshot of which was that the cook as senior officer
present, ordered the steward to return to both cook and serve dinner
while he, the cook, kept on to bag the bear. So there, safely back, was
Charley Tong Sing, but where was our cook and where were our two best
dogs?
De Long, having finally digested (instead of his dinner) this story in
excited pidgin English of ice, bears, dogs, and Chinamen, looked at his
executive officer in dismay. It was now dark, with considerable wind
and drifting snow.
“Shall I send the searching party out again, sir?” asked Chipp.
“What the use?” queried the harassed skipper. “A bear chased by dogs
chased by a cook is too pressed for time to steer a proper compass
course, so where should we look?”
We waited and worried till midnight, when that fear at least was
allayed as Ah Sam, thoroughly exhausted, came stumbling up the gangway,
and a more completely demoralized Chinaman you could never find. De
Long personally made him drink half a tumblerful of whiskey to bring
him round, but he was completely incoherent and began to cry. When at
last he was calmed a little, he related how he had continued to chase
the bear, which the two dogs to give him a chance, by fierce attacks
managed occasionally to stop for a minute or two but never for long
enough for him to get within range. The dogs, Prince and Wolf, fighting
desperately this way as the bear retreated, were both bleeding. Ah
Sam says he followed the bear on a southerly course fifteen miles,
determined to get him if he had to chase him all the way to China.
Then by a particularly vicious onslaught, the dogs finally succeeded
in holding the bear till Ah Sam could run up close enough for a fine
shot. Raising his rifle, our cook took careful aim on the bear’s head,
and pressed the trigger, when horror of horrors, instead of hurting the
bear, the rifle exploded in his hands! His morale completely shattered,
poor Ah Sam sat down in the snow and wept, while the bear, still
accompanied by Wolf and Prince, amazed no doubt by such weird hunting,
but unwilling to give up, moved on over the pack and that was the last
he saw of any of them. Still weeping, Ah Sam picked up the remains of
his rifle and started home. How he ever found the ship again, he didn’t
know; it had taken him, walking continuously, until midnight. And
there, indicating it with a hysterical wave of his hand, as proof of
this wild story was the treacherous rifle!
We examined it curiously. Ah Sam had not exaggerated—the gun barrel
was torn to pieces; only a half length, cracked open, being left still
attached to the stock. But to anyone used to firearms, the answer was
simple. Ah Sam, in his long chase, must have let the muzzle slip into
a snowdrift; the snow freezing solidly in the bore, had plugged it
off, with the natural result that when he fired, there being no proper
release for the exploding powder, it had promptly blown off the muzzle.
Dr. Ambler examined Ah Sam carefully for wounds; it seemed a miracle
one of those flying rifle fragments had not cut his head off. But
physically he had escaped unscathed; his demoralization was wholly
mental, owing to the way, in his efforts to provide roast bear for
dinner, an unkind fate had treated him. Still weeping, poor Ah Sam was
led off to his bunk.