April drew toward its close, leaving us as a parting gift in latitude
76° 19′ N., longitude 164° 45′ E. Over 76° North, and with our drift
increasing in speed weekly! We were on our way now with a vengeance,
moving at last toward the Pole. A few more months like April, and we
might find ourselves by the middle of summer across the 83rd parallel,
to establish with the _Jeannette_ at the very least a new record for
Farthest North! The effect on George Washington De Long was magical—his
shoulders straightened up as if he had shed a heavy weight, his blue
eyes became positively cheery, new courage oozed from his every
gesture—after twenty weary months of discouragement and defeat, our
third year in the Arctic was going to redeem all and send us home
unashamed!
May came. The temperature rose only a little, reaching zero, but we
didn’t mind that much, for in a few days we were nearing the 77th
parallel. The captain’s cheerfulness began to communicate itself to
the crew and a livelier spirit became decidedly manifest in all hands,
with one exception, that is. Collins, of course, was the exception.
He, technically a prisoner awaiting courtmartial, moped worse than
ever; upset even more by the idea that now that he no longer had
any active part, the expedition might really accomplish something.
Physically Collins was not under restraint—no irons, no cell, not
even restriction to his own stateroom, let alone restriction to the
confines of the ship. The captain had no wish to risk Collins’ health
by even such confinement as Danenhower was involuntarily subjected to.
But relieved wholly of all duty and responsibility, Collins was in
effect merely a passenger; his former work was divided between the
captain, Ambler, Chipp and myself, throwing a heavier load on us, for
the meteorological observations were religiously kept up. Indeed, with
the ship at last rapidly changing position northward and westward,
they were now increased. Still a member of the cabin mess, Collins ate
with us, absolutely silent except for an ostentatiously polite “Good
morning, captain,” once a day, after which his fine oblivion respecting
the existence of the rest of us was an excellent wet blanket on
conviviality at meals.
But other things relieved the monotony of meals a bit. Ducks and
geese began to show up overhead, flying some west, some north, and
occasionally landing on the small pools near by, formed by the
continually changing cracks in the moving ice. Dunbar and Alexey
knocked down some with their shotguns. After our continuous diet of
salt beef and insipid canned meat, rest assured we bit into those
heaven-sent ducks avidly, though frequently sudden cries of pain as
some _gourmet’s_ teeth came down hard on pellets of lead, showed that
Ah Sam had been none too careful in extracting birdshot before serving.
The weather warmed up a bit. The sun, though never high in the heavens,
stayed above the horizon twenty-four hours a day, and even at midnight
we began to see him, paradoxically enough, looking at us from due
north, over the unknown Pole!
But as another paradox, now that winter was going and late spring and
continuous daylight were with us, the doctor for the first time on
our long cruise since the diarrhoea epidemic in 1879, began again to
have a string of patients. Chipp, Tong Sing, Newcomb, Alexey, Kuehne,
Nindemann, and unfortunately, himself—all complained of general
debility, cramps in varying degrees, and slight indications of palsy.
Chipp, Tong Sing, and Newcomb, in the order named, were worst.
What was the trouble? The doctor, himself a minor sufferer, was able
to work on his own symptoms as well as on those of the others in
diagnosis. Naturally, since we had just come through the winter, scurvy
was promptly suspected, but not a single evidence of the very obvious
manifestations of that disease could the doctor find in anyone. This
was some mental relief, for in the midst of all our other failures,
De Long, Ambler, and I had taken considerable pride in having with my
distilled water kept us free of that Arctic scourge and for a longer
period than ever before in history.
But if it wasn’t scurvy, what was it? Ambler racked his brains and his
medical books, going over all possible diseases that cold, exposure,
darkness, poor ventilation, depression, and our diet might have exposed
us to, but to no result. The symptoms were none too obvious; he could
lay his finger on nothing definite. Had we developed a new Arctic
disease from our unprecedented stay in the ice? The surgeon could
not say—only time would tell. Meanwhile, Chipp, the worst sufferer,
decidedly thin and weak, was first relieved of part of his duties and
then of all of them. The other victims were told to take things easier
till they had recuperated.
But as the days dragged along, they didn’t recuperate, they got worse.
The doctor put Chipp on the sicklist and ordered him to bed; the same
with Charley Tong Sing whose case became even more serious. Meanwhile
Ambler, suffering himself, was feverishly searching his _Materia
Medica_ for an antidote. But with no definite diagnosis of the disease
possible, his search was fruitless. Ambler was nearly distracted, for
no ailment arising from our manner of life fitted in with the vague
symptoms. And then a severe attack of colic in Newcomb gave him a clue.
