Before the steadily rising Arctic gale, the _Jeannette’s_ three boats
in broken formation were scattering in the storm. Dismayed at this
sight, De Long who had the only navigating outfit in the flotilla and
in addition was carrying all Chipp’s meager food supply, rose in the
sternsheets of his cutter and waved vigorously to the other boats to
get back in position astern of him. But seeing the whaleboat nearly
swamp attempting to drop back, he signalled her on.
Taking a second reef in his own sail to deaden still further his
speed, De Long continued waving to Chipp, hopeful at least of getting
him close enough aboard to toss over his can of pemmican before in
the storm and the night, he lost him to view. Badly flooded himself
by oncoming seas, he nevertheless held back, till Chipp and his boat,
suddenly engulfed in the waves, disappeared forever from sight.
Sadly then, De Long shook out one reef and picking up headway, stood
away dead before the wind, heading southwest for Barkin. Blonde and
bearded Erichsen, tall and brawny, a sailor from his childhood in
far-off Denmark and in stature a royal Dane indeed, the best seaman in
the boat, steered. Crowded into the cockpit before him were De Long,
Ambler, and Collins, while forward of them on each side of the boat,
backs to the weather cloths holding them up against the sea, were the
rest of the crew—Nindemann, the quartermaster, tending the sheet, Lee,
Kaack, Noros, Görtz, Dressler, Iversen, Alexey, Ah Sam, and Boyd.
Jammed under the thwarts, practically filling all the spaces there were
the sledge, the tin cases containing the _Jeannette’s_ records, the
navigating gear, the silken ensign in its oilskin case, the rifles,
tents, sleeping bags, cooking pots, and a few cans of pemmican, with
Snoozer, the last Eskimo dog, crouching on the sleeping bags and
whimpering piteously as the spray soaked him.
The heavily-laden first cutter, only twenty feet long but wider of beam
than any other of the _Jeannette’s_ boats and with all that ballast on
her bottom, therefore more stable and more resistant to capsizing than
either of the other two, lumbered on before the wind, pitching heavily
as the curling seas swept up under her square stern, and yawing badly
in spite of all that Erichsen at the tiller could do to hold her on her
course. Darkness fell, the seas grew worse, the crew bailed steadily.
Twice the boat yawed suddenly and the sail jibed violently, straining
the mast, but each time Erichsen managed to catch her and the yard and
sail were again squared and the boat stood on with the wind screaming
by and the merciless seas breaking heavily over the stern, soaking
Erichsen continuously and spraying everyone else with freezing water.
For an hour the boat stood on before the storm with the water coming
in over both sides and the stern, while her crew bailed vigorously
to keep up with it. And then, riding on the crest of a tremendous
wave roaring up astern, came disaster. The boat took a bad yaw as the
sea struck, the stern swung off to port with the crest. Immediately
the sail, caught flat aback by the wind, jibed over and the yard
banged viciously round to leeward, heeling the boat sharply down on
her port side and riding the lee gunwale completely under! Instantly
solid water came pouring in over the submerged rail. In another split
second, the half-capsized cutter would have been bottom up with her
crew spilled into the raging seas, had not at that instant the mast,
already weakened by the previous jibes, broken clean off, and with the
flapping sail shot overboard, momentarily relieving the fatal strain!
For one horrible second, the listing boat hung with her gunwale
under, poised uncertainly between going completely over and rolling
back, while her agonized crew, clinging desperately to the thwarts to
avoid being tossed out, felt cold death in the form of the inrushing
water lapping round their bodies! Then slowly, very slowly, under the
influence of the heavy ballast jammed along the bottom boards, the
dismasted cutter rolled back on an even keel, awash to the thwarts and
so deep in the water that her gunwales barely showed above the foaming
surface!
“Bail!” roared De Long. “All hands! Bail!”
