De Long was left with the problem of how to make Collins and Newcomb
useful members of our primitive community. While Collins, before the
captain noticed him, had done useful work when it suited him to help,
I have little doubt that it was only for the Machiavellian purpose of
building up a brutal mistreatment case against the captain. Had he been
ordered to work steadily in harness like the others, he would either
have flatly balked or else have done it only as a martyr, neither of
which situations the captain was prepared to cope with. Newcomb’s case
was a little different. Had he been my problem, I am confident that the
toe of my boot, properly applied a few times, would have startlingly
changed his outlook both on work and on keeping his mouth shut when
spoken to, but De Long was constitutionally opposed to physical
persuasion. Casting his eye about the floes, the skipper observed that
seals were again occasionally in evidence, and decided that since both
our Indians, Alexey and Aneguin, were laboring like all the others as
pack-horses, he might well substitute Collins and Newcomb for them
as hunters. Hunting being in all civilized circles a gentleman’s
privilege, neither of these pseudo-seamen officers could well maintain
that it was beneath the stations for which they had shipped, and if
they shot anything, it would be of real value in stretching out our
precious food supply, let alone giving us a change from the pemmican
which constituted the fish, flesh, fowl and vegetable of our unvaried
menu.
So promptly providing Collins with a rifle and Newcomb with the shotgun
which he had carried from the wreck, both were turned to on the
floes to see what they could do in earning their passage while our
straggling line of boats and sledges moved on over the pack.
But even so Collins was not satisfied. A member of the party messing
and sleeping in the captain’s tent, his main business in life seemed
to be sizing up what he could find wrong with De Long’s management
of the retreat, to add in his private notes to whatever else he had
accumulated in the way of (in his eyes) errors in the captain’s
judgment. But he must have had a tough time of it, for the only
thing that apparently displeased him now was as he related it to his
_confidant_, Bartlett,
“The skipper’s always too infernally polite to me, seeing that I’m
served before he helps himself to pemmican, and making sure my place in
the tent’s all right before he’ll crawl into his sleeping bag.”
And under these embarrassing conditions, Collins began his life as a
hunter.
July 10th, far to the southwest, Dunbar sighted a faint cloud which he
announced as land, gravely assuring us that the New Siberian Islands
were in sight. While the skipper was dubious of its being land at
all, knowing (what Dunbar and most of the party did not) that the
nearest charted land, those New Siberian Islands, were still a hundred
and twenty miles off, so that what was seen was either a mirage or a
new discovery, the effect on our progress was magical—over none too
good ice we made three and a quarter miles that day! In the clearer
atmosphere, the skipper got some sights for the first time in a week
which when worked out placed us in latitude 77° 8′ N., longitude 151°
38′ E., to our joy showing that at last we were south of 77° 18′
N. from which we had started. But both the skipper and I stared in
amazement at our new position, for having by dead reckoning and compass
made sixteen miles to the south_west_ over the pack during the week,
the sights showed that our actual change of position in those seven
days was twenty-seven miles to the south_east_. So once again the
current had us, carrying us where it would, but since this time it was
increasing our southing, we could only be thoroughly grateful.
That night when (still keeping our actual position a secret) it was
announced that not only were we doing well over the ice, but that a
southerly drift was helping us along, there was a roaring cheer as the
straining men in harness leaned forward, and we got the boats away in
grand style.
For two weeks we struggled on to the southwest, sometimes certain
we saw land, sometimes certain we didn’t. But it was discouraging
work. Fog, snow, and hail made our lives miserable, and between the
everlasting ferrying over open leads and the plowing through pools
of surface slush, we kept our clothes continuously soaked in ice
water. Aside from the discomfort of stretching out in wet clothes to
sleep in a wet bag on a rubber sheet sunk in a puddle on wet ice, the
interminable wetness began to finish our moccasin and boot-soles,
and now there wasn’t a tight pair left in the ship’s company. These
soles, made of “oog-joog” skin, a rawhide from a species of seal, were
fine when dry in ordinary snow or ice, but when wet, they softened to
resemble tripe and then under the strain of men heaving hard against
sharp ice with their feet to drag the sledges, they soon let go. As
long as the spare “oog-joog” brought from the _Jeannette_ held out, we
patched away till all hands stood on a mass of patches as they worked,
but when it gave out (and it very soon did), we were in a bad way for
substitutes. First we tried leather, stripping it from the oar-looms,
but leather was not only too hard and slippery for use on the ice but
our supply didn’t last long, and we were quickly reduced to canvas, to
sennet mats woven of hemp rope by the seamen, to rag mats, and even
to wooden soles carved from what little planking our carpenter could
strip out of the bottom boards in our boats. None were in any degree
satisfactory—one hard heave on sharp ice would often tear the soles
off a man’s boots—and frequently before the end of a night’s hauling
I would have half a dozen men straining at the sledges with their
bare feet on the ice, even their socks completely worn through, while
the rest of the gang, whose soles still clung on, would be spurting a
mixture of slush and water from their torn moccasins at each step.
Between the lodestone effect of the dim land ahead of us, less snow,
a little smoother ice, and lighter sledges, we speeded up. The ice
improved to the point where we could drag a boat with only half our
party, thus advancing two loads at once and having to tramp only seven
miles for each mile made, instead of thirteen as before. But the cracks
in the ice increased in frequency and ferrying and bridging over
them made our lives a nightmare, the mental strain of forever riding
heavy sledges over bobbing ice cakes which threatened to capsize each
instant, being indescribable. And to add to our worries, our dogs began
to get fits, four of our best ones spinning dizzily in their harnesses
before dropping on the ice, frothing at the mouth when we cut them out
of the traces.
One pleasing incident occurred amidst all our hardships. After ten days
of hunting, Collins finally shot a seal in an open lead, which prize
was handsomely recovered by Ambler and Johnson in the dinghy before
it sank. For this we were doubly thankful—after using his grease to
tighten up our leaking boots, we dined most luxuriously on stewed seal,
fried seal, and if only we had had an oven, we might have had roast
seal. But he went very well as it was; after a month on cold pemmican,
it was a feast long to be remembered!
July 16th we struck tough going. The ferrying grew worse than ever;
Erichsen crossing a lead capsized with his sledge and we lost three
hundred pounds of pemmican, a serious blow. A few minutes later,
trying to get to a high hummock to inspect the distant land now more
visible ahead. De Long tried to jump a wide lead, the ice broke under
him and he went in up to his neck. He might well have gone completely
and forever had not Dunbar, who was with him, at that point grabbed
him by what he thought was his fur hood but which was actually his
whiskers, and nearly jerked the skipper’s head off pulling him out by
his mustaches!