He checked his medical books, checked the other patients, and with a
grave face went to the captain to inform him that, implausible as it
seemed, without question every man on the sicklist was suffering from
acute lead poisoning!
That made the mystery even deeper. If lead poisoning, where was the
lead coming from? Lead poisoning was normally a painter’s disease
and not for months had any man on the ship touched a paint pot or a
brush. What then was the source? As the most probable cause, I had
to direct suspicion at myself, for Bartlett, Lee, and I in making up
our distiller piping joints, had for tightness wiped them all with
red lead. Immediately, Surgeon Ambler who had daily for a year and a
half been testing the water for salt, tested it for lead. He found
some insignificant traces, but it seemed hard to believe such minute
quantities could cause us trouble. Still we had been imbibing that
water constantly and the cumulative effect might have done it. While
the problem of dismantling all the pipe joints and cleaning them of red
lead was being cogitated, the captain went one step further—he ordered
Ah Sam to discontinue for use in making tea and coffee, the pots which
had soldered joints, and to replace them with iron vessels.
And so, all full of this lugubrious discovery as to what had laid
up our shipmates, we met for dinner, a much reduced mess, with only
De Long, Dunbar, Danenhower, Collins and myself present. Ah Sam,
substituting for the deathly ill Tong Sing, served the meal—no bear,
no seal, no ducks this time—just salt beef and the ever present stewed
tomatoes, our principal vegetable antidote for scurvy, the supply of
which was holding out splendidly.
More quietly even than usual, dinner proceeded. I carved the salt beef,
Dunbar ladled out the tomatoes. Ah Sam padded around the cabin with the
dishes. Moodily we bent over our plates, and then an outburst, doubly
noticeable in that silence, brought us erect.
“Bah!” burst out the semi-blinded Danenhower, spitting out a mouthful
of food. “I don’t mind breaking my teeth on duck, but who, for God’s
sake, shot these tomatoes?”
“Shot the tomatoes, Dan? What do you mean?” asked the puzzled skipper.
“Just what I say,” mumbled Dan, trying more delicately with his napkin
now to rid his mouth of the remainder. “They’re full of birdshot!”
I walked over and examined the tomatoes spattered on the tablecloth
before Danenhower. Sure enough, there in the reddish mess were several
black pellets of solder, looking remarkably like birdshot! A light
dawned on me.
“Ah Sam!” I ordered, “bring me right away, half a dozen unopened cans
of tomatoes and a can opener, savvy?”
“I savvy; light away I bling cans from galley,” answered the cook,
and in a few minutes dinner was suspended and forgotten, while the
mess table was converted into a workbench on which I opened cans and
poured the contents into a large tureen. In every can we found drops
of solder, mostly tiny! Evidently when the canned tomatoes were stewed
before being served, the hot acid juices of the cooking tomatoes
completely dissolved the fine lead pellets. They had never been noticed
till a few drops large enough to escape complete solution had come
through for Dan to bite on!
We called the sick doctor from his bunk. He promptly got his chemicals
and then and there tested the hot stewed tomatoes already served for
dinner. The percentage of lead in them was far above anything found in
our water. No question about it now, the tomatoes were the cause—our
mysterious lead poisoning was at last solved!
But the captain was still both perplexed and worried. Perplexed,
because from the day we entered the ice, we had had canned tomatoes
four times a week. Why hadn’t we been poisoned before and why were some
of us apparently still unaffected? He was worried, because if we gave
up tomatoes, our last source of anything like vegetables, what (with
our lime-juice now practically gone) over the long months to come was
going to save us from scurvy?
Dr. Ambler quickly resolved both difficulties by pointing out that as
for the perplexity, till May came, we had had tomatoes but four times a
week while since then we had had them daily, thus practically doubling
the lead dosage and nearly as promptly starting the trouble. As for
the reason why some were victims and some not—of the bad cases, Chipp,
weak already from overwork and in poor condition, was a natural victim;
Newcomb, little resistant to anything, another; as for himself and the
bluejackets who were a little less affected, they were just somewhat
more susceptible than some of the rest of us, but in a short time the
lead would have got us all. Tong Sing’s case, worse than anybody’s, he
had to confess he couldn’t explain, but Ah Sam could and quickly did
make it crystal clear,
“Cholly Tong Sing, he likee tomato! He eat plenty, allee same
bleakfast, dinner, supper!”