A waterlogged wreck, the first cutter lay broadside in the trough
of the sea with every man in her buried in salt water to his waist,
frenziedly bailing to regain a semblance of buoyancy before the next
wave swept over her side and finished her. Fortunately at that instant,
the broken mast and the ballooning sail, dragging alongside by the
halliards streaming over the bow, caught the water, began acting as a
sea anchor, and the startled men in the boat, too busy bailing to lift
a hand for any other purpose, saw in amazement their submerged cutter
swing slowly round in the trough into the wind and sluggishly rise head
on to the next crest, heaving herself to!
Had even another moderate sea swept up at this moment, the boat would
unquestionably have finished filling and foundered, but by some freak
of the storm, only a succession of lazy billows came rolling by until
with the boat half-emptied and higher in the water, De Long could get
out some oars to hold her steady the while he sent Görtz and Kaack
racing forward to clear away the wreckage.
Holding his cutter head on with oars and rudder while he finished
bailing and dragged in the impromptu sea anchor by the halliards, the
captain hastily made a drag of his sail only and an empty water breaker
to hold it up, and then rode the gale to that, taking in the oars and
raising the weathercloths again, while Erichsen, still clinging to the
tiller, steered into the wind and the rest of the crew bailed to keep
afloat.
For the men crowded in the boat, it was a night of utter misery and
terror, wet through, freezing in the gale, tossing madly in the cutter,
and with Collins slumped in the cockpit too weak or too heedless to
reach the rail, violently and continuously seasick to add the final
touch.
At midnight their sea anchor carried suddenly away and with it went the
sail. Instantly out went a pair of oars to hold her up, while another
drag, made of the broken mast and the rest of the oars, with the
expedition’s solitary pick-ax hung to it to hold it down, was sent out
over the bow. This proved a poor substitute for the sail, for having
insufficient surface, it failed to catch the water properly and rode
off the cutter’s beam, instead of ahead, with the result that the boat,
no longer bows-on to the waves, wallowed in the troughs and rolled
horribly, making water worse than ever.
After thirty-six hours of this torture, the gale finally abated,
and with only a fresh breeze and a heavy sea still running, De Long
prepared again to get underway, but he had no sail. Nindemann searched
the boat for substitutes; out of a hammock and the sledge cover, sewed
together by Görtz and Kaack, Nindemann provided a jury sail. The drag
was hauled in to recover the mast; with a chisel, Nindemann refitted
the broken end of the mast to its step, rerigged it, and soon with the
two insignificant bits of canvas spread at the yard, the first cutter
resumed her journey for the Lena Delta, making hardly one knot through
the water, and because the breeze had now hauled to the south, unable
to sail closer to the wind than a course due west instead of the
desired southwest.
But what the course should be to make Cape Barkin and where the boat
was, God alone knew. It was impossible to get a sight, and even had it
not been, De Long’s hands were so badly frozen he could not work his
sextant. So willy-nilly, the boat went west for two days with De Long
and his frozen crew, barely crawling along under the tiny jury rig,
till early on the morning of September 16th, having been four days at
sea since leaving Semenovski Island, the wind failed altogether, and
in a dead calm sea, De Long ordered out the oars and headed due south,
feeling that he had made more than enough westing.
By this time, from long-continued watchfulness and exposure, both De
Long’s hands and his feet were so badly frozen and had swollen to such
size that he was wholly unable to move himself. Tenderly Dr. Ambler got
out his soaked sleeping bag, and helped by Görtz, slipped the captain
into it and then propped him up in the sternsheets so he could see to
maneuver the boat.
After a few hours of rowing south, the water began to shoal rapidly and
the cutter ran into a skim of young ice, through which it broke its
way. Soon low-lying land was sighted to the south, undoubtedly some
part of the northern side of the Lena Delta. With redoubled energy the
men heaved with their cracked and bleeding hands at the oars, driving
through thickening ice toward the coast. A little to starboard an open
lead in the young ice was sighted, seemingly running inshore toward
a river mouth, and into this lead the boat was rammed through the
intervening ice, keeping on in this open water till at about 9 A.M.,
still more than a mile offshore, the boat grounded solidly in less than
two feet of water with new ice freezing constantly all about her in the
bitter cold.
