After four harrowing days in the whaleboat, the first two in the gale,
the second two fighting our way through offshore shoals in the open
ocean, we finally sighted land. Hungry, thirsty, frozen, we gazed as
hopefully across the sea at two low headlands barely showing above the
horizon as though they were the very gates of Heaven. Under oars, for
the wind at last had died away, we propelled our boat toward them,
and soon found ourselves between two low hills apparently forming the
mouth of a wide and muddy river running swiftly out into the sea. All
hands leaned over the gunwales, and finding the water sweet, we drank
greedily, regardless of mud, regardless of everything.
Where were we? Neither Danenhower nor I knew, but as that low and
barren coast trended north and south, I assumed we were on the eastern
side of the Lena Delta, how far south of Cape Barkin I could not tell.
But at least we had Siberia at last before us! My orders directed me
to land at Cape Barkin, where I should find native huts, but I had
had enough of the Arctic Sea for the present and for the future, and
with Barkin an unknown distance up an unknown coast, I decided to be
satisfied with the land I could see and proceed up the river before
me till I located some village there. So in spite of Danenhower’s
objections to my course, we rowed (that is, if the feeble efforts of
the half-dead sailors manning the oars could be called rowing) up the
broad river, constantly attempting to make a landing on either bank,
but always baffled by shoals which prevented us from getting within a
hundred yards of those flat and muddy shores.
Finally in the late evening after a gruelling day at the oars, we
spotted on one bank an abandoned hut, before which was a cove into
which we made our way thankfully, and for the first time in five days
landed to stretch our legs. I found that I could hardly move mine;
most of my men were in like case. Only Danenhower, whose blindness had
excused him from bailing, and Newcomb, who had most successfully evaded
it, had managed to keep their legs in shape so that they could walk.
The rest of us had practically to crawl from the boat.
Thinking to warm up and thaw out our blackened and frost-bitten feet,
we gathered driftwood, made a fire in the hut, and huddled round it,
stretched on the ground, with our numbed feet toward the fire. But
instead of helping, agonizing pains started to shoot from my paralyzed
feet as soon as the heat took effect, so stripping my legs for
examination, I found they were frozen from the knees down, terribly
swollen, covered with cracks, blisters, and sores all run together, and
with the skin sloughing off at the slightest touch. Excruciating pain
instead of sleep was my portion our first night ashore, and in place of
the eagerly awaited comfort which we had looked forward to in Siberia,
most of us writhed in pain, suffering the tortures of the damned.
At dawn, after a slim portion of pemmican washed down with muddy
tea, we launched our boat and set bravely out up the river to find
a village, only to discover instead that we were in a desolate maze
of shoals, swamps, and muddy islands forming the delta, with rivers,
sometimes swift and sometimes sluggish, crisscrossing erratically as
they flowed over the low delta lands to the sea. Young ice was forming
everywhere over river and swamp and through it with boathooks and oars
we had to smash a way for our bow. Three days of this we had to endure
alternating between slaving at the oars during the day and freezing at
night in our camps on the barren mud flats, while both night and day
we starved on scanty rations, and I finally began to despair of rescue.
Here we were on the Lena Delta, but of the many villages indicated on
Petermann’s charts, we could find no sign. Never a native did we see,
and the few huts we spotted now and then were all abandoned, their
owners having already retreated southward before the oncoming winter
which was rapidly robbing us of what little vitality remained in our
feeble bodies. Were we never to escape? Were all our sufferings to end
only in our deaths in the delta? Had we not already borne enough since
those harrowing years on the _Jeannette_ to be spared that? First the
torture of dragging boats and sledges over the pack, then the horrors
of navigating amidst the streaming ice of the New Siberian Archipelago,
finally that four-day nightmare of tumbling waves and freezing spray
in the open whaleboat battling an Arctic gale—was all this not enough?
Yet through all our trials since the loss of the _Jeannette_ we had
been sustained by the thought that if only we held out till we reached
the Lena Delta, there at last our sufferings would end, amid friendly
natives we would find food, shelter, and transportation home.
How different now was the reality! The Lena Delta we found a bleak
and barren tundra, empty of game, as inhospitable and as desolate as
that ice pack in which for two years we had drifted in the long-lost
_Jeannette_. Our dream of a safe haven had exploded in our faces. With
food gone, men worn out, and worst of all, the hope which had driven
us all to superhuman labor proved a lie, our situation was desperate
beyond conception. Bitterly we cursed Petermann and all his works,
which had led us astray.
But there was nothing to do save to move on, working always toward the
headwaters of the delta as long as we could swing the oars, so for the
fourth day in succession, we shoved off from a mudflat camp, broke our
way through new ice, and I pushed my men (whose arms fortunately were
a little better off than their legs) upstream toward the delta head.
