“Come on, boys; we go back now for the rest of the load and the
captain,” ordered Nindemann, who with his rating of quartermaster was
senior in the group ashore. “Shake a leg; we got lots to do before dark
yet.”
“Yah,” said Iversen, plunging back in the sea, “frozen feet ban yust
too bad for any man. Ay tank ve better get it done qvick before yet it
gets colder!”
One by one, the men slipped back into the narrow lane broken through
the ice after Iversen and stolidly plodded off in the water toward the
distant boat, till only Ah Sam and Collins were left.
“Shake it up there, you fellers; we ain’t got much time,” growled
Nindemann.
“I’m ashore now and I’m going to stay ashore!” snarled Collins. “Do
you think you’re going to get me a mile out in the ocean again wading
through that mud and ice to drag in the captain and the dog? Well,
you’re not! I might for sick men, but not for them!”
“But the captain is sick! He can’t walk!” protested Nindemann. “And
besides, there’s all our food and the records to carry in yet!”
“Well, he can swim then for all I care!” replied Collins defiantly.
“And as for those records, carry ’em ashore yourself. I won’t; I didn’t
ship to be treated like a common sailor, and you can’t make me!”
“Suit yourself,” mumbled Nindemann uncertainly, for Collins was after
all an officer. He turned to the Chinese cook. “Get underway there, Ah
Sam.”
Poor Ah Sam, with his feet benumbed from constant immersion while
bailing, staggered toward the water, then collapsed in the mud, unable
to rise. The quartermaster dragged the inert Chinaman back on the beach
and deposited him at Collins’ feet.
“Get me a fire started here then, Collins, and see maybe if you can
thaw him out before I get back,” ordered Nindemann. “I’m going for the
captain,” and he plunged into the icy seas.
“Where’s Ah Sam and Mr. Collins?” asked De Long anxiously when
Nindemann, much behind the others, returned to the boat. “Anything
wrong?”
“They’re all played out,” lied Nindemann glibly. “So I left ’em to make
a fire for us when we got back ashore.”
“Poor devils!” muttered the captain sympathetically. “You should have
left somebody with ’em, Nindemann.”
“Oh, they’ll be all right soon,” Nindemann assured him. “Besides, I
needed here everybody,” and in that he was right enough for it took
three trips with the seamen slithering through mud and water to get
all the baggage ashore through that mile and a half of broken ice, and
it was completely dark when Nindemann at last gathered what crew he
had left round the lightened boat and attempted to work it ashore. But
even lightened to the utmost, with nothing but the three incapacitated
men and the doctor left in it, half a mile from the beach it stuck
finally in the mud and they could get it no further inshore. The wind
freshened, bringing a blinding snow-storm, blotting out everything. How
to get the invalids ashore was now a problem; in the slimy and uneven
footing through the shoal water they couldn’t safely be carried. There
being no other way, one after the other, Boyd, Erichsen, and De Long
were lifted over the side of the cutter by Dr. Ambler, and stood up in
the knee-deep water on their frozen legs. Then, each held from falling
by a seaman alongside, the three sufferers partly stumbled, were
partly dragged in the falling snow across that last half mile through
the broken lane of ice to the shore, while following them, Alexey,
the Indian hunter, with Snoozer over his shoulders, brought up the
procession, finally emptying the first cutter of its passengers.
It was eight at night and bitterly cold when De Long and his
companions, ashore at last on the desolate beach, joined his forlorn
seamen crowding round the fire which Collins had started and which
Noros and Görtz soon built up with driftwood into huge proportions—the
first bit of warmth the water-soaked men had felt in five days of
frigid Arctic weather. But it was of little comfort; beneath the snow
the ground was wet, and as the fire blazed up, it further softened the
beach roundabout it, so the men trying to dry themselves before the
fire soon found instead that they were sinking into the mushy tundra to
their knees.
“It’s no use, men. We might as well turn in. Pitch the tents,” ordered
De Long wearily, and soon the two tents were erected, a little shelter
at least from the cutting wind. On the soft and snow-covered ground
inside them, the wretched mariners stretched themselves out full
length, for the first time since leaving Semenovski Island, able at
least to turn in lying down.
More like stiffening corpses than sleepers, the exhausted men sprawled
out in the snow and soon as the driftwood fire died away, darkness
and falling snow enveloped the silent tents, while only the whistling
of the chilling wind kept watch over De Long and his thirteen worn
companions, stretched out at last on Siberian soil, victors in a heroic
retreat over ice and ocean to which the long annals of the sea, whether
in the tropics or round about the poles, offers no parallel.