All we need do to prevent scurvy was go back to the issue of tomatoes
only four times a week, which quantity of lead absorption we had before
apparently withstood. In addition we tried to reduce the lead still
further by having Ah Sam carefully strain out and remove all pellets
of solder _before_ cooking, thus keeping the lead content down to the
minimum, that is, whatever the cold tomatoes had already dissolved.
So with Ah Sam clearing away the mess of emptied cans, we went back
to finish our dinner, lukewarm salt beef only now; silent again,
wondering, if we had to stay in the Arctic another year, whether it
was preferable to eschew the tomatoes and die of scurvy or to continue
eating them and pass away of chronic lead poisoning.
The day dragged along. We were in the middle of May, it being the 16th.
Our rapid drift continued through the afternoon, more westerly than
northerly, but either was perfectly all right with us. The ice was
“livelier,” cracks and water leads showed up more frequently, the ship
was often jolted by submerged masses of ice, and not so far away as
earlier in the spring, high ridges of broken floes were piling up all
around us. Then in the early evening after supper, from Mr. Dunbar who
more out of habit than hope had crawled up to the crow’s-nest for a
look around, came the cry,
“LAND!”
And sure enough, there was land! Off to the westward lay an unknown
island!
The crew of the _Jeannette_ was delirious with excitement. Instead
of ice, there was _land_ to look at, something we had dully begun to
assume had somehow ceased to exist on this globe. And we had discovered
it! In exploration, our voyage was no longer a blank! In honor of that,
Captain De Long immediately ordered served out to all hands a double
ration of rum.
Not since March, 1880, when Wrangel Land last disappeared from sight,
had we seen land. As yet we could not see much of this island, nor even
make out its distance, but somewhere between thirty and seventy miles
off it stood, in black and white against the sky and the ice, masked
a little by fog over part of it. But our imaginations ran riot over
_our_ island! That must have been the land toward which the ducks and
geese were flying, and when we got there, what a feast awaited us! Some
eagle-eyed observers clearly spotted reindeer on its cliffs; others
even more eagle-eyed plainly distinguished the bucks from the does! Our
mouths, dry from chewing on salt beef, watered in eager anticipation.
De Long, positively glowing, hugged Dunbar for discovering our island
and looking happily off toward it, exclaimed,
“Fourteen months without anything but ice and sky makes this look like
an oasis in the desert! Look at it, it’s our all in all! How bears
must swarm on _our_ island, Dunbar! And if you want to tell me that
it contains a gold mine that’ll make us all as rich as the treasury
without its debts, I’ll believe you! _Our_ island must have everything!”
Even the sick, who came up on deck for a glimpse, were cheered by
the sight, all, that is, save poor Danenhower, who nevertheless came
up with the others, at least to look in that direction, knowing well
enough that he alone of all of us would never see our island; that
through the heavily smoked glass over his one remaining eye he could
hardly see the bulwarks, let alone the distant island we had at last
discovered!
Longer than anyone else, De Long stayed on deck that night, gazing off
toward the island, criticizing it, guessing its distance, wishing for a
favorable gale to drive us towards it, and finally before going to bed,
looking carefully again at it to make sure it had not melted away.
And when at last I dragged him below to rest, he murmured knowing well
the island could be only at most a little mass of volcanic rock,
“Melville, beside this stupendous island, the other events of the day
sink into insignificance!”
For the next week, we drifted northwest with fair speed toward our
island, with the water shoaling and the ice getting more active. By
several bearings as we moved along, we discovered that when first
sighted our island was thirty-four miles off. The question of making a
landing began immediately to be debated, but obviously for the first
few days, we were not yet at the closest point, so no decision was then
arrived at. For the next three days, it blew hard, during which time we
caught but few glimpses of our island as we drove northwest with the
ice. When the gale abated on May 24, we got some sights and found to
our pleased surprise that we were in latitude 77° 16′ N., longitude
159° 33′ E. 77° North! Another parallel of latitude left in our frozen
wake; we were now moving steadily on toward the Pole!
But that was not all for May 24. Going aloft himself in the morning,
De Long saw another island! Off to the westward it lay, closer to us
even than our first island; and in addition, from all the lanes which
had opened up in the pack, more water than he had seen since September,
1879. This second island, a little more calmly added to our discoveries
than the first one, was a most welcome sight. The water however was
nothing but a tantalizing vision, for none of the lanes were connected
nor did they lead anywhere, least of all toward our islands, both about
thirty miles away from us and from each other.