And then, thank God, in the middle of this day, while deadened arms and
stupefied bodies swung wearily over the oars, we suddenly sighted three
natives in kyacks shoot out from behind a bend in the swamp!
Like drowning men grasping at straws, we waved to them, shouted to
them, and tried to row to them, but before the apparition of a strange
boat in their waters, they were shy and afraid, and not till I held up
our last tiny strip of pemmican did I entice one, more curious than his
comrades, close aboard us to taste the strange meat. Then like the jaws
of a trap closing on its victim, we grabbed his kyack before he could
dart away!
Badly frightened, the fur-clad native attempted to escape, but we would
sooner have released our only hope of salvation than our grip on that
poor Yakut who represented now our last slim chance to avoid perishing
in the maze of that frozen delta, and we held to him like grim death.
Gradually I calmed his fears, gave him the pemmican, endeavored in
pantomime to show him we were friendly, and at last holding to him
while we beached our whaleboat, convinced him of our good intentions by
giving him a little of the trifling quantity of alcohol we had left for
our stove.
The alcohol settled the question. He promptly hailed his two comrades
standing warily off in their kyacks, and soon all three of the natives,
warming up on pure grain alcohol, were our bosom friends. In exchange
for the alcohol, they gave us some fish and a goose out of which
mixture we promptly made a stew which we wolfed down ravenously. And
then with pencil sketches and gestures, I endeavored to make plain that
I wanted them to guide us to a village, and specifically to Bulun, the
largest town shown on my chart, some sixty miles up the Lena River
from the head of the delta.
It was remarkable how, understanding not one word of each other’s
language, we got along. The three Yakuts indicated we could not get to
Bulun on account of ice in the river, that we should all die on the
way. However, they made plain that another Yakut village, Jamaveloch,
they could take us to, and next day for Jamaveloch we started. But
so tortuous was the course and so hard the labor in working our boat
through the delta swamps and rivers, that not till a week later did
we finally, on September 26th, two weeks after the gale, arrive at
Jamaveloch. Had it not been for the food provided by our guides as well
as for their pilotage, it is inconceivable that we should ever have
arrived alive at this village at the southeastern corner of the delta,
seventy miles from Cape Barkin, and the only inhabited village for
over a hundred and fifty miles in either direction along the Siberian
Coast! Had we gone to Barkin, we should assuredly have perished, for
there, the natives told us, Petermann was absolutely wrong—there were
no villages, no lighthouses, no inhabitants of any kind there, nothing
but a barren coast.
But Jamaveloch itself was not very promising as a haven except for a
brief stay. It had but six huts and a few small storehouses, not over
fifteen adult inhabitants, and no great surplus of food. Doubtful that
its scant supply of fish and geese would long take care of eleven
voracious seamen thrown unexpectedly on the resources of so small a
community, I decided after one night at Jamaveloch to push on in our
whaleboat up the south branch of the Lena to Bulun, a hundred and ten
miles away by land but a hundred and fifty miles distant up the winding
river. Strenuously in their native Yakut tongue (some of which I had
now picked up) the villagers and especially their headman, Nicolai
Chagra, objected that ice in the river would block us and leave us
to perish along the uninhabited river banks, but I persisted. So
accompanied once more by my original native pilots, I loaded my sick
crew into the whaleboat, took aboard sixty dried fish (all I could
get) for supplies from Nicolai, and we started. In an hour we were
back. Nicolai Chagra was right. The _Jeannette_ herself could not have
plowed through the ice, alternately freezing and breaking loose in the
river, which swept downstream in the current, effectively blocking any
progress toward Bulun.
Willing or not, there was no choice but to stay at Jamaveloch. Unable
to walk, I crawled from the whaleboat and was hauled on a sledge from
the shore to a hut turned over to us by Nicolai; Leach, with the flesh
falling from his frozen toes, was hauled up on another sledge; and
most of the rest of my crew in the remnants of their tattered clothes,
crawled or hobbled after us.
For two and a half weeks we lay in that hut, slowly recuperating from
our frostbites, subsisting mainly on a slim ration of fish given us
daily by the Yakut villagers, and thinking up weird schemes of getting
away to Bulun. But till the rivers froze solidly enough to sledge
over the ice, there was no chance. Even then, the limited facilities
of the village could never provide the necessary sledges for eleven
men nor the clothes to keep us from freezing in the sub-zero weather
which October had brought. But get away soon we must, for all the
flesh had sloughed from several of Leach’s toes and he needed medical
attention badly if he were not soon to die; while Cole, lucid at
intervals, required expert care also if his mind were to be saved; and
Danenhower’s eye, a month now without surgical care, was beginning
to relapse. As for the rest of us, our legs were getting better and
we could soon drag ourselves about, but the food problem was rapidly
getting acute, and I was very much afraid that we should awake some
morning to discover that the natives, finding us too much of a drain
on their stores, had silently moved on in the night to some other
collection of vacant huts of which we knew nothing, leaving us to
starve alone lest everyone starve together.
