CHAPTER IX
We struck with a shivering crash that shook the Jeannette from keel to main truck, and hung there with yards banging violently. Lucky for us now, that nineteen inch thickness of heavily reenforced side and the stout backing of those new trusses below—that impact would have stove in the side of any ordinary vessel!
But though we had survived that first smashing blow, we were in grave danger. Impotent with sails and rudder to claw off that ice bank, we lay there in a heavy seaway, rolling and grinding against the jagged shelf on which the wind was pushing us.
That put it up to the black gang. I rushed below into the fireroom.
“Bartlett!” I yelled. “Wide open on your dampers! Accelerate that draft!”
“Sharvell! Iversen!” I sang out sharply to my two coalheavers. “Lively with the slice bars! Cut those banked fires to pieces! Get ’em blazing!”
For thirty anxious minutes we fought before our two Scotch boilers with slice bars, rakes, and shovels to raise steam, while through our solid sides as we toiled below the water line, we heard the groaning and the crunching of the ice digging into our planking and from above the slapping of the sails, the howling of the dogs, and the kicks and curses of the seamen still struggling futilely to get the ship to claw off to windward.
At last with fires roaring, the needle of our pressure gauge started to climb toward the popping point; I reported we were ready with the engines.
De Long doused all sail; under steam alone with our helm hard aport and propeller turning over at half speed, we swung our bow at last to starboard into the wind and slowly eased away from the pack, decidedly thankful to get clear with no more damage than a terrible gouging of our stout elm planking. And under steam alone for the rest of the night we stood on dead slow nearly to windward between east and southeast, keeping that ice pack a respectable distance on our port hand till dawn came and with it, a fog!
For the next few watches, we played tag with the ice-fields, standing off when the fog came in, standing in when the fog lifted, searching for an open lead to the northward. At one time during this period, the fog thinned to show to our intense astonishment, off to the southeast a bark under full sail, a whaler undoubtedly, standing wisely enough to the southward away from the ice, but so far off, anxious as we were not to lose any northing while we sought an open lead, we never ran down and spoke him.
Soon, a little regretfully, we lost him in the fog, the last vessel we ever saw, homeward bound no doubt and a missed opportunity for us to send a farewell message home before we entered the ice-pack around Wrangel Land.
Finally with nothing but ice in sight except to the southeast, De Long decided to try a likely looking lead opening to leeward, toward the northwest. So with the captain in the crow’s-nest and the ice-pilot perched on the topsail yard, we entered the lead, Lieutenant Chipp on the bridge conning the ship as directed from aloft. Cautiously we proceeded in a general northwesterly direction up that none too wide lead of water with broken ice-fields fairly close aboard us now on both sides, for some seven hours till late afternoon, when simultaneously the lead suddenly narrowed and the fog thickened so much that we stopped, banked fires, and put out an ice-anchor to a nearby floe.
Chilled, cramped, and dead-tired from his long day in the crow’s-nest, De Long laid down from aloft and promptly crawled into his bunk, while the fog continuing, we lay to our ice-anchor till next day.
For the first time on our cruise, the temperature that night dropped below freezing, with the odd result that by morning between the fog and the freezing weather, our rigging was a mass of shimmering snow and frost, magically turning the Jeannette into a fairy ship, a lovely sight with her every stay and shroud shining and sparkling in the early dawn, and the running rigging a swaying crystal web of jewels glistening against the sky.
But as the fog still hung on, and we consequently could not move, I am afraid our captain, more interested in progress northward than in beauty, gave scant heed, and it was left to Ambler and me, being early on deck, really to drink in the soul-satisfying loveliness of that scene.
Some new ice, a thin film only, made around the ship during the night, the weather being calm and the surface of our lead therefore undisturbed and free to freeze, but it was insignificant in thickness compared to the pack ice surrounding us, which seemed everywhere to be at least seven feet in depth, of which thickness some two feet were above water and the rest below, with some hummocks here and there pushed up above the smooth pack to a height of six feet perhaps.