Having two islands now on our hands, we could no longer refer to
the first simply as _our_ island, as we had before lovingly done in
mentioning it, for was not the second equally ours? So it becoming
necessary to distinguish between them in the future, De Long took
thought like Adam of old, and named them—the first after our ship
and our ship’s godmother, Jeannette Island; and the second after our
sponsor’s mother, Henrietta Island. Having thus taken care of our
sponsor’s sister and his mother, De Long looked confidently forward
to new discoveries on which he might bestow the name of our sponsor
himself.
Meanwhile, the question of landing on either or both of our islands
came again to the fore, the weather having cleared once more. Jeannette
Island had dropped astern during our strong drift in the gale, while on
Henrietta Island we were closing steadily. De Long decided therefore on
May 30, six days after we had discovered it, to send a landing party
over the ice to take possession of Henrietta Island and to explore it.
The journey would evidently be a dangerous one over broken and moving
ice, with worst of all, the ship steadily moving with the ice away from
the land. Most opinions were adverse to success, but Captain De Long
ordered the trip, feeling that a knowledge of that island as a base to
fall back on would be invaluable in case of disaster to the ship, and
exceedingly desirous also of erecting a stone cairn there in which to
leave a record of our wanderings and whereabouts (this, I think, though
De Long never expressed it so, as a permanent clue to our fate should
we be swallowed forever by the pack threatening us).
Not as any compliment to me, but out of sheer necessity, De Long
selected me to take charge of the expeditionary party and make the
attempt to land. I was the only commissioned officer of the Navy
available; Danenhower, Chipp, and Ambler were incapacitated in varying
degree; the captain himself, anxious as he was to have the honor of
being first to plant our flag on newly discovered soil, dared not leave
the ship to the only one other seagoing officer still on deck, the
whaler Dunbar. So by a process of simple elimination, I was given the
doubtful honor of leading. To help me were assigned Mr. Dunbar and four
picked men from the crew—Quartermaster Nindemann and Erichsen, one of
our biggest seamen, from the deck force; with Bartlett, fireman, and
Sharvell, coalheaver, from my black gang, the latter to act as cook.
With these men, one sledge, a dinghy to ferry us over any open water,
provisions for seven days (including forty-two ounces of the inevitable
lime-juice and eleven gallons of distilled water but no tomatoes),
navigating instruments, fifteen dogs, and the silken ensign which Emma
De Long had made for the _Jeannette_ as the particular banner to be
used in taking possession, we shoved off from the vessel’s side on May
31, cheered by all the remaining ship’s company. Henrietta Island was
twelve miles off over the pack, bearing southwest by west. The ship,
to guide me in my return, hoisted a huge black flag, eleven feet square
at the main.
Our sledge carried between boat and supplies, a load of 1900 pounds,
nearly a ton. With Dunbar running ahead as a leader to encourage the
dogs and the other five of us heaving on the sledge to help along,
it was as much as we could do to get it underway and moving slowly
over the rough ice away from the ship. The harnessed dogs behaved as
usual—they were not interested in any cooperation with us. In the first
fifteen minutes, several broke out of harness and returned to the ship,
there of course to be recaptured by our shipmates and dragged back to
the sledge.
Of our terrible three day journey over only twelve miles of live ice
toward Henrietta Island, I have little to say save that it was a
nightmare. We made five miles the first day, during which we lost sight
of the _Jeannette_ and her black flag; and four miles the second. At
that point, Mr. Dunbar, who had been doing most of the guiding while
the rest of us pushed on the sledge to help the dogs, became in spite
of his dark glasses totally snow-blind and could no longer see his
way, even to stumble along over the ice in our wake. So we perched
him inside the dinghy, thus increasing our load, and on the third day
set out again in a snow storm, guided now only by compass toward the
invisible island. In the afternoon, the storm suddenly cleared, and
there half a mile from us, majestic in its grandeur, stood the island!
Precipitous black cliffs, lifting a sheer four hundred feet above the
ice, towered over us; a little inland, four times that height, rose
cloud-wreathed mountains, with glaciers startlingly white against the
black peaks filling their every gorge.
As we stood there, awestruck at the spectacle, viewing this unknown
land on which man had never yet set foot, the silence of those
desolate mountains, awful and depressing, gripped us, driving home the
loneliness, the utter separation from the world of men of this Arctic
island!
We were now only half a mile from the shore which marked our goal,
but as we gazed across it, cold dread seized us. What a half mile!