Finally on this day, the doctor discharged Chipp from the sicklist,
though doubtful as to how long it might be before Chipp broke down
again. This resulted in a shuffle in commands—Chipp relieved me in
charge of the working force; I relieved Ambler in charge of the road
gang; and Ambler with only Danenhower left as a regular patient, was
detailed to work with Dunbar in scouting out the road. The doctor
offered to join the sledge gang in harness, but we were doing better
there, so the skipper refused. He preferred to use Ambler simply as
scout and medical officer, hoping that his terribly calloused, corned,
and chapped hands might recover enough for proper surgical work should
an accident make any necessary.
The skipper worked out some sights. The latitude, reliable, was 76°
41′ N.—28 miles gained to the south in six days—fine progress, much
more than we were logging over the ice. The longitude, doubtful, put
us at 153° 30′ E., indicating we were still going southeast though we
were heading southwest, but we were not greatly concerned over that.
Anything to the south was cause for gratitude.
We dragged along five days more. Newcomb at last shot something, a
gull he called a _mollemokki_, interesting ornithologically to him,
perhaps, worthless to us for food, certainly. The ice grew rotten; we
had more trouble with it. Our men, their eyes and minds affected by
the ice, easily deluded by mirages, were now seeing land in nearly
all directions, south of us, west of us, and even _north_ of us! And
not a day went by when someone didn’t see open water ahead of us,
fine wide-open sea in which we could launch our boats, toss away our
sledges, and sail homeward in comfort!
Instead of that we soon bumped into the worst mess of ice we had yet
encountered, a jumble of small lumps and water, with numberless large
floes tipped on end vertically. With my road gang and our solitary
pick-ax, I started the herculean job of clearing away some of these
hummocks so we might proceed, and was busily at it when the doctor,
bless his soul, came in to report that by retracing our path northward
half a mile, we could then go due west till we got on the flank of
that broken ice, after which we might go southwest again. I snapped at
that; the job ahead of me was like tunneling through a mountain with a
toothpick. So back over our trail we went with our boats and sledges.
Getting across even that better path was a heartrending job, for the
rotten floes would hardly stick alongside each other, till finally
using all the lines we had, like Alpine climbers we lashed the floes
together while we crossed over, seriously hampered by a dense fog.
It was a long stretch. In the middle of it, we came to morning, our
usual time for piping down to camp and rest during the day, but the
captain, seriously alarmed at the prospect of that rotten and moving
ice disintegrating under us while we slept, belayed the usual camp. So
without rest and only a brief stop for supper, we kept on, till after
twenty-three hours of terrific labor we came in the late afternoon to a
solider floe and stopped at last to rest our weary bones.
The captain, feeling rightly enough that what we now most sorely needed
was sleep rather than cold supper, gave the order for all hands to turn
in. This the men in my tent thankfully did and were soon stretched out
in their sleeping bags, but in the next tent, assigned to Danenhower,
Newcomb, and five seamen, Newcomb immediately sounded off.
“This is a fine way,” he said sarcastically, “to treat men who have
been working so hard; ordering them to turn in without anything to eat!”
Lieutenant Danenhower peered in surprise through his dark glasses at
the naturalist who had done nothing all day but carry a small shotgun.
“Maybe it _is_ hard for the men who are working, Newcomb,” he said
quietly, “but for you and me who haven’t done a blessed thing, it
isn’t, and we shouldn’t be the first to complain now.”
Newcomb ran true to form. Instead of taking the hint thus delicately
conveyed, he retorted angrily,
“I wasn’t speaking to you; I was speaking to these men. I don’t count
myself in the same category with you. I’m a worker!”
Newcomb a worker! Danenhower could hardly believe his ears. But not
wishing to start a row before the men, and not wanting anyone, least of
all a man who passed as an officer with them, to encourage them in the
belief that they were ill-treated, he ordered curtly,
“Pipe down, Newcomb! That’s enough on that!”
But piping down was one thing not in Newcomb’s psychology. Answering
back suited him better.
“No, I won’t!” he piped up. “I don’t take orders from you. And now that
the crisis has come, I’m going to meet the issue! You’ve made yourself
disagreeable to me right along, but I’m an officer too, and it’s got to
stop!”
Had Dan been able to see in more than a vague blur, the issue would
undoubtedly have met Newcomb’s jaw then and there. As it was, without
further words, Dan stumbled from the tent to report the still spouting
naturalist to the captain for endeavoring to foment trouble in the crew.
In five minutes, Newcomb was placed under arrest to be taken home for
courtmartial on two charges:
I. Using language tending to produce discontent among the men; and
II. When remonstrated with by Lieutenant Danenhower, using insolent
and insubordinate language.
There being little further De Long could then do, he deprived Newcomb
of his shotgun, ordered him to keep in the rear as we proceeded, and
sternly warned him meantime not to annoy anyone working.
So when late that night we got underway, we had two officers under
arrest—the surly Collins who seemed to spend much of his time
unburdening his wrongs in the ears of my fireman Bartlett, but in
between times making himself useful as a hunter, and Newcomb who was
thoroughly useless for anything.
The land which Dunbar weeks before had sighted across the ice,
undoubtedly a newly discovered island not on the charts, was now in
plain sight only a few miles off, bearing westward. Through bad gales
and over broken pack, with occasional floebergs suddenly shooting into
the air near us, we worked toward it. July 23rd, the captain’s sights
showed no change in our latitude since the 16th; in that time between
our own efforts and the erratic drift, we had been taken twenty-eight
miles due west and were now fairly close to our new island. We
struggled along toward it over badly moving ice, but at least this ice
was firm and many of the floes were large. Collins finally shot another
seal, but it sank before the dinghy could get to it, and we sadly saw
our visions of a second feast dissolve into cold water. Next morning
we pitched camp as usual, with the land tantalizing us not three miles
off but mostly hidden in fog. Soon after turning in, the man on watch
shouted,
“Bear!” and instantly out of their sleeping bags popped Alexey and
Aneguin, eager to get the first bear sighted since our ship sank. We
heard a couple of shots, and our mouths began to water. Um-m! Bear
steaks for dinner! But it was all wasted for soon the two Indians were
back, empty-handed and disgusted. The bear had been in such excellent
trim that they had had to fire at a thousand yards on a rapidly
reciprocating target as that bear humped himself over the ice, and they
had of course missed. However, it didn’t matter much, claimed Alexey,
as the bear was only a dirty brown one and not very big, a remark which
prompted the captain to ask innocently,
“Sour grapes, Alexey?” but Alexey only looked at him puzzled. Grapes,
sour or otherwise, never grew in his latitudes, so I’m afraid he missed
the point. Quieting our disappointed stomachs as best we could, once
more we turned in. But we got the bear. In the late afternoon, Seaman
Görtz, who had the watch the while the rest of us slept, spotted him
once again. This time Görtz kept his mouth shut while the bear advanced
to within five hundred yards of our camp, and then, unnoticed, our
lookout managed to crawl within a hundred yards of him to plant two
bullets in that bear where they did the most good!
