Twenty-five miles further north than when we started! Coming on top
of all else, that was a knockout blow. With sagging knees, I leaned
against the gunwale of the whaleboat, looked at the haggard captain,
asked faintly,
“Sure?”
“Yes,” he replied mournfully, “sure. Two meridian altitudes of the sun
and a couple of Sumner lines and they all check. I couldn’t believe the
first sight myself; I thought my sextant was bad. But after checking
that with nothing wrong, I spent all day getting check sights; you saw
me shooting some of them. No question about it now. But, for God’s
sake, don’t tell anyone! Not even another officer. If the men knew, I
couldn’t get ’em to lay a hand on another sledge. They’d just sit down
here and wait to die!”
I nodded at that. Who could blame them? Caught on a treadmill, why
should they torture themselves with such labor as slaves would lie down
under and suffer themselves to be lashed to death rather than rise and
endure, when the only result was that they were being carried backward
five times as fast as their puny efforts pushed them forward? If the
men learned the results of those disastrous sights, we were finished!
But weren’t we finished anyway, whether they knew it or not?
“That’s bad, captain,” I mumbled, my brain numbed at the news. “What
can we do now?”
“I haven’t figured it out fully yet, chief; I want your advice on what
I have in mind. That’s the only reason I told you; that, and maybe the
thought that at least one other officer ought to know where we are and
where we’re going in case something happens to me. Since Chipp and
Danenhower, both my deck officers, are knocked out, you’re the only
officer left I can talk to. But this mustn’t get out! It’d kill Chipp,
who’s in a bad way anyhow, like hitting him with an ax. And what it’d
do to the men, you can guess!” He finished with a ghastly smile.
Vaguely I felt that that might be a mercy to Chipp; indeed it might
well be a mercy to all of us should a kindly Providence then and there
somehow brain us all with an ax and end our sufferings. But of that I
said nothing. The captain had hinted at something further to be done.
What, I wondered, was it? Abandon the boats, speed up our progress,
trusting to luck the ice held out under us till we got to the New
Siberian Islands, there to live (or starve rather) on moss and Arctic
willow till perhaps some year a chance party of ivory hunters landed
and rescued us? A thin chance, that! I looked curiously at De Long.
“Well, skipper, no thanks for telling me. I could’ve got more work out
of my gang if I were still in blissful ignorance like the others than I
can now, but I’ll keep on doing my best. And if my advice is any good,
you’re welcome to it. What’s your idea?”
“I know that well enough, chief. I would gladly have suffered under
that knowledge alone, but the safety of the whole party requires
someone else to know, and unfortunately to suffer with me. But no
use talking about that now. Let’s get along with what’s next.” He
jerked out from beneath his parka a chart, unfolded it, spread it on
the midship thwart of the whaleboat. On it, marked by a bold cross
enclosed in a red ink circle, was a spot in latitude 77° 18′ N. where
the _Jeannette_ had sunk, a spot unfortunately for us now, far to the
southeast of the small penciled cross in latitude 77° 43′ N. which
marked our present position as shown by the captain’s latest sights.
“There’s just one possible thing we can do, Melville; change the course
from due south as we’re heading now, to southwest. The ice is drifting
clearly enough northwest. It’s like crossing a river current; no use
bucking into it as we’re doing now going south, even if land is closest
that way. The only hope is to cut across perpendicular to the current
and ultimately you get to the other bank, even though the current
carries you downstream meanwhile. The same with us, we’ve got to cut
directly across the drift, that is, southwest; and some day, regardless
of how far north we’re carried, we’ll come to the edge of this pack and
can launch our boats—provided we live long enough! And to insure that,
we’re going to go on shorter rations now to stretch out our food,” he
concluded significantly. “I’ve decided all that already, Melville. All
I want to know from you—you’re working the men—is how thin I can cut it
and still let you keep on driving them, harder even than now!”
I thought a moment. Our daily rations, pemmican, hard bread, and
coffee, were none too generous in quantity as it was for the terrific
physical effort the men were laboring under. But who knows what men can
stand? I was learning all the time.
“Well, skipper, cut a third off. That’ll stretch it out for ninety
days instead of sixty. I doubt that we can keep up long on such short
rations, but maybe we can knock over a few seals to help out now and
then. Anyhow, I’m willing to try.
“Good!” agreed De Long. “_Nil desperandum!_ I knew I could count fully
on you, chief; I always can. We’ll start that program, new course and
all, tonight.” He started to fold up the chart again, when his eye
fell on the penciled cross marking our position. “77° 43′ North,” he
muttered. “Farthest North for us yet. And forever too, on this cruise
anyway, I hope. Say, Melville, you remember that silk banner you used
in claiming Henrietta Island? Well, it’s in the first cutter, alongside
the whaleboat here. There’s something else about that flag my wife
made for me. She wanted me to fly it in celebration when we made our
‘Farthest North.’ Let’s hope we’re celebrating that glad event right
here and now. But the crew knows about that too, I think. If I fly
_that_ flag over this camp, they’ll smell a rat right off.” He looked
furtively round. All our men were apparently still in the tents. No one
was in sight. “I think I can take a chance to please Mrs. De Long on
this; it’s little enough I’ve done for her since she married a sailor.
Here, Melville, lend a hand.”
Together we drew from its case and unwrapped that silken banner, a
moderately large American ensign beautifully embroidered round the
edges by Emma De Long’s loving hands for her husband’s ship. And
stealthily, keeping it below the gunwales of the first cutter lest
someone looking from a tent should see and wonder, we fully extended
it horizontally. Then standing on the ice alongside that open boat,
with De Long to starboard and me to port, we two, looking certain death
on the pack in the face, waved that banner beneath the Arctic sky in
latitude 77° 43′ from the Equator—Farthest North for George Washington
De Long, if not for the _Jeannette_!
And then, leaning over the gunwale, De Long buried his weather-beaten
face in the rustling silk folds of his wife’s flag, kissing it
fervently, while I, clinging to the other side, closed my wet eyes in
silence. Well did I remember that June day in 1879, almost exactly two
years before in San Francisco, when at our commissioning Emma De Long,
a lovely figure, had herself proudly manned the halliards and hoisted
that banner to the masthead on the _Jeannette_! But the _Jeannette_ was
gone beneath the floes, and far away at that moment, I envisioned Emma
De Long, a different woman now, worn by two years of hourly dread over
news that never came, praying for the safety of the man before me, who
with heaving shoulders was caressing his country’s flag, the solitary
symbol of his wife’s love still left in his possession.
De Long straightened up.
“All right, Melville. I think my wife’ll be glad to know when it gets
back we flew her flag at our Farthest North. Come on, let’s fold it up;
carefully now, so nobody’ll know we had it out and perhaps guess why.”
Silently I obeyed. We rolled up the flag, slid it into its oilskin
case, carefully restowed the case as before. The chances of our ever
getting back were slight now, but as I shoved that case under the
thwarts in the cutter, bachelor as I was, I hoped that even though our
own bodies might soon be stretched in death over that desolate ice
pack, somehow that flag in the boat might survive the drift, some day
to be picked up and returned to the one person who would sense among
its silken folds the message that it bore.