By afternoon, the fog cleared enough for us to haul in our ice-anchor, spread fires and get underway along our lead, which running now in a northeasterly direction we followed for two hours, poking and ramming our way between drifting floes. Then to our delighted surprise, we emerged into the open sea again, open, that is, between east and north only, with ice filling the horizon in all other directions.
With some searoom to work in, we speeded the engines and headed north, where we soon passed a drifting tree, torn up by the roots, an odd bit of flotsam to encounter in those waters, but which as it must have come from the south encouraged us since it lent some weight, however slight, to the Japanese Current theory about which we were beginning to entertain serious doubts. But we had little time to speculate on this, for soon from the lookout came the cry,
“Land ho!”
Sure enough, bearing northwest, apparently forty miles off and much distorted by mirage, was land which from our position and its bearings we judged to be Herald Island. This island I must hasten to explain was so named, not after the New York Herald whose owner, Mr. Bennett, was financing our expedition, but after H.M.S. Herald, whose captain, Kellett, had discovered and landed on that island thirty years before, in 1849.
Immediately from alow and aloft all hands were scanning the island, through binoculars, through telescopes, and with the naked eye. There was much animated discussion among us as to its distance, but regardless of that we could do nothing to close on it, for the ice-field lay between. So as night fell, we merely steamed in circles at dead slow speed, just clear of the pack.
Day broke fine and crisp with a light northerly breeze off the ice. Picking the most promising lead toward Herald Island, we pushed the Jeannette into it, and for two hours amidst drifting floes we made our way with no great trouble, when, to our dismay, we began to meet new ice in the lead, from one to two inches in thickness. For another two hours, we pushed along through this, our steel-clad stem easily breaking a path through which we drove our hull, with the thin ice scratching and gouging our elm doubling, when we came at last smack up against the thickest pack we had yet seen, some ten to fifteen feet of solid ice. This, needless to say, brought us up short. Since we could do nothing else, we ran out our ice-anchor to the floe ahead, while we waited hopefully for some shift in the pack to make us a new opening.
With clearer weather, several times during the morning as we lay in the ice, we made out distinctly not only Herald Island but other land beyond, above, and also to the southwest of it, which from everything we had been told, should be part of that Wrangel Land on which we were banking so much to afford us a base for our sledging operations toward the Pole. Consequently we searched the distant outlines of this continent with far greater interest than we had bestowed on the nearer profile of Herald Island, but to no conclusion. Danenhower, Chipp, and De Long, all experienced seamen, strained their eyes through glasses, scanning what could be seen of the coast of Wrangel Land, but so far even from agreeing on its remoteness, looking across ice instead of water so upset their habits of judging, that their estimates of its distance varied all the way from forty to one hundred miles, while De Long even doubted whether what he saw beyond Herald Island was land at all but simply a mirage. Being only an engineer, I took no part in these discussions, more concerned myself in staring at the unyielding edges of the nearby floes and wondering, if our navigation for the next few weeks was to consist mostly of traversing leads filled with such floating ice cakes, how long we could hope to go before an ice floe sucked in under our counter knocked off a propeller blade, and how long a time would elapse before our four spare blades were all used up. But there was no great occasion for such worry on my part. Not till afternoon could we move at all, and then only for a couple of hours, when once more we were brought up by solid ice ahead and with banked fires again anchored to a floe, called it a day, and laid below for supper.
Supper was an unusually somber meal. Such an early season encounter with the ice-fields and at so low a latitude, was a sad blow to our hopes of exploration. De Long, at the head of the table, served out silently as Tong Sing placed the dishes before him; I, on his left, carved the mutton and aided him at serving—to Chipp first, then to the others on both sides of the table down to Danenhower, who as mess treasurer sat at the foot of the table opposite the captain. Potatoes, stewed dried apples, bread, butter, and tea made up the rest of our unpretentious meal, the simplicity of which perhaps still further emphasized our situation and put a damper on any conversation. Only the shuffling of the Chinese steward’s feet on the deck as he padded round the little wardroom with the plates broke the quiet.