Now that we had him, he turned out to be a very fine bear indeed, even
Alexey admitting that ungrudgingly, and soon the air over that floe was
filled with an appetizing aroma of sizzling bear steaks that fairly
intoxicated us. We envied no man on earth his evening meal that night
as, disdaining pemmican, we gorged ourselves on bear. But we needed it.
When we broke camp and started for the island ahead, we found ourselves
with nothing but moving ice over which to work our sledges.
For two days, mostly in fog, we fought our way toward that island, with
the floes breaking under us, sliding away from us, and the whole pack
alive around us. A gale blew up, and on the off side of the hummocks
about us, a bad surf broke and kept us drenched. Finally on the third
day, we found ourselves opposite the dimly visible western tip of the
island, with nothing but a forlorn chance left of ever making the solid
ground that so desperately we ached to rest ourselves on. With but a
few hundred yards remaining before the pack finally drifted us past it
forever, we sighted ahead a long floe of heavy blue ice extending in
toward the land, with only a few openings between the floe and ours.
We bridged the gaps, bounced our sledges and boats over, and made good
a mile and a half across that floe. There we found more broken ice and
water, which with difficulty we started to cross in the fog by passing
a line to a floe beyond and using a smaller cake as a ferryboat, when
suddenly the fog lifted and there over our heads, some 2500 feet high,
towered a huge cliff, and sweeping past it as in a millrace were the
floes on which we rode!
We finished our ferry, ending on a moderate-sized floe drifting
rapidly past the fixed ice piled up at the base of the cliff, with the
southwest cape, our last slim chance to make the land, not far off. For
over two weeks we had dragged and struggled toward that island; now in
despair we found ourselves being helplessly swept by it!
Our little floe, covered with sledges, men and dogs, whirled and eddied
in the race, spinning crazily, and threatening to break up any moment,
when we noted that if only it should make the next spin in the right
direction, it might touch a corner against the ice fringing the land.
We waited breathlessly. It did!
“Away, Chipp!” shouted De Long, and in an instant our sledges started
to move off that spinning floe. The first got away perfectly, the
second nearly went overboard, the third sledge shot into the sea,
carrying Cole with it, and the fourth was only saved by Erichsen who,
with superhuman strength, shoved an ice cake in for a bridge. We
couldn’t get the boat sledges over; our floe was already starting to
crack up. Working frenziedly as it broke, the few of us left on the
floe pushed the boats, their sledges still under them, off into the
water and the men already landed started to haul the boats over to
them, when away drifted the last remnant of that ice cake, carrying
with it De Long, Iversen, Aneguin and me, together with six dogs! For
a few minutes we were in a bad way, threatening to drift clear of the
island on that tiny ice cake with no food, except perhaps the dogs;
while the men ashore ran wildly along the ice-foot, unable to help us
in any manner.
Fortunately for us, a little further along a swirl drove our floe in
against a grounded berg for a second and dogs and all, we made a wild
leap for it; successfully too, for only three of us landed in the
water. Aneguin, the Indian, proved the best broad jumper. He landed
safely enough on the berg and dragged the rest of us up and out.
Soon reunited again, behind our dripping captain the entire ship’s
company straggled across the ice-foot to solid ground (the steep face
of the cliff), where clinging to the precipice with one hand, the
captain for the third time on our voyage displayed his silken banner,
proudly rammed its staff for a moment into the soil, and exclaimed,
“Men, this is newly discovered land. I therefore take possession of it
in the name of the President of the United States, and name it,
“BENNETT ISLAND!”
The men, most of them (except the five who had landed with me on
Henrietta Island) with their feet on solid ground for the first time in
two years, cheered lustily. Jack Cole then sang out,
“All hands, now. Three cheers fer Cap’n De Long!” in which all again
joined except Collins and (for the first time in his life managing to
keep his mouth shut when anybody gave him an order) Newcomb.
But our happy captain, not noticing that, turned to his executive
officer and jocularly remarked,
“We’ve been a long time afloat, Mr. Chipp. You may now give the men all
the shore leave they wish on American soil!”
It was July 28th when we landed; we stayed a week on Bennett Island,
resting mainly, while Nindemann and Sweetman worked strenuously
repairing our boats. All were badly damaged and unseaworthy from the
pounding they had received in the pack. The whaleboat especially, our
longest boat, had suffered severely and every plank in its stern was
sprung wide open. Sweetman did the best he could in hurrying repairs,
pouring grease into the leaking seams and refastening planks, but it
was a slow job nevertheless.
While this was going on, the men explored Bennett Island, which we
found to be of considerable extent (we never got to its northwest
cape), probably thirty miles long and over ten miles wide, very
mountainous, with many glaciers, running streams, no game we ever saw,
and thousands of birds nesting on the cliffs. This island, at least
three times the size of Henrietta Island, nicely finished off the
honors due the Bennett family, for we now had one each for Mr. Bennett,
his sister, and his mother.
Geologically, we found the island interesting. I discovered a thick
vein of bituminous coal, and Dr. Ambler found many deposits of amethyst
crystals, but what took our fancy most were the birds. We knocked down
innumerable murres with stones, which, fried in bear’s grease, we ate
with great relish. But they proved too much for Dr. Ambler’s stomach,
laying him in his tent for over a day.
On August 4th, with the boats all repaired, we made ready to leave. To
the southward of Bennett Island, the pack looked to us badly broken up
with enough large water openings to make it seem that thereafter we
could proceed mostly in the boats among drifting floes, keeping the
sledges for use when required. To this end, since the dogs would be
less necessary and feeding them on our pemmican an unwarranted further
drain on our stores, De Long ordered ten broken-down dogs to be shot to
avoid their suffering should we abandon them, keeping only the twelve
best for future sledging, including husky Snoozer who was by now quite
the captain’s pet.
By sledge over the pack we had travelled almost exactly a hundred miles
in a straight line from where the _Jeannette_ had sunk to Bennett
Island, though over the winding track as we actually crossed the
drifting ice we had dragged our sledges more than a hundred and eighty
miles and in so doing had ourselves tramped far beyond a thousand
miles on foot. We prepared hopefully to rely from then on mainly on
our boats, and for this purpose the captain rearranged the parties,
breaking up the sledge and tent groups in which we previously had
journeyed.
Into the first cutter with himself he took a total of thirteen—Dr.
Ambler, Mr. Collins, Nindemann, Erichsen, Kaack, Boyd, Alexey, Lee,
Noros, Dressler, Görtz and Iversen.