After a fruitless effort to get inshore through the invisible shoals,
De Long tried to work out again to the northward, hoping then to go
further west and perhaps find a better channel into the river, which
so far as could be judged from the width between the headlands, seemed
to be one of the main northern mouths of the Lena. But the thickening
ice had closed in behind, and stuck fast in the hidden shoal, the boat
could be moved neither ahead nor astern with the oars.
De Long after a futile effort to push out, using the oars as poles,
became desperate.
“All hands over the side to lighten the boat!” he ordered. “We’ll push
her off!”
Silently, all except the helmsman, the men started to obey, but first
began to remove their wet boots, not wishing to fill them with mud.
Off came the worn and leaking footgear, exposing to view badly swollen
feet, many already black with frostbite and with blisters breaking as
the skin, stuck to the boots, tore away from the frozen flesh. Dr.
Ambler took one swift glance at them, then leaning over the helpless
captain, whispered in his ear. De Long bent forward, looked himself,
then said,
“Belay going over the side, men. Put on your boots. We’ll try shoving
her off again with the oars instead.”
But the enfeebled seamen had little luck. An all day struggle with the
shallow water moved the boat hardly a hundred yards, and night fell on
an exhausted boat crew, caught amidst ice and shoals, unable either to
get the cutter ashore or get it to sea.
Once more they spent a cheerless night in the cramped boat, tantalized
by that unapproachable shore a mile and a half away, unable to sleep,
wet, freezing, and thirsty on the crowded thwarts.
At daybreak, they tried again. Managing to get free of the ice and the
mud, they made a few yards, only to ground on another shoal. Getting
clear of that, the ice soon blocked them. It made little difference
which way they headed, north or south, east or west, shoals and young
ice were everywhere. Bitterly De Long looked from his heavy cutter and
his fast-fading men across a mile and a half of thin ice, strong enough
to block the boat, too weak to sustain a man, toward the low coast of
Siberia. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. He would never get the
boat free—eight hours of labor today on top of all of yesterday and no
progress made either toward shore or toward sea and nothing to look
forward to now except another terrible night in the boat in the fierce
cold.
De Long made up his mind. Regardless of their condition, they must
abandon the cutter, wade ashore. He still had two hours of daylight in
which to work, and despite frost-bitten feet, there was no alternative;
into that icy water they must plunge. But three of the men, Boyd,
Erichsen, and himself, hardly able to stand without toppling headlong,
could never make that mile and a half wading through ice and shoals to
the land. They would have to get the boat closer first.
“Except the sick and the doctor, all hands over the side! We’re going
to abandon the boat and wade ashore! Keep your boots on this time, men!”
Slowly the rest of the crew crawled over the side into the water,
finding it knee deep. Leaving in the boat only the four men and
Snoozer, and taking as heavy a load on his back as each could carry,
the crew set out for shore, Nindemann first to break a path through the
half inch ice, then in succession Kaack, Görtz, Iversen, Lee, Dressler,
Collins, Alexey, Noros, and finally Ah Sam, whose feet were in such bad
shape that not to impede the others he was ordered to go last. It was
hard work, especially for Nindemann smashing ahead through the ice,
with the chilly water changing irregularly in depth from knee deep to
over his waist, sinking unexpectedly into mudholes from which he could
hardly drag his feet, and all the while pounding away at the sheet ice
with hips and thighs, unable to use his arms because of the load on his
shoulders.
Finally the panting quartermaster reached the shore, a low and swampy
slope. Behind him trudged the others, and thankfully coming up out of
the sea, squeezing mud and slush from their boots at every step, they
dumped their loads on the beach. Siberia at last! A feeble cheer burst
from husky throats and cracking lips.
But looking round at that dismal shore, covered with snow, bare of
all vegetation, utterly desolate and devoid of any trace of human
habitation then or ever, it is doubtful that there could have been
found on earth any group of human beings save only these few who had
gone through hell on ice to reach that shore, who would not have cursed
instead of cheered at setting foot on that bleak tundra.