De Long, brooding over the ship’s situation, was gradually struck by the absence of conversation and its implications. More I think to make conversation than in the hope of gaining any information, he picked out the ice-pilot on my left, sawing earnestly away at his mutton, and asked him,
“Well, Mr. Dunbar, do you think we’ll get through this lead to Herald Island?”
Dunbar, absorbed like the rest of us in his thoughts, surprised me by the speed, so unusual for him, with which without even looking up he snapped out his reply,
“No, cap’n, we won’t!” Then more slowly as he turned his grizzled face toward the head of the table, he added vehemently, “And what’s more, while God’s giving us the chance, I’d wind her in that little water hole astern of us and head out of this ice back to open water before the bottom drops out of the thermometer and we’re frozen in here for a full due!”
Astonished by the heat of this unexpected reply, De Long looked from the old whaler, who in truth had hurled a lance into the very heart of each man’s thoughts, to the rest of us, all suddenly straightened up by the thrust.
“And why, Mr. Dunbar?” in spite of a pronounced flush he asked mildly. “Where can we do better, may I ask?”
“Further east, off Prince Patrick’s Land, to the north’ard of the coast of North America,” replied Dunbar shortly. “A whaler’ll stay in open water further north’n this over on the Alaska side most any time; the current sets that way toward Greenland, not this side toward Siberia.”
De Long calmly shook his head.
“No use, pilot; we’re not whaling and we’ll not go east. That would take us away from Wrangel Land, and sledging north along the coasts of Wrangel Land’s our only hope for working into the real north from Behring Strait. No, we can’t do it. We’ll have to take our chances here.”
Dunbar, his suggestion overruled, made no reply, masking his disappointment by hunching a little lower over his plate and hacking away once more at the chunk of mutton before him. And as suddenly as it had flared up, all conversation ceased.
September 6 dawned, for us on the Jeannette a day to which we often looked back with mingled feelings. During the night our water lead froze up behind us. In the morning, as far as the eye could see in every direction now was only ice—no water, no open leads anywhere. A fog hung over the sea, blotting out Herald Island, but a light northerly wind gave some promise of clearing the atmosphere later on.
We gathered at breakfast in the cabin, a somber group. Under way for a week since leaving Cape Serdze Kamen, we had made but 240 miles to the north, to reach only lat. 71° 30′ N., a point easily to be exceeded by any vessel all year round in the Atlantic. But here we were, completely surrounded by ice. Was this the exceptionally open Arctic summer, so free of ice, that in Unalaska we had been informed awaited us?
Danenhower, loquacious as always, broke the silence, observing to no one in particular,
“This damned coffee’s even worse than usual, all water and no coffee beans. Ah Sam’s had time enough to learn by now. Can’t anyone persuade that Chink to put some coffee in the pot? What’s he saving it for?”
“Maybe the sight of all that ice discourages him,” observed Ambler. “Perhaps he thinks we’re in for a long hard winter and he’s got to save. I reckon he’s right too, for that ice pack sure looks to me as if it never has broken up and turned to water yet.”
“Right, surgeon.” Captain De Long at the head of the table, busily engaged in ladling out a dish of hominy, looked up at Ambler and nodded pessimistically,
“And what’s worse for us, it looks to me as if it never will, unless someone whistles up a heavy gale to break up the pack.”
Chipp, uncomplainingly engaged in drinking down his portion of the insipid coffee, took objection at this.
“Don’t try that, captain! In any gale that’d break up this pack the pack’d break the Jeannette up in the process. No, let Nature take her course melting that ice; it may be slower but it’s safer.”
“Come down to earth!” broke in Danenhower. “Let’s leave the pack a minute; it’ll be there for a while yet. I was talking about coffee. Hasn’t anybody in this mess got influence enough to get Ah Sam to pack a little coffee in the pot for all this water to work on?”
“Well,” grinned Collins, seeing a chance to slip in a pun, “you’re the navigator, Dan. Why don’t you try shooting that Celestial’s equator? That ought to stir him up.”
Collins, chuckling happily, glanced round for approval.