The drifting pack, in which miles away the unresisting _Jeannette_
was being carried along, was here in contact with immovable mountains
which could and did resist. As a result, around the bases of those
cliffs, were piled up broken floes by the millions, the casualties in
that incessant combat between pack and rock. While moving past between
were vast masses of churning ice, forever changing shape, tumbling and
grinding away at each other as that stately procession of floebergs
hurried along. And it was over this pandemonium, that if ever we were
to plant our flag on that island, we had to pass!
To get sledge, boat, and all our provisions across was utterly
hopeless. So I made a _cache_ on a large floe of our dinghy, stowing
in it all except one day’s provisions and most of our gear, raising
an oar flying a small black flag vertically on the highest hummock
of that floe as a marker. Next there was Dunbar. Terribly down in
the mouth at having collapsed and become nothing but a hindrance, he
begged to be left on the ice rather than encumber us further. But to
leave an old man blinded and helpless on a drifting floe which we might
never find again, was not to be thought of. In spite of his distressed
pleadings, I put him on the sledge together with our scanty provisions
and instruments, and then with a lashing to the neck of the lead dog
who had no intention whatever of daring that devil’s churn, we started,
myself in the lead.
It was hell, over floes tossing one minute high in air, the next
sinking under our feet. Splashing, rolling, tumbling, we scrambled from
floe to floe, wet, frozen, terrified. Only by big Erichsen’s truly
herculean strength in bodily lifting out the sledge when it stuck fast
did we get over safely. When at last, soaked and exhausted, we crawled
up on the quiescent ice fringing the island, we were barely able to
haul Dunbar, dripping like a seal, off the sledge and onto the more
solid ice.
We paused there briefly while little Sharvell, his teeth still
chattering from fright, clumsily prepared our cold supper. Then
marching over the fixed ice, I as commander first set foot on the
island and in a loud voice claimed it as a possession of the United
States. I invited my shipmates ashore, and in a formal procession led
by Hans Erichsen (who as a special reward was carrying our silken
ensign) they landed also on the island, where Erichsen proudly jammed
the flagstaff into the earth.
With a few precious drops (and precious few) of medicinal whiskey, I
christened the spot HENRIETTA ISLAND, after which we six sick seamen
drank the remainder of the medicine in honor of the event, and then
revelling in a brief tramp over real earth for the first time in over
twenty-one of the longest months men have ever spent, we hauled our
sleeping bags about our weary bones and lay down, at last to rest again
on _terra firma_.
At ten a.m. we woke, startled to have slept so long, for we were not to
stay on the island longer than twenty-four hours. On a bold headland
nearby, we built our cairn, burying in it two cases, one zinc and one
copper, containing the records with which Captain De Long had provided
us. This promontory, Mr. Dunbar named “Melville Head” in my honor, but
after considering its bareness of vegetation, I decided “Bald Head” was
more appropriate and so entered it on the chart which I now proceeded
to make.
With Bartlett and Erichsen reading instruments while I sketched, we
ran a compass survey which took all day. From the high headlands, the
_Jeannette_ was plainly visible in the ice to the northeast, a black
speck against the white pack, but we paid little attention to her,
being anxious only to finish. While this was going on, Sharvell and
Nindemann searched the valleys, shooting a few of the birds nesting in
great profusion among the rocks. But aside from the birds they saw no
other game—no bears, no reindeer, no seals—not a trace of animal life
on that island.
In the early evening, our survey finished, we harnessed again our
staked-out dogs, furled our banner, and started back.
Our retreat through the roaring ice about the island we found even
more difficult than our landing. On one small floe, rounded like a
whaleback, we took refuge for a moment in that cascading ice. We
clung on in terror when it began rolling beneath us, evidently about
to capsize. That to our dismay it finally did, but providentially we
were scraped off as it went over onto the main floe. From this more
solid footing we dragged up out of the icy water by their harnesses
the drenched dogs and the even more drenched Dunbar clinging to the
submerged sledge.
Back once more on ice moving only as part of the great Arctic pack, we
breathed a little more freely, shook ourselves like the dogs to get rid
of surplus water before it froze on us, and headed for the spot toward
which I figured our abandoned boat had drifted. There was nothing
we could recognize, there were none of our previous tracks we could
follow; the arrangement of that pack had changed as completely as a
shuffled deck of cards. Amongst high hummocks we could see but a little
distance and I was becoming thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of never
finding our boat again. Then with the weather clearing a bit, from the
top of the highest hummock around, Erichsen spied in the distance the
oar marking our boat. We hastened toward it, truly thankful, for we had
already made away with the single day’s rations which we had carried
with us, and had no longer a bite left to eat.
