“Mr. Collins dying
And there on October 30th, the pitiful record ended. Before he could
put a period to that final tragic sentence, the pencil dropped from
De Long’s nerveless fingers, with his last conscious effort he tossed
his journal over his shoulder to save that record of what had happened
to his shipmates from the fire nearby. My blurred eyes stared at the
pages before me; my captain had died as he had lived—with his thoughts
only on his men. Not a word on that last tragic page about himself,
his sufferings, or his own approaching death. And yet for the solitary
malcontent who on the _Jeannette_ had tried the captain’s very soul,
who had fought savagely to destroy the discipline on which De Long
relied to save our health and our lives amid the perils of the Arctic
pack, he could still tax the little strength left in his starved body
to note down,
“Mr. Collins’ birthday; forty years old.”
And so to the final entry, by the irony of Fate recording that man’s
death, the dying captain’s stiffening fingers scrawled out faithfully
the record of his shipmates, but not one word regarding George
Washington De Long!
With wet cheeks, I stood humbly before the frozen body from which the
great soul of my Captain had passed, till finally Nindemann approached
and with his aid, I loosened the three terribly emaciated forms from
the snow and bore them gently to our sledges. Evening fell and we
returned to a hut at Mat Vay, ten miles south across the great frozen
bay, where I established headquarters. The next few days, digging in
the snow near the tripod where I had found the rifle, we uncovered
the bodies of the rest of the party, all fearfully gaunt. There was
not a whole garment on any man; and not one pair of boots or of fur
clothing could we find. Everything made of skin or of leather had been
eaten; most of the men lay in ragged underwear with their feet bound in
canvas, and the first two who died had been stripped naked and so lay
in the snow, their poor rags wrapped round their then dying comrades.
As we dug away the snow in the lee of that river bank where the last
ten survivors (Alexey had died a short distance away near that grounded
raft) had huddled, trying to shelter themselves from the fierce gales,
we found first the ashes of their fire, then the sticks with which they
had sought to rig their sole remaining piece of canvas as a windbreak,
and then so close to the ashes that their underwear was badly scorched,
the bodies of all hands except Lee and Kaack. And there also we found
De Long’s main ship journals. But those two men and the expedition’s
silken ensign we could not find.
I puzzled over that, and then reading back again De Long’s journal, I
noted that Lee and Kaack had been carried “around the corner out of
sight.” But where was there a corner in that bank running straight
north and south? And then it came to me that as all the gales De Long
had logged blew from the southward, they must have set their bit of
canvas up athwart the wind and camped on its north side, so that he
meant around the corner _of the tent_. Directing the natives to dig to
the southward of the sticks, they soon found Lee and Kaack, naked both,
and now there was nothing missing but the ensign. Knowing well that
De Long, however weak he might be, would never have abandoned that, I
ordered the edge of the tent line excavated and there at last we found
the silken banner, deep in the snow, safely rolled in its oilskin case.
But one thing still puzzled me. Why were the men whose deaths De Long
had recorded all there in the lee of that high bank, while he himself,
with Ah Sam and Dr. Ambler, the last survivors, lay on top that
promontory where there was not the slightest shelter from the biting
wind? After another survey, I could only conclude that De Long, wholly
despairing of rescue and feeling death swiftly approaching, had with
his two dying companions started to move the records of the expedition
up from the river bank onto the higher ground where they would longer
escape the spring floods, but the three of them having made one trip
up the slope in which they dragged with them the copper kettle and a
tin chart case (which I found there near the captain) had none of them
the strength to crawl back for another load and there they all soon
perished. Evidently of those three Ah Sam died first; his arms were
crossed above his breast as if laid out by the others close to the
little fire they had built beneath the kettle in which they were trying
to boil a few twigs of Arctic willow. Whether Dr. Ambler or Captain De
Long was the last survivor, no one will ever know—Ambler lay face down
near the fire, De Long a little farther off.
At my direction, Nindemann and Bartlett carefully searched the camp and
all the bodies for any final messages left, but only on Surgeon Ambler
did they come across anything like that. The last page of his journal
was in the form of a letter. I sobbed as I read it.
On The Lena,
Thursday, Oct. 20, 1881.
_To Edward Ambler, Esq.,
Markham P. O., Fauquier Co., Va._
MY DEAR BROTHER:
I write these lines in the faint hope that by God’s merciful
providence they may reach you at home. I have myself very little hope
of surviving. We have been without food for nearly two weeks, with
the exception of four ptarmigans amongst eleven of us. We are growing
weaker, and for more than a week have had no food. We can barely
manage to get wood enough now to keep warm, and in a day or two that
will be passed. I write to you all, my mother, sister, brother Cary
and his wife and family, to assure you of the deep love I now and have
always borne you. If it had been God’s will for me to have seen you
all again I had hoped to have enjoyed the peace of home-living once
more. My mother knows how my heart has been bound to hers since my
earliest years. God bless her on earth and prolong her life in peace
and comfort. May His blessing rest upon you all. As for myself, I am
resigned, and bow my head in submission to the Divine will. My love to
my sister and brother Cary; God’s blessing on them and you. To all my
friends and relatives a long farewell. Let the Howards know I thought
of them to the last, and let Mrs. Pegram also know that she and her
nieces were continually in my thought.
God in his infinite mercy grant that these lines may reach you. I
write them in full faith and confidence in help of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Your loving brother,
J. M. AMBLER.