Into the second cutter (a smaller boat) under Lieutenant Chipp’s
command, he put ten—Mr. Dunbar, Sweetman, Sharvell, Kuehne, Starr,
Manson (later transferred to my boat), Warren, Johnson, and Ah Sam (who
later to lighten still further the second cutter, was transferred to De
Long’s boat).
Into the whaleboat, of which he gave me the command, also went
ten—Lieutenant Danenhower, Mr. Newcomb, Cole, Bartlett, Aneguin,
Wilson, Lauterbach, Leach, and Tong Sing.
Thus we made ready, with De Long commanding the largest and roomiest
boat, Chipp commanding the smallest boat, and me in command of the
whaleboat, considerably our longest craft though not our greatest in
carrying capacity. And promptly there flared up in the Arctic an echo
of that Line and Staff officer controversy agitating our Navy at home.
(At home, it lasted until the Spanish War showed that we engineers were
as important in winning battles as deck officers, and maybe more so.)
I, as an engineer officer, belonged to the Staff; Danenhower, as a deck
officer, belonged to the Line, which alone maintained the claim to
actual command of vessels afloat. A whaleboat was not much of a vessel,
but nevertheless Danenhower, when he heard of the assignments, promptly
informed me he was going to protest to the captain.
“Go ahead, Dan,” I said. “That’s perfectly all right with me.” So the
navigator went to the captain to object to a staff officer being given
command while he, a line officer, was put under my orders. In that
congested camp on Bennett Island, he didn’t have far to go to find the
skipper.
“Captain,” asked Dan, “what’s my status in the whaleboat?”
“You are on the sicklist, sir,” replied De Long.
“Who has command of the boat?” persisted Dan.
“Mr. Melville, under my general command.”
“And in case of a separation of the boats?” questioned the navigator.
“Suppose we lose you?”
“In that case,” said the captain, “Mr. Melville has my written orders
to command that boat and what to do with her.”
“Am I under his orders?”
“Yes, so far as it may be necessary for you to receive orders from him.”
“But that puts me under the orders of a staff officer!” objected Dan
strenuously.
“Well, you’re unfit to take command of the boat yourself,” pointed out
the skipper. “You can’t see, Mr. Danenhower. I can’t put you on duty
now. So long as you remain on the sicklist, you will be assigned to no
military control whatever.”
“Why can’t I be put in a boat with a line officer, then?” asked Dan,
the idea of having to report to a staff officer rankling badly.
“Because I have no line officer left to put in that boat with you, and
because I have seen fit so to distribute our party. I want one line
officer in each boat. In an emergency, Mr. Melville may wish to have
your advice on matters of seamanship.”
“Well then,” replied Danenhower vehemently, “I remonstrate against
being kept on the sicklist.”
“But you’re sick and that’s nonsensical,” said De Long curtly.
“Why, sir, haven’t I the right to remonstrate?”
“You have, and I’ve heard you, and your remonstrance has no effect,”
replied the captain bluntly. “I’ve had the anxiety of your care and
preservation for two years and your coming to me on these points now
is simply an annoyance. I will not assign you to duty till you’re
fit for it, and that will be when the doctor discharges you from the
sicklist. I will not put other people’s lives in jeopardy by committing
them to your charge, and I consider your urging me to do so is very
un-officer-like conduct.”
Taken aback at this barbed comment on his complaint, Danenhower asked
hesitantly,
“Am I to take that as a private reprimand?”
“You can take it any way you please, Mr. Danenhower,” concluded the
irritated De Long, walking away to supervise the loading of the first
cutter, leaving the crestfallen navigator no alternative but to come
back to join me in the whaleboat.
“Don’t take it so hard, Dan,” I suggested. “Too bad about your eyes,
of course, but it can’t be helped now. We’ve always been the best of
friends and we’re not going to let this change things. As long as
you’re in the whaleboat, you can count on me, old man, not to say or do
anything that’ll hurt your feelings as an officer. Hop in, now; we’re
shoving off!”
Already delayed two days by bad weather, on August 6th we got away from
Bennett Island, with intense satisfaction, though the wind had died
away, being able to get underway in our boats under oars, carrying the
sledges and our twelve remaining dogs. The boats, of course, packed
with men, food, records, sledges, and dogs, were heavily overloaded and
in no condition to stand rough weather, but we had smooth water and
we made two miles before bringing up against a large ice island. Here
we lost most of our dogs, who not liking water anyway, and objecting
still more to the unavoidable mauling they were getting in the crowded
boats from the swinging oars, promptly deserted the moment they saw ice
again, by leaping out on the floe, and we were unable to catch them.
We worked around the ice pack in the boats, by evening getting to its
southern side, where we camped on the ice, with five miles between us
and Bennett Island, a good day’s work and a heaven-sent relief from
sledging.
The weather was startlingly clear. Looking back, we got a marvelous
view of the island. When we had first reached it in late July, its
appearance was quite summery with mossy slopes and running streams,
but now winter had hit it with a vengeance. Everything on it was
snow-covered and the streams were freezing. We regarded it with
foreboding. The first week of August and the brief Arctic summer was
fading away, with four hundred miles before us still to go on our
journey to the Lena Delta. We must hurry, or the open leads we now had
for the boats would all soon freeze over.
For two weeks we stood on to the southwest, boating and sledging.
With luck in pushing away the ice with boathooks, we might make five
or six miles between broken floes before we met a pack we could not
get through afloat, when it was a case of unload the boats, mount
them on their sledges, and drag across the ice. By the second day of
this, we were down to two dogs, Snoozer and Kasmatka, all the rest
having deserted, but these two special favorites were kept tied and
so prevented from decamping. The boat work, whether under sail or
oars, was hard labor. There was no open sea, merely leads in the open
pack, and over most of these leads, the weather was now cold enough to
freeze ice a quarter of an inch thick over night. We found we could
not row through this, so the leading boat, usually the first cutter,
had to break a way, and all day long men were poised in her bows with
boathooks and oars breaking up the ice ahead. And we had before us
several hundred miles of this!
The weather was bad, mostly fog, snow squalls, and some gales, but
because of the vast amount of floating ice, there was no room for a
heavy sea to kick up, and when a moderate sea rose, we always hauled
out on the nearest floe. And so camping on the ice at night, hauling
out for dinner, and making what we could under sail or oars in between
when we were not sledging over the pack, we stood on to the southwest
for the New Siberian Islands. At the end of one week’s journeying,
the snowfalls became frequent and heavy, troubling us greatly, though
they did provide us with good drinking water which was an improvement
over the semi-salted snow we got on the main pack. By now it was the
middle of August, sixty days since we had left the _Jeannette_, and the
expiration of the period for which originally we had provided food. We
were hundreds of miles from our destination, and our food was getting
low. Of course had it not been for our going on short rations soon
after our start, our position would now be precarious, since the few
seals, birds, and the solitary bear we got, while luxurious breaks in
our menu so long as they lasted (which wasn’t long) meant little in the
way of quantity.