The only solution to this dilemma, since we could not go to Bulun, was
to have Bulun send us the necessary dog teams, sledges, clothes, and
food to make the journey. How to get word to Bulun, however, was the
difficulty, for none of the natives would go and no man in my party
knew the road over the distant mountains to Bulun. I dared send no one
without a guide.
The reason given by the natives for refusing to undertake the trip was
that it was an impossible season for traveling, an in-between time in
which they could safely move neither by boat nor sledge. A few weeks
before, in early September, it would have been possible to go by boat
but now new ice forming everywhere prevented. A few weeks later, it
would be possible to travel by sledge cross-country over snow and ice,
but just now that also could not be attempted for the ice on the many
rivers to be crossed was continuously breaking in the current and was
nowhere yet thick enough to bear the weight of a sledge without grave
danger of crashing through into the river and losing sledge and dogs
at least, if not drivers also. To all our entreaties, Nicolai Chagra
merely shrugged his shoulders—early September, yes; late October, yes;
but now, a most decided no!
Providentially the matter was settled for us about the middle of
October by the chance visit to the village of a Russian exile, Kusmah
by name, who lived nearby and who on the promise of the whaleboat
immediately and five hundred roubles later (when I could get funds from
America) undertook to make the dangerous journey and started off with
his dog sledge over the frozen tundra to Bulun, expecting to return in
five days.
Vaguely, while he was gone, we speculated on how long it would take us
to sledge the fifteen hundred miles from Bulun via Yakutsk to Irkutsk
on Lake Baikal, and then via post road get to Moscow and so home. And
while we speculated over that, we also speculated earnestly over the
fate of De Long and the first cutter. There was no doubt that his boat
had followed Chipp’s, but over the question of how long the first
cutter had lasted in the gale and whether she had come to her doom
finally by capsizing or by swamping, there was many a hot discussion,
as my seamen argued vehemently over the relative probabilities of a
square-sterned boat like the heavily-built first cutter broaching
before she flooded, or vice versa. The consensus of opinion was that
she had swamped, for De Long had in his boat not only three more men
than we, but also Snoozer, the last dog, all the navigating equipment,
four rifles, the complete records of the expedition in ten cases,
and one small sledge which De Long had kept to drag the records on.
With so much ballast in his boat, that his men could have bailed fast
enough to avoid foundering seemed incredible to most of us after our
own experiences with the much lighter double-ended whaleboat, but the
broaching theorists would never agree to it. Chipp, whom all hands
freely admitted was the best sailor, had broached and capsized. How
then could De Long have avoided it? And since, crowded in our little
hut with nothing else to do, there was no outlet for men too feeble to
get about save in talk, the argument went on endlessly, and of course
with no chance of an agreement ever being reached.
Five days went by and Kusmah, our messenger to Bulun, had not returned.
Ten days elapsed and we became alarmed for Kusmah. Had he perished in
the ice? To add to our worries, Nicolai Chagra cut our food supply
from four fish a day to three, with occasionally a putrid and decaying
goose supplied in lieu of the fish.
I was seriously debating sending Bartlett, the strongest member of
our party, on to Bulun in the forlorn hope of getting us assistance,
when on the night of October 29th, after thirteen days’ absence on his
hazardous journey, Kusmah at last returned, bringing on his sledge some
supplies, about forty pounds of bread mainly, and no clothes for us,
but instead a letter in Russian from the Cossack commandant at Bulun
stating that next day he would start for us from there with a reindeer
caravan and clothes enough to bring us all safely over the mountains to
Bulun.
This news heartened us considerably, and in broken Russian I profusely
thanked Kusmah. Meanwhile my men, not waiting to thank anybody, were
revelling in the bread of which we had seen none for nearly five
months, breaking the loaves in huge chunks into which they sank their
teeth hungrily. All smiles at my expressions of approbation, and happy
at the way everyone seemed to appreciate what food he had brought us,
Kusmah bowed, then pulled from inside his fur jacket a dirty scrap of
paper which he tendered me. On it was a pencilled message. Pausing
casually between two mouthfuls of bread, I glanced at it, noted in
surprise that it was in English, and then as I read the first words, I
stiffened as suddenly as if I had been shot.
“Arctic steamer _Jeannette_ lost on the 11th June; landed on Siberia
25th September or thereabouts; want assistance to go for the CAPTAIN
and DOCTOR and nine (9) other men.
WILLIAM F. C. NINDEMANN,
LOUIS P. NOROS,
Seamen U. S. N.