Danenhower twisted his broad shoulders in his chair, directed a blank stare at Collins.
“Huh? If that’s another one of your puns, Mr. Meteorologist, what’s the point?”
Collins stopped laughing and looked pained.
“Don’t you see it, Dan?” he asked. “Why, that one’s rich! Celestial, equator, and you’re a navigator. Now, do you get it?”
Danenhower, determined with the rest of us to squelch Collins’ puns, looking as innocent of understanding as before, replied flatly,
“No! I’m too dumb, I guess. Where’s the point?”
“Why, Ah Sam’s a Chinaman, isn’t he?”
“If he’s not, then I’m one,” agreed Danenhower. “So far I’m with you.”
“Well, all Chinamen are sons of Heaven, aren’t they? So that makes him a Celestial. See? And you’re a navigator so you shoot the stars; they’re celestial too. And anybody’s stomach’s his equator, isn’t it? You see, it all hangs together fine. Now do you get it?” inquired Collins anxiously.
“I’m damned if I see any connection in all this rigmarole of yours with my attempts at getting better coffee,” muttered Danenhower. “Does anybody?” He looked round.
Solemnly first De Long, then Chipp, Ambler and I all shook our heads, gazing blandly at Collins for further elucidation as to what the joke might be.
Collins looked from one to another of us, then in disgust burst out,
“The farther all of you get from San Francisco, the weaker grow your intellects!” He leaned back sulkily. “By the time we get to the Pole, you won’t know your own names. Why, that one’s good! They’d see it in New York right off. I’ve half a mind to try it out on that Indian, Alexey. I’ll bet even he sees it!”
“Why don’t you try it on Ah Sam instead, then?” queried Danenhower, rising. “If our cook sees it, there’s hope. Maybe next you can make him see why he ought to put some coffee berries in the pot when he makes coffee, and that’ll be something even my thick skull can understand!” He jerked on his peacoat, lifted his bulky form from his chair, and strode to the door. “I’m going on deck. I’m too dumb, I guess, to see the points of Collins’ puns. But maybe if I’m not too blind yet, I can see the ice, anyway.”
With a wink at Ambler, our navigator vanished. It seemed to be working; perhaps we might yet cure Collins of his continuous stream of puns, for most of them were atrocious, and anyway, having now had a chance to get acquainted at close range with punning, I heartily agreed with whoever it was, Samuel Johnson I think, in averring that a pun was the lowest form of wit. With us the case was serious—here with the long Arctic night approaching, locking us within the narrow confines of our vessel, we were shipmates with a punster and no escape except to break him of it!
I rose also and went out on deck, the while Collins turned his attention to Dunbar, trying to get him, who also knew something of navigation, to admit that he at least saw the point in the meteorologist’s play on words, but I am afraid he picked the wrong person, for Dunbar’s grim visage remained wholly unresponsive.
Out on deck, clad in a heavy peacoat with a sealskin cap jammed tightly down over my bald spot, for the temperature was down to 26° F., I looked around. A distant view was impossible because of fog. Nearby were a few disconnected pools of water covered by thin ice, but short of miraculously jumping the ship from one pool to another over the intervening floes, there seemed no way for us to make progress. I glanced down our side. For several feet above the waterline, the paint was gone and our elm doubling was everywhere scraped bright with here and there a deep gouge in the wood from some jagged floe.
De Long joined me at the rail, looked despondently off through the mist, his pipe clenched between his teeth, the while he puffed vigorously away at it.
“A grand country for any man to learn patience in, chief,” he remarked glumly. “Since we can’t push through the pack to Wrangel Land over there on the western horizon, I’ve been hoping and praying at least to get the ship in to Herald Island to make winter quarters before we were frozen in, but look what’s happened!” He gazed over the bulwark at the nearby hummocks. “Yesterday I hoped today would make us an opening through to the land; today I hope tomorrow’ll do it. And tomorrow—?” He shrugged his shoulders and left me, to climb our frosted ratlines to the crow’s-nest on the chance that from that elevation he might see over the fog. This turned out a futile effort, since not till one p.m. when the fog finally lifted, were we able to move.