Morning dawned; it snowed intermittently. Crawling from his tent, De
Long looked about. Nearby to the westward, flowing north to discharge
into the sea, was a wide river. From the chart, this was evidently the
River Osoktah, the main northern mouth of the Lena, and close at hand
should be Sagastyr with its signal tower and a busy trading village.
But with a sinking heart, De Long, looking over the snow-covered
tundra, saw that every evidence of civilization shown on his chart
was completely missing—no signal tower, no village, no signs of river
traffic on the Lena, not even the slightest sign of roving hunters!
Petermann’s vivid descriptions of traffic and of settlements at the
Lena mouth were only the idle dreams of an unreliable geographer, as
unreal as the Grecian myths of marvelous Atlantis to be found just
beyond the Pillars of Hercules!
On rescue at this point De Long had based all his plans, figured his
food supply, and savagely driven himself and his men far beyond human
endurance to get here. And now at this long-sought goal, plainly
evident to all hands, was nothing but disillusion and despair!
Hobbling about him, trying to dry themselves before a new fire, were
his worn and crippled companions, all hope gone from their haggard
faces, all strength gone from their frozen bodies, through bleared and
sunken eyes, watching him apathetically. De Long beckoned to Ambler.
“Do what you can for the men’s feet today, doctor, while I sort over
our stores. There’s no hope of assistance on the coast. We may as well
look this situation in the face, and prepare ourselves to walk inland
to the nearest settlement.”
“And where will that be?” asked the surgeon anxiously.
“At Ku Mark Surk, ninety-five miles to the southward,” replied De Long.
“Ninety-five miles!” repeated Ambler in dismay. “Why, some of these men
can’t walk even a mile!”
“They’ve got to now,” answered the captain grimly. “Get to work on our
feet, doctor. Our lives depend on them now. Tomorrow they’ve _got_ to
carry us along!”
“Aye, aye, sir. But ninety-five miles over this tundra! In our state
now, it’s worse than that drag over the pack. We’ll never get there!”
“Some of us may, and we’ll all try. It’s our last chance. And it’s up
to you, doctor. See what you can do to save our feet!”
All day on one man after another, Surgeon Ambler worked with lint,
with vaseline, and with his scalpel, opening blisters, cutting away
dead skin and flesh, gently massaging frozen feet and legs to restore
circulation, and finally bandaging up. When evening fell, De Long,
Boyd, and Ah Sam could hobble again. Even Erichsen, whom the long
motionless hours at the tiller during the storm at sea had left with
a far worse frostbite than anyone, whose two feet, stinking with
festering sores nauseated even the doctor as he worked on those
horribly swollen and blistered lumps from which protruded black and
feelingless toes, claimed to be improved and able to walk a little.
While this (during a storm of snow, hail and sleet) was going on, De
Long ordered a cache made on the beach of the navigating gear, most
of the cooking utensils, the sleeping bags, and other miscellaneous
articles, so that the baggage to be carried was reduced to the clothes
the men wore, the ship’s records, four rifles and ammunition, medicine
and surgical tools, blankets, tents, and their four days’ food supply,
consisting only of some tea and the unopened can of pemmican which
should have gone to Chipp.
Leaving a written record in the cache to direct anyone who might ever
come after, searching for them, on the early afternoon of September
19th, the ragged seamen shouldered their burdens and dragging the
expedition’s records on their little sledge, set out under a bright sun
over the snow-covered tundra for Ku Mark Surk, ninety-five long miles
to the south over the trackless delta.
It was a forlorn scene as De Long and his men took leave of the Polar
Sea which for two years had held them prisoner—to the west flowed
the Lena, a broad swift stream tumbling on its swirling bosom broken
floes from further up the frozen river; to the north spread the Arctic
Ocean, covered as far as eye could reach with young ice, through which,
sticking up gaunt and bare, the only objects visible on its desolate
surface, were the mast and the low gunwales of the abandoned cutter.
To east and south lay the flat snow-covered tundra, and over this
straggled the dismal caravan of the first cutter’s crew—Iversen and
Dressler dragging the sledge, Alexey out ahead to break a path, De Long
following him with the _Jeannette’s_ ensign in its oilskin case slung
across his back, and behind him the rest of the seamen staggering under
their loads, with Lee, whose weakened hips frequently gave way under
him, constantly falling in the snow, and Erichsen, Boyd, and Ah Sam
hobbling painfully along at the rear.
It was terrible going, not helped much by a fifteen minute pause
every hour for rest. The snow-covered ground was swampy, with many
ponds covered with thin ice and hidden under the snow, and into these
pitfalls the men stumbled frequently, burying themselves to their knees
in the mossy tundra beneath, and coming up with their leaking boots
or moccasins filled, to plunge along again through the snow and the
freezing wind, oozing a slimy mixture of mud and water from between
their toes at every step.