_Reply in haste; want food and clothing._”
For a moment my heart stopped beating as I read, then I called out
huskily,
“Men! De Long and the first cutter landed safely! They’re alive!”
All over the hut broken loaves of bread thudded to the floor as
open-mouthed in astonishment at this startling declaration, my
shipmates stared at me, then clustered round to read the note, while I
turned abruptly to Kusmah, asked in my best Russian,
“That note, Kusmah! Where did you get it?”
With some difficulty, Kusmah explained to me his trip. To get to Bulun,
he had to go fifty miles due west cross country over the mountains to
Ku Mark Surk on the Lena River (where he was delayed a week waiting for
the main stream to freeze over so he could cross) and then sixty miles
due south along the west bank of the Lena to Bulun. On his way back to
us from Bulun, coming again to Ku Mark Surk, he had met there a small
reindeer caravan of Yakuts bound south for Bulun and with that caravan,
clad only in tattered underwear and sick almost to death, he had come
across two strangers feebly expostulating with the natives against
going south and almost hysterical at their inability to make themselves
understood.
He spoke to them in Russian, with no better luck at communication than
the Yakut reindeer drivers had had, but suddenly recalling what we had
told him of our two lost boats, he enquired of them,
“_Jeannette? Americanski?_” and immediately the men had understood,
nodding vigorously in assent; and writing this note, had placed it in
his hands, begging him piteously,
“_Commandant! Bulun! Bulun!_”
That he understood also, but as he was bound for Jamaveloch and knew
that I would be most interested in the matter, he had forthwith
resumed his journey, and now, two days later, there was the message in
my hands, while Nindemann and Noros no doubt were by this time in Bulun
itself.
I retrieved the note from Bartlett and read it again carefully. De Long
had landed, but simply “on Siberia.” Where was he now? The note was
blank on that. I could not tell. But evidently he was in a bad way,
for Nindemann and Noros, somehow separated from their shipmates, were
from Kusmah’s account obviously far gone, and as for the others, that
closing scrawl,
“_Reply in haste; want food and clothing_” had an ominous ring. And
then my eyes fell again on “the CAPTAIN and DOCTOR and nine (9) other
men.”
Nine? Hastily I counted up. The captain, the doctor, Nindemann, Noros
and nine others—that made only thirteen! But De Long had had fourteen
all told in his boat! Was nine an error? No; as if to emphasize it, the
_nine_ was repeated as a figure in parenthesis. So already one of De
Long’s party had died. Sadly I wondered who. Collins, perhaps? No, I
decided; Collins had done no work on the ice to wear him down. Lee, my
machinist, was most likely, I concluded. His injured hips would have
made it most difficult for him to keep up and he might have had to be
left behind.
But this was no time for wondering. Only Nindemann and Noros could
tell me where the captain was and how to get there. And if those two
men were as badly off as Kusmah said, they might both soon die, taking
their secret with them. The Lena Delta was large, over 5000 square
miles in area, and from bitter experience I knew now how difficult
it was to find one’s way amidst its myriad islands, swamps, and
freezing streams. And as for charts, there were none worthy of the
name—Petermann’s, which had nearly led my party to starvation, was
worse than useless. I shivered as I thought of that. De Long, relying
on that same Petermann chart, had intended to land near Barkin! Barkin
and the north coast of the delta thereabouts, were not only uninhabited
and a hopeless stretch of barren tundra, but a hundred miles further
north and by so much further removed even from such slight shelter as
we had providentially encountered at Jamaveloch! De Long and his party
must be in fearful straits!
“Kusmah!” I said sharply. “Return with me to Bulun at once! Get your
dogs! We start right away!”
But Kusmah demurred, objecting that his dog team was completely worn
out and could not travel the ice again without several days’ rest.
On investigating his dogs, this proved to be true, so getting hold
promptly of Nicolai Chagra, I insisted vigorously that he provide
immediately from somewhere another team if it stripped the village of
its last dog.
Chagra was willing enough, but it took him all night to scrape up the
necessary dogs, and not till next morning, October 30th (a day which
later became indelibly burned into my memory), behind a team of eleven
dogs driven by my original Yakut pilot, did I set off in a temperature
twenty degrees below zero for Bulun where from Nindemann and Noros I
hoped to learn of De Long’s whereabouts. Two days later, after hard
labor by the dogs through deep snow and over broken ice, I was at Ku
Mark Surk, where I changed my worn-out dog team for a reindeer sledge,
and with that made the last sixty miles southward up the frozen Lena to
Bulun, arriving on the evening of November 2.
I promptly enquired my way to the hut where were lodged Nindemann and
Noros, and in mingled fear and hope hurried there. What was I going to
hear of my captain, of Dr. Ambler, about my other shipmates? Which one
of them was already dead, what chance had I of rescuing the survivors?
With my heart pounding violently, I pushed open the door of the hut.