For two days in miserable weather we stumbled back toward the ship,
steering a compass course through continuous snow. To add to our
troubles, Nindemann came down with severe cramps (lead, of course) and
Erichsen, who since Dunbar’s collapse had been guiding the dogs, with
snow-blindness. So pitching our tent in the snow, we camped our second
night, while I dragged out the medicine chest with which I had been
provided by Dr. Ambler and began to read the directions. The remedy for
cramps was “Tincture of capsicum in cognac.” Henrietta Island having
seen the last of the cognac, the best liquid substitute available in
the chest appeared to be a bottle of sweet oil, which I drew out,
together with the bottle marked “Tinc. capsicum.”
My own fingers were cold and numbed, so Erichsen who wanted some of
the sweet oil to rub on his chafed body which he had stripped for that
purpose, volunteered to draw the corks for me. First pouring some of
the sweet oil over his hands to soften them, he pulled the second cork,
but so clumsily with his frozen paws, that he spilled a liberal portion
of the tincture of capsicum over his badly chapped hands to discover
promptly that compared to tincture of capsicum, liquid fire was a
cooling, soothing lotion!
Startled, Erichsen involuntarily rubbed the mixture on his bared
rump and immediately went wild. To the intense interest of his
shipmates, down went Erichsen into the snow, trying to extinguish the
burn, wiggling his huge form like a snake on fire. Little Sharvell,
solicitously taking his arm, piped up,
“’Ere, matey, let me lead you to a ’igher ’ummock! Bli’ me if I don’t
think ye’ll soon melt yer way clean through this floe!”
Nindemann began to laugh so hard at this that he completely forgot his
cramps, while Dunbar, between his own groans, sang out cheerily,
“Hans, are ye hot enough yet to make the snow hiss? If ye are, when we
get back, the chief can put out the forecastle stove and use ye for a
heater!”
Amid the general merriment, joined in by all hands except poor Hans,
big Erichsen finally managed to cool himself down in the snow enough so
that he could stand an administration of pure sweet oil to the affected
parts. Carefully applied by me, this soothed him enough to permit his
dressing again, and with most of us in a hilarious frame of mind, we
slid into our sleeping bags.
Next day, our sixth since departure, we set out again at 3 A.M., and
mirth having proved a better cure than medicine, with all hands in fair
shape except Dunbar who still had to ride the sledge. Within an hour we
sighted the ship. This cheered us further. And the dogs recognizing the
masts and realizing that at last they were pulling toward home, for the
first time put their hearts and shoulders into the job. Over bad ice,
we made such excellent progress that by 6 A.M. we were within a mile of
the ship, apparently without having been sighted from there.
At this point, I ran into an open water lead with running ice, and
unable to find a detour, had determined to launch the dinghy and ferry
across when a sledge runner gave way and left us flat in the snow. We
repaired the runner, but it was evident that it would never carry all
the weight again. So I unloaded the boat, ferried the sledge across,
and then sent it ahead with Dunbar only on it while Sharvell and I
stayed behind with the dinghy and all the rest of our sledge load of
equipment.
We were all soon sighted and a party came out from the ship. There
on the ice, Dr. Ambler met me, and undemonstrative though he was, so
overjoyed was he at our safe return that he gave me a regular bear hug.
Approaching the gangway, we caught sight of Captain De Long,
enthusiastically waving to us from the deck, running up the ladder to
the bridge for a better view. Then to our horror we saw him, absorbed
only by our progress, step directly into the path of the flying
windmill! In an instant, before anyone could cry out in warning, down
came one of the huge arms, whirling before a fresh breeze, hitting him
a terrific blow on the head and sending him reeling backwards down the
ladder!
Fortunately the quartermaster caught him, breaking his fall, but Ambler
and I, forgetting all else, rushed for the gangway, arriving on deck to
find the captain crawling on hands and knees, stunned and bleeding from
a great gash in his head. Ambler hurriedly bent over him, carefully
feeling his skull, and announced thankfully there was no evident
fracture. He helped the semi-conscious captain to his cabin, where he
immediately went to work stitching up a deep four-inch long wound. By
the time this was done and the bandages applied, De Long at last came
out of his daze. But calloused as I was by war and many hardships it
nevertheless brought tears to my eyes when his first question after his
fluttering eyelids opened on the doctor bending over him, was not about
himself but a faint query,
“How about Melville and his men, doctor? Are they all safe?”