Big Erichsen could barely even hobble, hardly able to lift one numbed
foot after another. At the second stop for rest, Ambler drew Nindemann
aside,
“Quartermaster, can’t you make a pair of crutches for Erichsen? His
arms are still strong; with crutches, he’ll make out better.”
“Yah, doc, but with what should I make ’em?” asked Nindemann. “I ain’t
got tools no more.”
“Don’t worry over that, Nindemann,” replied the doctor. “You’ve got
a knife.” He opened his medicine chest on the sledge. “Here, take my
surgical saw; I guess if it’ll saw bones, it’ll saw wood all right,” he
finished grimly.
Nindemann got to work on some driftwood branches, and soon between
sheath knife and bone saw, he had fashioned a fair enough pair of
crutches, on which when the party resumed its journey, Erichsen swung
along haltingly behind the crippled Ah Sam.
But for the worn and burdened seamen, progress was still snail-like.
After another faltering advance, De Long halted the party and deciding
to lighten up still further, sent back Nindemann and two other seamen
with one tent, all the log books, the spyglass, and two tins of alcohol
to stow them with the abandoned gear in the cache at the beach. This
left to be carried or dragged by the men only De Long’s private
journals as a record of the expedition, one tent, some alcohol and
medicines, the rifles, a cooking pot, and what little food they still
had, together with the silk flag which De Long himself bore along.
The second day thus, the party staggered on four miles more to the
south. The going got worse, the straggling procession lengthened out in
the snow. A brief pause to rest, and all hands once more got underway
except Nindemann, whose load chafing his shoulders, stayed behind to
readjust it while the others started off through the snow. Having
eased the fastenings of his pack as well as possible, the wearied
quartermaster struggled to his feet and was hurrying forward to catch
up with his mates when unexpectedly he stumbled over what as he fell
he thought at first was a log half-hidden in the snowy path, but which
he quickly saw to be Erichsen, prone on his face, while nearby, tossed
into a drift, were his crude crutches!
With a thumping heart, Nindemann feverishly rolled his shipmate over
on his back expecting to have to revive him, only to find instead
Erichsen’s snow-flecked blue eyes staring bitterly at him, and
Erichsen’s broken voice rising in a curse,
“Go avay, damn you! Ay vant yust to die here in peace!”
“Get up, Hans!” pleaded Nindemann. “You’re not going to die; nobody is.
Here’s your crutches. Come along! I’ll help you!”
Erichsen only shook his head, his eyes rolling in anguish.
“No use, Nindemann, my feet ban all gone! Even if you can go so far as
Moscow, Ay tal you, Ay cannot go one step more! Go on! Let me die!”
and with a convulsive effort of his huge body, he twisted himself face
down again and clawing feebly with his fingers, tried to bury himself
completely in the snow.
Frightened, Nindemann jerked erect and shouted down the trail,
“Captain! Hey, captain! Come back!” but so far off were all hands
now that no one turned. Leaving his silent shipmate in the drift,
the quartermaster, going as fast as the broken path allowed, hurried
after them, shouting occasionally, till half a mile along he finally
attracted De Long’s attention and stopped him till he could catch up,
when he told the captain of Erichsen’s plight.
De Long gritted his teeth.
“Keep ahead, Nindemann, till you come to driftwood, then build a fire
quick and camp,” ordered De Long briefly. “Come on, doctor; we’ll go
back for Erichsen!”
Back rushed De Long and Ambler till buried in the snow as Nindemann
had left him, they found the prostrate Erichsen. With some difficulty,
Ambler turned him over, while De Long pulled his crutches out from
the deep snow alongside. The doctor took the broken seaman by both
shoulders and started to lift him.
“Let go me, doc,” begged Erichsen, “it ban no use any more to help. My
legs ban killing me. Ay vant now only to die qvick! Go avay!”
“_Get up, Erichsen!_” ordered De Long in a voice cold as steel. “Here’s
your crutches; take ’em and get going down that road! Do you think I’m
going to leave you now? Get underway! And when you can’t hobble, I’ll
drag you! Up now, before I jerk you up!”
For a moment, Erichsen, lying in the snow, stared dumbly into the
captain’s inflexible eyes, then his habit of obedience conquered his
suffering. Slowly he pushed himself into a sitting position and without
another word reached for the crutches. With Ambler’s assistance, he
rose to his feet and then with both De Long and the doctor behind him
to see that he did not again lie down, he hobbled off down the path,
each step undoubtedly an agony to him as his bleeding and tortured feet
came down in the snow. And so, slowly and painfully they covered the
last mile into the camp, where a roaring driftwood fire and a scanty
supper of cold pemmican and tea awaited them.