By August 16th, nine days underway from Bennett Island, we had made
only forty miles—not very encouraging. Next day we did better—ten
miles under sail with only one break, but the day after, it was once
more all pulling with the oars and smashing ice ahead and slow work
again. But on August 19th we saw so much open water that we joyfully
imagined we were near the open sea at last. We loosed our sails and
until noon went swiftly onward with the intention of getting dinner in
our boats for the first time without hauling out on the ice, and then
continuing on all night also. Suddenly astern of us we saw Chipp’s boat
hastily douse sail, run in against a floe, and promptly start to unload.
There was nothing for the rest of us (cursing fluently at the delay)
to do except to round to and secure to the ice till Chipp came up,
and long before he had managed that, the ice came down on us from all
sides before a northeast wind, so that shortly it looked as if there
was nothing but ice in the world. Chipp finally sledged his boat over
the pack to join us and we learned the ice had closed on him suddenly,
stove a bad hole in his port bow, and he had to haul out hurriedly to
keep from sinking.
By three p.m., Chipp had his boat repaired, using a piece of pemmican
can for a patch, and we were again ready. Each boat had its sledge, a
heavy oaken affair, slung athwartships across the gunwales just forward
of the mast. Abaft that, the boats were jammed with men and supplies,
the result being that they were both badly overloaded and topheavy.
With great difficulty we poled our way through ice drifts packed about
us to more open water and made sail again before a freshening breeze,
De Long in the first cutter leading, my whaleboat in the middle, and
Chipp with the second cutter astern of all. We felt we must be nearing
the northerly coasts of the New Siberian Islands, which we hoped to
sight any moment and perhaps even reach by night.
The breeze grew stronger and the sea started to kick up. My whaleboat
began to roll badly, taking in water over the gunwales, and at the
tiller I found it difficult to hold her steady on the course, though
with some bailing we got along fairly well, and so it seemed to me did
the first cutter ahead. But the second cutter astern, the shortest
boat of the three, was behaving very badly in that sea—rolling
heavily, sticking her nose into the waves instead of rising to them,
and evidently making considerable water. Hauling away a little on
my quarter and drawing up so he could hail the captain ahead, Chipp
bellowed down the wind,
“Captain! I’ve either got to haul out on the ice or heave overboard
this sledge! If I don’t, I’ll swamp!”
De Long decided to haul out. He waved to Chipp and me (he being to
leeward, we couldn’t hear him) indicating that we were to haul out on a
floe nearby on our lee side. The near side of that floe, its windward
side, had a bad surf breaking over the ice, so we tried to weather a
point on the floe and get around to its lee where we could see a safe
cove to haul out in, but our unwieldy boats would not sail close enough
to the wind, and we failed to make it. Chipp’s case by this time was
desperate; his boat was badly flooded and in spite of all the bailing
his men could do, the waterlogged cutter seemed ready to sink under
him. There was nothing for it but to land on the weather side of the
ice, which dangerous maneuver, with a rolling sea breaking badly on the
floe and shooting surf high into the air, was skilfully accomplished
without, to our intense relief, smashing all our boats beyond repair.
The gale grew worse. It was now 7:30 P.M. and beginning to get dark.
(Between the later season of the year and our being farther south, we
no longer had the midnight sun with us, but instead about eight hours
of darkness.) There was no hope of further progress that night, so we
pitched camp on the floe, while the gale started to push ice in about
us from all directions.
That night before supper, the captain called Chipp and me to his tent.
The question for discussion was the boat sledges. We had since leaving
Bennett Island broken up all our other provision sledges and burned
them for fuel. Chipp strenuously insisted that the boat sledges be
treated likewise immediately.
“Captain,” he said, “I’m surprised I’m here to talk about it even! My
boat’s so topheavy with that sledge across her rails, a dozen times I
thought she’d either founder or capsize. And a man can’t swim a minute
in these clothes in that ice water. If she’d sunk under me, long before
you or the chief could’ve beat back against that wind to pick us up,
we’d all be gone!”
With Chipp’s facts, honestly enough stated, De Long was inclined to
agree and so was I, but the question was too serious to be decided out
of hand. On our first journey across the pack, the sledges were our
salvation, and it was the heavy boats (holding us back like anchors)
which we then gravely considered abandoning lest our party perish
before we ever reached water. Now the situation was reversed; it was
those boats, dragged across the ice at the cost of indescribable agony,
which had become our main hope of escape, but still could we afford to
abandon the sledges which so obviously now imperilled our safety in
the boats? We were not yet out of the pack; one had only to poke his
head through the tent flap to see as much ice as ever we had seen. And
if we had to sledge over much more of the pack to get south, without
those boat sledges we couldn’t do it. What then should be done with the
sledges?
With our lives very likely depending on that decision, we considered
it deeply. The conclusion, concurred in by all, was that the certainty
of disaster if we kept the sledges, outweighed the possibility of
being now caught permanently in pack ice, unable to move except by
sledging, and De Long finally give the order to burn the sledges. In
a few minutes, knives and hatchets in the hands of sailors eager to
make an end of those incubi before the captain could change his mind,
had reduced them to kindling and they were burning merrily beneath our
pots. No man regretted seeing them go who had toiled in the harnesses
dragging them and their bulky burden of boats across the ice pack,
laboring as men have never done before, and as I hope may never have to
again.
Further to help Chipp, the captain in expectation next morning of a
long voyage among the New Siberian Islands, decided to even matters
somewhat more by removing from Chipp’s stubby cutter, only sixteen
feet long, part of its load. Accordingly he decreased its crew by two
men, taking Ah Sam (our Chinese cook who had since the sinking of the
_Jeannette_ with nothing but pemmican on the menu, not cooked a meal,
serving instead only as a beast of burden like all others) into the
first cutter with him, and sending Manson, a husky Swedish seaman, to
join my crew in the whaleboat. In addition, De Long took into the first
cutter part of Chipp’s supply of pemmican, still more to lighten his
boat which was certainly a worse sea boat than either my twenty-five
foot long whaleboat or his own twenty foot long cutter.
With these rearrangements, we camped for the night in the midst of a
howling gale drifting snow about our tents, the while we earnestly
hoped that the wind would break up the pack in the morning, and allow
us to proceed.
But instead, for ten wearing days we lay in that camp, unable to launch
a boat and unable of course to sledge them over the broken pack, while
the weather varied between gales with heavy snow and dismal fogs, and
we ate our hearts out in inaction, watching our scanty food supplies
constantly melting away with no progress to show for it. Our hard bread
gave out altogether, our coffee was all used up, and our menu came down
to two items only, pemmican and tea three times a day, with an ounce
of our fast-vanishing lime-juice for breakfast to ward off scurvy. To
save what little alcohol we had left (we had been using it for fuel for
making tea and coffee) we continued to burn up the kindling from our
boat sledges, but long before we broke camp, even that was all gone,
and we started again on our precious alcohol.