With the weather clearing, I got up steam while De Long, armed with binoculars, perched himself once more in the crow’s-nest, Dunbar again straddled the fore topsail yard, Chipp took the bridge, and we got underway for as odd a bit of navigation as all my years of going to sea have ever witnessed.
To start with, the only possible opening was on the port bow, but with heavy ice ahead and astern, there was insufficient room to maneuver the ship by backing to head her for the opening. So over the side went Bosun Cole and half the starboard watch, dragging with them one end of a six-inch hawser. Selecting a sizeable ice hummock a few shiplengths off on the port side which gave a proper lead to our forecastle bitts, Cole expertly threw a clove hitch in the hawser round the hummock, using the ice, so to speak, as a bollard; while on deck, Quartermaster Nindemann heaved in on the ship end of that line with our steam winch, warping the bow smartly round to port till it pointed fair for the opening, when Chipp gave me the signal,
“Slow ahead!”
With a few turns of the propeller, we pushed our bow into the crack between the floes. After that, with the line cast off, it was a case of full out on the throttle. With connecting rods, cranks, and pistons flying madly round, we certainly churned up a wild wake in that narrow lead wedging those cakes apart while the Jeannette squeezed herself in between the ice floes.
And so it went for the next three hours, the captain and the ice-pilot directing from aloft, while in the engine room we nearly tore the engines off their bedplates and the smoking thrust block off its foundation with all our sudden changes from “Full ahead” to “Full astern” and everything in between, while the Jeannette rammed, squeezed, backed, and butted her way through the ice, sometimes relying only on the engines, sometimes only on Jack Cole and his mates plodding along on the floes ahead of the ship dragging that six-inch hawser and occasionally taking a turn with it on some hummock to help warp the ship into position for ramming. Our solid bow and thick sides took a terrific beating that watch as we hammered our way through pack ice deeper than our keel, but everything held, and when we finally ceased a little after four, it was not from any fear of the consequences to the Jeannette, but only because the fog came down again, blotting out everything.
Once more we ran out our ice-anchor, and with that secured, recalled aboard the warping party. I came up out of the engine room, having taken enough out of our engines in a few hours to drive us halfway to China. Chipp, Danenhower, and the captain all were gathered on the bridge over my head.
“Well, Dan, how much’ve we made good toward Herald Island?” I enquired eagerly of Danenhower.
The navigator’s thickset brows contracted dejectedly as he peered down at me over the after rail.
“Maybe a mile, chief,” he answered.
Maybe a mile? And to get that mile, keeping up a full head of steam all the time for ramming, I had been burning coal furiously these past three hours. A hundred miles of progress at that rate and our coal would be completely gone. I turned questioningly toward the captain, asked,
“I suppose it’s bank fires now and save coal, hey, brother?”
Before answering De Long looked off through the fog. Ice ahead, ice astern, ice on both beams, with only tiny disconnected patches of water showing here and there among the floes. He shook his head.
“No, chief, we won’t bank this time. Let your fires die out altogether; save every pound of coal you can. If a good chance comes to move, I’ll give you ample time to get steam up again.”
And so we left it. As the day ended, the Jeannette, hemmed in by ice, lay an inert ship, unable to move in any direction, as a matter of form only, held to an ice-anchor; while below, after securing the engines, I reduced the watch to one man only, young Sharvell, coalheaver, left to tend the boilers while the fires died out in them.
The temperature, which never during that day rose above the freezing point, started to drop toward evening and soon fell to 23°. The result was inevitable. Young ice, making during the night over all patches of open water, had by morning completely cemented together the old pack.
One look over the side in the midwatch satisfied me there would be no call for the engines next day, nor unless something startling happened, for many a day. All the steam I could put behind my engines could not stir the Jeannette one inch from her bed, and as for warping her now with our winch, our stoutest hawsers would be about as useful as threads in tearing her from that grip of ice.
And so September 6, 1879, ended with the helpless Jeannette solidly frozen into the Arctic ice pack.