Before the fire, all hands steamed in front while they froze behind,
and then stretched out on driftwood logs for a bed, hauled their sole
remaining tent flat over the fourteen of them and turned in. But
between sharp winds, bitter cold, and falling snow, it was a fearful
night for the fourteen sufferers, shaking and shivering beneath the
thin canvas, and no one slept.
Through snow and fog again the party struggled southward along the
river bank next day, with Boyd and Ah Sam both improved, and even
Erichsen, the captain’s stern voice still ringing in his ears, doing a
little better on his crutches. But with only two days’ slim rations of
pemmican left, and with each day’s progress hardly a scant five miles
over the snowy tundra, the chances of making the remaining eighty miles
to Ku Mark Surk began to fade.
In the middle of the third afternoon, the party came to two abandoned
wood huts by the river side, the first evidence of habitation they had
met in the Lena Delta, and gladly all hands entered. Inside the huts,
reasonably sheltered for the first time in weeks from cold, from wind,
and from snow, and with plenty of driftwood about so they could warm
themselves at last, the men stripped off their soaked and ragged furs
and stood about naked while their clothes dried before the hurriedly
built fires.
Dressed again, and with a tiny portion of pemmican and some hot tea for
supper, the exhausted travelers threw themselves on the dirt floor,
at last to catch some sleep inside a human habitation, primitive even
though it was. No one any longer had a sleeping bag; only the patched
and ragged remnants of the fur and cloth garments and the long since
worn-out boots in which three months before they had started the
terrible journey over the ice from the sunken _Jeannette_ remained to
them. But at least there was a tight roof and solid walls about them
and it was enough. In a few minutes, at four o’clock in the afternoon,
thankful beyond description for so much shelter, all hands were sound
asleep.
But there was one exception. Shelter or no shelter, Erichsen, suffering
the agonies of the damned from his mortifying feet, only tossed
and moaned, waking the doctor. Rousing Nindemann to help him, the
surgeon seated the suffering seaman on a log before the fire, got his
instruments and medicines, and then, while Nindemann held the patient
erect on the log, gently proceeded to unbandage his left foot, the
worst one.
As the last turn of the bandage came off, Nindemann anxiously watching,
saw to his horror, all the flesh, dead and putrid, drop away from
the ball of the foot, exposing tendons and bones. Startled, he closed
his eyes, repressed a groan. But Ambler said nothing; only the slight
compression of his lips indicated his despair. There was nothing
medical skill could do. Quietly smearing a fresh bandage with vaseline,
he carefully bound up the foot again and put back Erichsen’s stocking
and his boot.
“All done, Erichsen,” he said reassuringly; “you can turn in now,” and
gathering up his equipment, Ambler, his heart torn by poor Erichsen’s
condition, hurriedly stretched himself out in the hut as far away as he
could get lest his patient should start to question him.
But Erichsen was not wholly ignorant of what had happened. Turning to
Nindemann on the log beside him, he asked,
“Do you know much about frostbites?”
“Yah, Hans,” replied Nindemann, “at the first coming on, the flesh
turns blue and then it gets black.”
The big Dane nodded, continued sadly,
“Ven doc took off the bandage, Ay saw somet’ing drop from unter my
foot. You saw it too, Nindemann. Yah?”
Nindemann, with one arm about his suffering shipmate to keep him erect,
looked him squarely in the eye, and putting all the conviction into his
voice that he could muster, he lied heroically,
“No, Hans, there was nothing. You must be dreaming things.”
“Don’t try to fool me, qvartermaster; Ay tal you Ay saw it und so did
you.” Mournfully he gazed at his shabby boot, then sadly shook his
head. “Ay hope you get home yet, Nindemann, but vit me, it ban all
done. Stretch me out now; you must sleep.”
But it being still early in the evening, after a brief nap, De Long
sent Alexey and Nindemann out with rifles to hunt, the while the
others rested and he took stock of the situation.
Long and earnestly, as the two hunters trudged outside through the
snow looking for game, the captain pondered. His recent chart, based
on Petermann’s reports and descriptions of the villages on the delta
itself, he now knew was worthless; only in the old Russian chart
showing Ku Mark Surk at the head of the delta and Bulun beyond could
he put any faith. But with the nearest of these over eighty miles
distant, it was hopeless to expect that his crawling party, making at
best five miles a day, could ever get through on the two days’ pemmican
still left. And without food to sustain them on the way, the outside
temperature, hovering around zero, would of itself in a few more nights
in the open like the preceding one, quickly make an end of them. There
seemed nothing for it except to stay in the huts where at least they
had shelter and warmth and stretch to the utmost their few pounds of
pemmican, eked out by poor Snoozer as a last resort, the while he sent
two men ahead on a forced march to Ku Mark Surk in the thin hope that
he might keep his starving men alive till they returned with aid, in
two weeks at the soonest if they found the traveling good, longer if
they did not.