The tobacco gave out (each man had been permitted to take one pound
with him from the _Jeannette_). To the captain, an inveterate pipe
smoker, this was a severe trial and left him perfectly wretched, till
Erichsen, who still had a trifle left, generously shared with him the
contents of his pouch. De Long declined to take more than a pipeful,
but Erichsen insisting on an even division of his trifling remnant, the
skipper found he had enough for three smokes. Immediately seeking out
the doctor and Nindemann, he divided with them and together they puffed
on their pipes, in a mixed state of happiness and despair watching the
last tobacco from the _Jeannette_ curling upward in smoke wreaths into
the Arctic air.
Next day, like the others, they were smoking used tea leaves and
getting little solace from them.
Our second day in this camp, through a rift in the fog we sighted land
twenty miles to the southward, in the captain’s opinion the island of
New Siberia, one of the largest islands of the New Siberian group and
the one farthest eastward in that archipelago.
As the days went by and in the fog and snow we drifted westward with
the pack before an easterly gale, the knowledge of that unapproachable
island added to our aggravations. We could do little except repair our
boats (which, using pemmican tallow, rags, and lampwick for caulking
materials, Nindemann and Sweetman labored at) and wait for the pack to
open, a constant watch night and day being set with orders that if a
lead appeared, we should immediately launch our boats into it. But none
showed up. In desperation at the delay, which was bringing us face to
face with the prospect of starvation, De Long again sent for Chipp and
me.
“Mr. Chipp,” he asked, “can you move your boat across this ice to the
land?”
“No,” said Chipp flatly. “It’ll stave in her bottom trying to ride her
on her keel.”
“Mr. Melville,” turning to me, “can you get the whaleboat across?
Is this any worse than when you landed with the dinghy on Henrietta
Island?”
“Captain,” I replied sadly, “no worse, but it’s as bad; the ice is just
as much alive. And I didn’t take the little dinghy to Henrietta Island,
even on her sledge; I left her at the edge of the moving pack. I can
get the whaleboat across this ice to that island if you order me, sir,
but when she gets there, she’ll be worthless as a boat.”
“Well, in that case,” remarked De Long, bitterly disappointed at our
views, “it’s no use taking them there.” And while he didn’t voice it,
there was little question but that he deeply regretted having ever cut
up the boat sledges. In my opinion, however, sledges or no sledges, we
couldn’t safely get those boats through to the land over that swirling
ice between. We started to leave.
“Hold on a moment,” ordered De Long, pulling a book out from under his
parka, “there’s something else.” He pushed his head out the tent flap,
called to the man on watch in the snow. “Send Seaman Starr in here!”
In a moment or two, Starr, with his snow-flecked bulk practically
filling the tent, stood beside us. The captain opened the book. It was
in German, one of Petermann’s publications, the best we had on New
Siberia and the Lena Delta. Starr, aside from his Russian, could also
read German, and as he translated, De Long, Chipp, and I followed on
the chart, putting down Petermann’s data on the islands, and especially
on the Lena Delta, where near Cape Barkin were marked winter huts
and settlements, a signal station similar to a lighthouse, and the
indication that there we could get native pilots to take us up the
Lena. At this time the captain warned me that should we be separated,
Cape Barkin was to be our rendezvous. At that point the delta formed a
right-angled corner. To the westward from Cape Barkin, the coast ran
due west; but at the cape itself, the coast turned and ran sharply
south for over a hundred miles, while through both the northern and the
eastern faces of this corner-like delta, the Lena discharged in many
branches to the sea. But Cape Barkin at this corner we must make—there
between the pilots and the settlements shown by Petermann, our voyage
would end and our troubles would be over. The remainder of our journey
home would merely be a tedious and probably a slow trip on reindeer
sledges southward from the Siberian coast inland fifteen hundred miles
to Irkutsk, then a long jaunt westward by post coaches to Moscow, and
so back to America. The captain marked it all out, made two copies of
his chart, one for me and one for Chipp, and then dismissing Starr,
told us,
“There are your charts with the courses laid out to Cape Barkin. As
I informed you in my written order at Bennett Island, Melville, if
unfortunately we are separated, you will continue on till you make the
mouth of the Lena River, and without delay ascend the Lena to a Russian
settlement from which you can be forwarded with your party to a place
of safety and easy access. Try to reach some settlement large enough
to feed and shelter your men before thinking about waiting for me. And
the same for you, Chipp. That’s all, gentlemen. Be ready to start the
instant the ice breaks.” He drew out his pipe, ending the discussion.
We took our charts and departed, leaving the skipper trying to light
off a pipeful of damp tea leaves.
On August 29th, after ten days of fuming in idleness during which
time our pack drifted first westward and then southward, the weather
cleared a bit and we found ourselves between Fadejovski and New Siberia
Islands, and closer to Fadejovski, the western one of the pair. At
noon, Dunbar scouting on the pack, reported a lead half a mile away.
Immediately we broke camp, and carrying our provisions on our backs
while we carefully skidded our boats along on their keels, we dragged
across that half mile of floe to the water and launched our boats,
thankful even for the chance the remainder of the afternoon to fight
our way through swirling ice cakes to the southward. The drift in
that lead was rapid, the broken ice there was violently tumbling and
eddying, and as we swept down the bleak coast five miles off Fadejovski
Island unsheltered from the intense cold, with oars and boat hooks
savagely fending off those heaving floes on all sides of us to keep
our frail boats from being crushed, it was like making passage through
the very gates of hell! For two horrible days we worked along the
coast fighting off impending death in that swirling maelstrom of ice,
when with the pack thinning somewhat, we managed at last to work our
way to land on the southerly end of Fadejovski, three weeks underway
since leaving Bennett Island, and humbly grateful to find ourselves
disembarking still alive.
We stayed one night on a mossy slope trying to thaw our frozen feet by
tramping on something other than ice, and as Dunbar expressively put
it, “Sanding our hoofs.” They needed it. The most pleased member of our
party was Snoozer, now our sole remaining dog, who joyously tore round
chasing lemmings, while we sought for real game which we didn’t find.
And that night was served out our last ration of lime-juice which so
heroically salvaged by Starr from the sinking _Jeannette_, had shielded
us from scurvy for two and a half months on our tramp over the ice.
But we saw the last drops of that unsavory medicine disappear without
regret and without foreboding for the future, for now we were nearing
the open sea and our voyage was nearing its end.