What alternatives were there? He considered them. Erichsen, Lee, Boyd,
and Ah Sam were his drags on progress, especially the two former. If he
left these two, the others might easily double their speed of travel
and reach Ku Mark Surk and safety in possibly a week. But it would take
at least a second week to get help back to his abandoned men. How could
two helpless cripples without food, hardly able to crawl outside to
gather wood to warm themselves, stay alive for two long weeks, perhaps
more? They would soon, hopeless in the feeling that they were deserted,
both lie down and die. As it was, only his constant driving, his
apparently soulless harshness, and the lash of his stinging commands,
kept them hobbling weakly along.
Could he abandon them? Dispassionately he tried to consider it. On one
hand, a far better chance for life to twelve men, certain death for
two. On the other hand, the strong probability that all would perish in
that hut before relief arrived. Going on, leaving his cripples behind,
looked logical. But De Long shook his head. While he lived, he could
abandon nobody to the loneliness of that Arctic waste, least of all
the heroic Erichsen, who unrelieved through that terrible night in the
boat, had clung to the tiller, safely steering them all through the
gale, and now in the agony of his decaying feet, was uncomplainingly
paying the penalty of his steadfastness. With a sigh, the captain
decided to stay on in the hut, while he sent ahead for help. Who should
go? Running over in his mind the physical condition of his men, he
decided on Surgeon Ambler and Nindemann, the two he felt who were most
likely to get through.
At six o’clock, Nindemann returned, empty-handed except for a dead
gull he had found. Eagerly the hungry seamen, roused by Nindemann’s
entrance, crowded round while Ah Sam plucked the gull, only to discover
that the carcass had long since rotted. Sadly it was thrown away, and
the disappointed sailors once more turned in. Alexey still was missing,
but no fears were felt for him, and quickly, without exception now, the
exhausted company sank into deep slumber.
About nine o’clock came a knock on the door of the hut and Alexey’s
voice rang out,
“All sleep here?”
Immediately, sleeping heads lifted here and there over the floor as the
door flew back and Alexey cried proudly,
“Captain! I shoot two reindeer!” and in staggered the snow-covered
hunter bearing on his back the hind quarter of a doe.
“Well done, Alexey!” shouted the captain, leaping to his feet and
kissing the startled Indian while all about men sprang up, almost
smothering the beaming Alexey in handclasps and in clumsy hugs.
Immediately sleep was forgotten, the fires poked up, and that haunch of
venison, cut in chunks, was roasting on a dozen sticks. Each man got
a pound and a half; most of them, long before their meat was hardly
more than seared before the fire, were gorging themselves on the raw
flesh! With startling rapidity, it disappeared and hungrily his men
looked toward the bloody remnant of that haunch, but De Long, stowing
it behind him in the hut, shook his head and ended the feast, leaving
the party no option but to return to sleep, while only Snoozer, still
gnawing wolfishly at the shank bone, remained awake.
That changed De Long’s plans. Issuing only a very scanty ration of
pemmican for breakfast, he sent Alexey and six men out in the morning
to get the deer, while he concluded to spend that day and the next in
the hut, recuperating the sick, and then with his two days’ supply of
pemmican still intact and the remainder of the two does for food on the
journey, push on southward with all hands.
And so they did. Warmed by soup made of the reindeer bones, fortified
by deer meat, and rested by two days’ inaction in the hut, the party
set out hopefully on September 24th with twenty pounds of pemmican and
fifty-four pounds of venison still left for food for fourteen men and
their dog, leaving a note and the captain’s Winchester rifle (for which
there was no longer any ammunition) as a record behind them.
They tramped along the east bank of the river for three miles, resting
hourly and making poor progress. Looking hopelessly at the broad stream
still flowing unfrozen past him, De Long sighed for his abandoned
cutter, in which here with oars and sail, they might make fine
progress even against the current. But the cutter was gone and wishes
would do no good. However, they might perhaps make a raft and sail or
pole that upstream, at least relieving their feet. So stopping the
party, De Long turned all hands to gathering logs out of which, using
the sledge lashing for a fastening, a crude raft was finally fashioned
at the cost of eight hours’ strenuous toil, on which at five p.m. they
attempted to embark. But the river had ebbed meanwhile, and in spite
of an hour’s battle, it was impossible to get the grounded side of the
raft afloat. In deep disgust, amid the suppressed curses of all hands
at the result (and especially of Nindemann who had done most of the
work), the raft was abandoned, the loads picked up again, and the men,
doubly weary now, staggered away southward, again to camp for the night
on the open tundra, freezing on a few logs spread in the snow for a
bed, to rise next morning after no sleep at all, stiffer and sorer even
than the night before.
The next day’s traveling was difficult beyond words, over snow and thin
ice through which torn boots broke, to come up covered with a slushy
mixture which immediately froze solid, soon making each man’s feet
as large and as heavy as sandbags, a gruelling task to lift them, an
endless labor to keep them reasonably cleared.
By some miscalculation either in issue or in original weighing, but
eight pounds of deer meat was found remaining, all of which went
for dinner. An afternoon of heartbreaking travel over an ice-coated
bluff from which the piercing wind had cleared all snow, leaving it
slippery as glass, brought them at night to a dilapidated hut, filthy
in its interior, but nevertheless the freezing seamen, taking it for a
godsend, stretched themselves promptly in the dirt inside, unutterably
grateful for the shelter. A scant portion of pemmican passed for
supper. With only three similar rations apiece left as the total
food supply, the toil-worn men turned in, grumbling audibly for the
immediate issue of the remnant of the pemmican and De Long began to
fear open rebellion.
Day broke inauspiciously. Before them, blocking the way, was a swift
side stream, too deep to ford, with ice too thin to walk upon. De
Long, after examining all possibilities of crossing, ordered Nindemann
to build a raft to ferry over on, and Nindemann, tired, hungry and
bitter over the fiasco attending the raft of a few days before, went
grumblingly at it. While he and his shipmates struggled with the logs
and the single line they had for a lashing, De Long silently ignoring
the none too well hidden signs of growing disaffection went back to the
hut. Outside the door, Ambler met him, pulled him aside,
“Erichsen’s condition is getting desperate, captain. Both feet are
worse; another couple of days and nothing in God’s world can keep him
on them.”
“All right, doctor. We’ll do the best we can,” said De Long resolutely.
“Keep him going to the last minute, then we’ll drag him. Meanwhile, I’d
better keep an eye on the work on that raft.”
By ten a.m. the raft was done, a crazy affair and not very large due
to the lack of sufficient lashings. With Collins, Alexey and Lee as
passengers, and Nindemann and Kaack as ferrymen, it started over, amid
voluble cursing promptly submerging all hands to their knees. But
nevertheless it got successfully over to shoal water on the other side,
where Nindemann started to look for a good landing spot.
“Don’t waste time!” shouted De Long. “Let those men wade ashore and
hurry back with that raft!”
After considerable growling, audible even to De Long on the other
shore, the passengers waded off, and the two ferrymen paddled back. On
his return, Nindemann promptly started grumbling again about the raft.
“What’s the matter, Nindemann?” asked De Long.
“The lashings are loose and there ain’t enough logs to float it,” said
Nindemann sullenly.
“Well, you made the raft. Haul the lashing tighter then if it doesn’t
suit you,” suggested the captain.
“But I hauled it already as tight as I could,” protested the irritated
quartermaster.
“That’ll do!” Curtly De Long cut him short. “Get more logs if you want
them; tighten the lashing if you wish, but quit standing there! I’ve
had enough of your grumbling! Shake it up, now! We’ve got to get on!”
Glowering at the reproof, Nindemann, his nerves finally at the breaking
point, glared a moment at the skipper, then turned and moved down the
bank. A few steps off, facing the next gang of men waiting to cross
on the raft, the stocky quartermaster clenched his fists, swung them
wildly in the captain’s direction and shouted,
“I would sooner be along with the devil than be along with you! I wish
I was in hell, or somewhere else than here, by Jesus Christ!”
Quietly De Long looked from the little knot of men on the raft to
Nindemann’s circling fists, then in an icy voice, he ordered,
“Nindemann! Come back here!”
Slowly the infuriated quartermaster approached his captain, to find a
pair of cold blue eyes drilling into him.
“So you’d sooner be shipmates with the devil than with me, eh? You’ll
find yourself in hell quick enough if you don’t do what I say! What’s
the matter now?”
Nindemann quailed, his mutinous passion suddenly chilling before that
frigid gaze.
“Nothing at all, sir,” he mumbled weakly.
“Another word from you and I’ll have you courtmartialed!” said De Long
coldly. “Now get up into that hut and consider yourself under arrest
until I send for you!”
“Very well, sir,” answered Nindemann, and meekly he scrambled up the
bluff to the hut, while the captain looked down at the men milling
round on the raft.