Next morning we shoved off from the south end of Fadejovski, only to
discover despondently that we had embarked on a twelve days’ odyssey
through the New Siberian Archipelago before which our previous
sufferings seemed nothing. We had not wholly lost the ice; instead we
had only added to our previous perils some new ones—vast hidden shoals,
bitter freezing weather, long nights of sitting motionless and cramped
in our open boats, while the Arctic winds mercilessly pierced our
unshielded bodies, and the hourly dread of drowning in a gale.
It was seventy miles over the sea to Kotelnoi, the next island westward
in the group. To get there, instead of being able to sail directly
west, we found we had to stand far to the southward of Fadejovski to
clear a shoal, getting out of sight of land. When night caught us far
out in the open sea, we discovered even there shoals with less than two
feet of water, over which a heavy surf was breaking badly. Standing off
into deeper water, we beat all night into the wind to save ourselves
from destruction, for we had no anchors in our boats. Wet, miserable,
frozen by spray coming over, we stayed in the boats, so crowded we
could not move our freezing legs. At dawn we stood on again westward,
with streaming ice bobbing all about us, traveling before a fresh
breeze all day. In the late afternoon, having lost sight of Chipp and
the second cutter, his boat being unable to keep up, we finally spotted
a floe sizeable enough to camp on. De Long signalled me to stop; we
promptly secured to it and waited for Chipp to catch up, meanwhile for
the first time in thirty-six hours stretching our wet forms out in our
sleeping bags on the ice, while a gale blew up, snow fell, and the sea
got very rough, which gave us grave concern over our missing boat.
By daylight there was so much pack ice surrounding our two boats, it
seemed unbelievable we had arrived there by water, and our anxiety
for Chipp increased. We lay all day icebound, all night, and all next
day, occasionally sighting the mountains on Kotelnoi Island, perhaps
ten miles to the westward. And then Chipp and the second cutter finally
showed up, coasting the north side of our floe, half a mile away across
the pack, and soon Chipp and Kuehne, walking across the ice, were with
us. They had had a terrible time the night we lost them; long before
they sighted any floes, the gale caught them, and over the stern where
Chipp and Dunbar sat steering, icy seas tumbled so badly that all hands
bailing hardly kept the boat afloat till they finally found a drifting
floe. When at last he steered in under the lee of the ice, but one man,
Starr, was still able to jump from the boat and hold her in with the
painter while the others, badly frozen, could barely crawl out over
the gunwale. He himself and Dunbar in the sternsheets found themselves
so cramped from sitting at the tiller that they could not even crawl
and had to be lifted by Starr from the boat. To warm up his men, Chipp
had served out immediately two ounces of brandy each, but Dunbar was
so far gone that he promptly threw his up and fainted. The second day,
underway again, he had kept westward for thirty miles before sighting
us in the late afternoon, and there he was, with his crew badly
knocked out, in the open water on the edge of the pack surrounding us
completely.
To get underway next morning, there was nothing for it but to move our
two boats over the ice to where Chipp’s was, and with no sledges, we
faced that portage over bad ice with deep trepidation. Five men, headed
by Nindemann, went ahead with our solitary pick-ax and some carpenter’s
chisels to level a road. We carried all our clothes and knapsacks on
our backs, but De Long dared not take the pemmican cans from the boats,
for so scanty was our food supply getting that the chance of any man’s
stumbling and losing a can of pemmican down a crack in the ice was a
major tragedy not to be risked. So food and all, the boats had to be
skidded on their keels over the ice, leaving long strips of oak peeled
off the keels by the sharp floe edges as we dragged along. As carefully
as we could, all hands at a time on one boat, we lightered them along
that half mile, and when after seven fearful hours of labor we got them
into the water, it was with unmitigated joy we saw they still floated.
We made a hasty meal of cold pemmican, and all hands embarked. De Long,
last off to board his cutter, was bracing himself on the floe edge to
climb aboard, when the ice gave way beneath him, and he went overboard,
disappearing completely beneath the surface. Fortunately, Erichsen in
the cockpit got a grip on him while he was still totally submerged (for
he might not ever have risen except under the widespread pack) and
hauled him, completely soaked to the skin, in over the stern. Without
delay, except to wipe the water from his eyes, the captain signalled us
to make sail.
We fought again fog, ice, and shoals for six hours more to cover the
last ten miles to Kotelnoi, and when night finally caught us, all we
knew was that we were on a sandbank where we gladly pitched camp, in
total ignorance of whether we had made the island itself or an offshore
bank and caring less so long as we could stop. We found some driftwood
on the bank, made a fire, and soon, most of all the captain still in
his soaked clothes, we were trying to warm ourselves around it. So
ended September 4th.
The next two days we tried to struggle west along the south coast of
Kotelnoi, largest island of the archipelago, but a blinding snow-storm
and ice closing in held us to our sand spit. Going inshore, some of
the men found the long-deserted huts of the fossil ivory hunters, and
even a few elephant tusks, but not a trace of game, and our supply of
pemmican kept on shrinking.
Signs of physical breakdown were becoming plain enough in our company.
Our rations were slender and unsatisfying. Long hours on end of sitting
cramped and soaked in wet clothes and icy water, often unable in the
overcrowded boats even to stretch a leg to relieve it, no chance in
the boats to stretch out and sleep at all, and the mental strain of
working those small boats in tumbling seas and through tossing ice,
were beginning to tell. On the pack at least, each night we could camp
and stretch ourselves in our bags to rest after each day of toil; now
except when bailing, we were compelled to endure the cold motionless.
Captain De Long’s feet were giving way. Swollen with cold and with
toes broken out with chilblains, he could barely move about, and then
only in great pain. Dunbar looked older than ever, fainted frequently,
and the doctor said his heart showed a weakness that might carry him
off under any strain. De Long admonished the ice-pilot to give up all
work and take things easy, but even merely sitting up in the boat
was a strain which could not be avoided. To keep him braced up, the
doctor gave him a flask of brandy with orders to use it regularly.
Danenhower’s eyes continued the same—poor, but with one eye at least
partly usable when the sun did not shine, which fortunately for Dan in
all that fog and snow was most of the time. But Dan continued to pester
the doctor to put him off the sicklist, driving Ambler nearly wild that
he should be nagged to consider such an unethical request. Others too
began to complain—Erichsen of his feet, Cole of a general dullness in
his head. As for all the rest of us, gaunt and underfed, with seamed
and cracked faces, untrimmed whiskers, haggard eyes, shivering bodies,
and raw and bleeding hands and feet, against a really well man we would
have stood out as objects of horror, but there being none such amongst
us, our appearance excited no special comment among ourselves.