“Görtz! Lend Kaack a hand with those paddles! Shove off now!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Immediately the raft started its second trip.
It was slow work. Not till three in the afternoon was the raft ready
for the last load. Then sending Erichsen down first, De Long peered
into the hut at Nindemann crouching before the fire.
“Pick up your traps, quartermaster, and get to work again!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” said Nindemann obediently, and hastily gathering up
his load, he ran down to the raft where for the last trip he paddled
over and then, dismantling the logs to recover the priceless lashings,
he looked expectantly up to the captain for orders.
“Build a fire,” said the skipper briefly. “We’ll have dinner here and
dry ourselves before moving on.”
They made four miles by dark, camped in the snow, froze as usual
instead of sleeping, ate a skimpy breakfast, and with but a single
meal left, the party was about to break camp, when far away Nindemann
spotted some reindeer approaching the river. Keeping everybody down,
the captain sent Alexey and Nindemann out with rifles.
Circling three miles to get to leeward of the small herd of reindeer,
the two hunters crawled cautiously along on their stomachs another
quarter mile, pausing, with their very lives depending on their care,
each time a deer looked in their direction, then snaking along again
through the snow. At last, within a hundred yards, they stopped, picked
out the two largest bucks they could see, and at a word from Alexey,
fired simultaneously.
Down went the buck at which Alexey’s Remington was aiming, but
Nindemann’s Winchester misfired and before Alexey could get in another
shot, the startled herd was off. Firing nevertheless, Alexey swung to
the moving targets, but failed to hit again. Leaping up, the two men
ran in to secure their prize and saw joyfully that Alexey had knocked
over a fine buck, as large as both the does which he had previously
shot. It took five men to drag him in to camp, and there, all thought
of movement suspended, the ravenous men turned to on frying deer meat,
gulping down three pounds apiece before the captain finally called a
halt on eating, and ordering his crew to shoulder the remainder of the
buck, provisions for three days more, they got underway again in the
teeth of a driving snow-storm.
By the next afternoon, September 28th, having spent the previous
night again in the snow, De Long came to an empty hut on a promontory
and looking off ahead, found himself trapped! On his right, running
north was the Lena; before him, running east, was another broad river
branching away from it and neither one could he ford, nor after a
diligent search, find any materials about of which to make a raft.
Huddled in the dirty hut, his utterly tired men sprawled out before the
fire, while Alexey scouted the river to the eastward for a ford, but
found none.
For three days, the ill-fated refugees were forced to remain in that
hut, unable to move in any direction except back northward, while a
gale outside brought heavy snow; and bitterly cursing their enforced
inaction while consuming their precious provisions, they waited,
hopeless of movement till in the increasing cold, the river should
freeze hard enough for them to cross. And meanwhile, fearing Erichsen
would get lockjaw if he waited further, Dr. Ambler was forced to
amputate first all his toes and then saw away a good part of the
remainder of the unfortunate Dane’s feet, leaving him with useless
stumps on which it was hopeless to expect, even with crutches, that
Hans Erichsen would ever walk again.
The captain became desperate. He cut the issue of deer meat down
to the limit, sent Alexey out in the blinding snow to hunt in one
direction, Nindemann in another, and Görtz and Kaack with fish lines
to see whether the rivers which were choking off their progress, might
at least yield up a few fish to eke out their provisions. But except
for one gull which Alexey knocked off a pole with a rifle ball, not a
solitary bit of food did anyone get.
Meanwhile, the problem of how to move Erichsen became acute. Finding a
solitary driftwood plank, six inches thick and about four feet long,
Nindemann was turned to with a hatchet and the doctor’s saw (which but
a few hours before had been used on Erichsen’s feet) to make a sledge
on which to haul him, and by the night of September 30th, it was done.
October 1st came and the Arctic winter descended on them in earnest.
After a bitterly cold night, they issued from the hut to find the Lena
apparently frozen from bank to bank. Cautiously, with the thin ice
cracking ominously beneath them at each step, Alexey and Nindemann
scouted a path across, then one by one, with the men widely separated,
to distribute the weight, the others crawled over, last of all Erichsen
on his sledge drawn by two men some distance apart hauling on a long
line.
With all hands finally on the west bank without mishap, the party
turned south and for three days struggled on through increasingly
bitter cold, never finding any shelter, sometimes traveling on
through the night because that was less of a torture than freezing
while stretched out in the snowdrifts. The delta became a maze of
intersecting streams among which De Long was wholly unable to locate
his position on his useless charts. And a new horror was added to
their others—Erichsen became delirious and each time the shivering
men halted, he raved incessantly in Danish and English, making sleep
impossible even had the frigid nights otherwise permitted it. And then
the food (except for tea) gave out completely, first the remaining
scraps of reindeer going; finally the last hoarded bits of the pemmican
(which for nearly four months they had dragged with them from the
_Jeannette_) went for dinner on October 3rd.