Our third day on Kotelnoi, we managed to work a few miles to the
westward along the coast, rowing and dragging our boats along the sand,
making perhaps thirteen miles inshore of the ice pack which we could
not penetrate to the sea beyond. But on September 7th, before an early
morning northeast breeze with the temperature well below freezing,
the pack opened up and we sailed away through drifting ice streaming
before the wind, for Stolbovoi Island, sixty-five miles southwest. By
noon, I concluded that somehow I must have stove in the bottom of my
boat, for we were making water faster than it could be bailed and the
boat started to sink. Signalling the others, I hastily ran alongside a
nearby floe, where my crew had a lively time getting the whaleboat up
on the ice before she went from under us. Capsizing her to learn the
damage, I was much relieved to find we had only knocked the plug up out
of the drain hole. We found the plug beneath the overturned boat, tried
it again in the hole, and found it projected through an inch. Evidently
bumping on some ice beneath the bilge had knocked it out, so I sawed
off the projection to prevent a recurrence, righted and floated my boat
again. Meanwhile being on the ice, we all had dinner and shoved off
again.
With a fair breeze, we stood southwest for Stolbovoi Island, fifty
miles off now. The breeze freshened and we made good progress, too good
indeed for Chipp and the second cutter, as both De Long and I had to
double reef our sails to avoid completely losing Chipp astern again.
The sea increased somewhat, the boats rolled badly, and we had to bail
continuously, but as we were getting along toward the Lena, that didn’t
worry us, nor did the fact that being poor sailors, Collins, Newcomb,
and Ah Sam became deathly seasick again.
We kept on through the night, delayed a bit from midnight until dawn
by streaming ice we couldn’t see and cold, wet, and wretched as
usual. Several times during the night we were nearly smashed by being
hurled by surf against unseen floes. Once, under oars, I had to tow
the captain’s boat clear of a lee shore of ice from which he couldn’t
claw off, to save him from destruction. But after daybreak, we could
see better our dangers and avoid them in time, so that we stood on all
day till four in the afternoon, when having been underway thirty-three
hours in extreme danger and discomfort, the captain signalled to haul
out and camp on a solitary floe nearby. Long before this, we should
have hit Stolbovoi, but a shift in the wind had apparently carried us
by it to the north.
After a cold night on this floe, at four in the morning on September
9th we were again underway through rain and snow. By afternoon we were
picking a path through an immense field of drifting floes which luckily
we penetrated and got through to the southwest, when sighting a low
island to the westward, evidently Semenovski, the last island of the
New Siberian Archipelago between us and the Lena, we abandoned all idea
of searching to the southward for Stolbovoi which we had never sighted,
and headed west instead for Semenovski. As luck would have it, the wind
of which we had too much the day before to suit some members of our
party, now died away completely and out went our oars. Through a calm
sea we rowed the lumbering boats for six hours, warming up the oarsmen
at any rate, though horribly chafing their frozen hands. Then, a fog
setting in at 10 P.M., and it being impossible to see the other boats,
the captain sang out through the night to haul out on the ice, where by
candlelight we ate our pemmican.
Next day, September 10th, still rowing through the fog, we made
Semenovski by noon, and after a passage of one hundred and ten miles
from Kotelnoi, we beached our boats and camped for a much needed rest.
We were all of us stiff, frozen, and sore, but Dunbar especially was
quite feeble and looked indeed to be on his last legs.
Semenovski, a tiny island, was to be our last stop before crossing
ninety miles of open ocean to Cape Barkin on the Lena Delta, with
little chance on that leg of meeting any floes large enough to haul out
on for shelter in case the sea kicked up. So while a few men went out
with rifles to look for game, we turned to in a final effort to make
our boats more seaworthy for this last ocean leg, our experiences so
far in rough water strongly indicating the need for improvement. On my
whaleboat, I took the canvas boat cover, and by nailing it firmly to
both bows and securing it tightly around the mast, I decked over my
bow, forming a sort of canvas forecastle. The rest of the boat cover,
from the mast aft to the stern, I split in half lengthwise, giving me
two long strips of canvas which I nailed fore and aft to the sides.
Then making a set of small stanchions which were lashed to the gunwale
on each side as supports, I had both starboard and port a flexible
canvas weathercloth eighteen inches high which the men on the windward
side could hold up with their backs against the fixed stanchions, in
effect raising our rail eighteen inches above the gunwale on either or
both sides, but allowing us to drop the weatherscreens instantly should
it become necessary to get out the oars. Cole and Bartlett did this
work on my whaleboat. Nindemann on the first cutter, and Sweetman on
the second cutter, fitted them out in a generally similar manner.
While this was going on, our hunters, accompanied by a dozen others as
beaters, spread across the narrow island and started to sweep it from
north to south. They soon started up a doe and its fawn, which fled
in fright, but before long a rifle shot knocked down the doe which,
quickly tossed over a small cliff onto the beach, was brought in a
boat to our camp. Needless to say, all else was suspended, driftwood
gathered, and at four o’clock, though it was long before our supper
hour, we turned to on a pound of venison steak apiece, which I have
little doubt surprised our astonished stomachs, as, accompanied by hot
tea, it went down our throats instead of the usual pemmican. That held
us until 8 P.M., when we had our regular supper (slightly delayed),
consisting of somewhat more than a pound each this time of roast deer,
which cleaned up the deer completely except for her bones. Out of these
we intended to make soup next day, all except one meaty bone which went
to the overjoyed Snoozer. And with that, we felt well fed for the first
time since Görtz provided us with bear steaks a month and a half before
off Bennett Island, bear steaks so far removed from us now in point
of time and suffering between, that it seemed almost in a previous
incarnation we must have enjoyed that bear!
During our second supper, it blew up half a gale and started to snow,
so the captain announced that since the next day was Sunday, instead of
getting underway, we would rest on Semenovski, finish our boat work,
and if we could, get that fawn, shoving off Monday for the Lena. I
thought this suited all hands, but apparently it didn’t for I heard
Collins grumbling to Bartlett,
“Losing over a day for the sake of a feed of meat!”
I looked at the sullen Collins curiously. Whatever the captain did or
didn’t do was wrong with him. Yet he had downed his “feed of meat” as
voraciously as anybody, but perhaps since he expected to taste it again
when he heaved it up after we got into the tossing boats, another feed
didn’t mean as much to him as to a sailor.
Sunday, as on every Sunday without exception which we had passed
whether on the pack or in the boats since the _Jeannette_ went down,
after mustering the crew and reading them the Articles of War, De Long
held Divine Service in his tent, attended as usual only by Chipp,
Ambler, Dunbar, Danenhower, and myself. Solemnly we listened, seamen
about to embark in frail shells for a long and dangerous voyage across
the open Arctic Sea, as De Long reverently read the service, and never
were we more sincere in our lives than when at the end our rough
voices, mingling with the freezing gale howling outside, rose in the
final fervent plea,
“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea!”