Without food the party staggered on from their dinner camp, De Long
praying earnestly that some game might by a miracle again cross their
path. But they saw none, and weak with hunger dragged their ice-clogged
feet along, skirting the thin ice on the river edge where the going was
easier than on the mossy snow-covered tundra. Suddenly De Long broke
through and went into the river up to his shoulders; while he was being
hauled out, Görtz plunged through to his neck and Collins was soused
to his waist. A moment after they had been dragged back to the surface
soaked to their skins, each was a glistening sheet of ice, with no help
for it but to keep hobbling onward till evening, when still in the
open, they camped by the river bank and, in the midst of a whistling
gale of wind and snow they huddled round a driftwood fire where the
ice-coated sufferers endeavored vainly to thaw themselves out.
There was nothing left for food for the wan and hungry crew—except
Snoozer. De Long, hoping to take at least this favorite dog back home
with him, had clung tenaciously to Snoozer through thick and thin, kept
him in the boat when the other dogs ran off at Bennett Island, saved
him when the other seamen would have left him to starve or drown in the
abandoned cutter off the Siberian coast, fed him from his vanishing
store of pemmican when he had little enough to eat himself. But now
with his men starving about him, desperately needing food if they
were to hold a little life in their chilling bodies, sentiment and
affection had to give way. Sadly he called over Boyd and Iversen, told
them to take Snoozer where no one could see them, kill him, and dress
the carcass.
So for supper each had a little dog meat, eaten with revulsion by
everyone, but eaten. And then followed a night horrible beyond
description. Erichsen’s ravings mingled with the whistling of the
wind; in the sub-zero blackness, the stupefied men, unsheltered from
the driving snow, crouched about a fire from which they could get no
warmth; in his wet and freezing garments, De Long huddled alongside
Alexey to keep from freezing to death; while all about, shivering limbs
and chattering teeth beat a gruesome accompaniment to Erichsen’s groans
as lashed to his sledge, as close to the fire as they dared put him, he
alternately shrieked and moaned in delirium till finally he lapsed into
a coma.
Morning came at last, to bring the unpleasant discovery that Erichsen
had somehow worked off his mittens during the night and both his hands
were completely frozen, through and through. The doctor set Boyd and
Iversen to work chafing his fingers and palms, endeavoring to restore
the circulation, but it proved hopeless. Erichsen was now totally
unconscious.
Meanwhile Alexey had spied a hut a few miles off, and after a hastily
swallowed cup of tea which constituted breakfast, the men hurriedly
shouldered their burdens and dragging their unfortunate shipmate, moved
off toward it, fumbling along through the driving snow and the intense
cold for two hours, when, fervently thanking God for the shelter, they
reached the hut and building a fire inside, proceeded to get warm for
the first time in four days.
Here after a brief prayer for the unconscious Dane, read in a broken
voice by the captain, the entire party (except Alexey) sank to the
floor to rest at last. Alexey refused to rest. He had shipped for the
cruise, not as a seaman but as a hunter, and now with his captain and
his mates urgently needing food, regardless of himself, he went out to
seek it. But there was not the slightest sign of game about, and frozen
worse than ever from having broken through the river ice on his hunt,
the faithful Indian was at last compelled to return empty-handed.
Supper, half a pound of dog meat apiece, and the last of the tea, was
the only meal for the day, but grateful to be out of the blizzard
raging roundabout, no one complained.
October 5th came and went, commencing in a breakfast consisting only
of hot water colored by re-used tea leaves and ending with a supper
composed of the last of the dog meat and more hot water barely tinted
with third-time used tea leaves. Hour by hour the men sat, crowded in
the little hut gazing at Erichsen, occasionally conscious now, while
his strength slowly ebbed away and his tongue babbled feebly about his
far-off Denmark. Night fell, the storm howled on, the dying seaman
relapsed again into a coma, and his overwrought shipmates sagged down
on the dirt floor to rest.
October 6th came and in the early morning light, Erichsen died. Sadly
in the driving snow, the grief-stricken sailors gathered round a hole
cut through the river ice while broken-hearted, De Long sobbed out the
funeral service over the body of as brave and staunch a seaman as ever
sacrificed his life to save his shipmates. And there in the Arctic
wastes, where he so long had suffered, with three volleys from all
the rifles in the party ringing out over the ice as a final salute,
mournfully his gaunt and frozen comrades consigned Hans Erichsen, their
strongest and their best man, to the Lena’s waters.