CHAPTER XIII
On November 6, two months to a day of our being trapped in the pack, came the first break in the monotony of our imprisonment. About four in the afternoon Collins, trudging perhaps for the thousandth time the rough path to the observatory across that hundred yards of ice which we had come to regard as substantial as a Broadway sidewalk, came pell-mell back to the ship and up the gangway into the wardroom to startle us with the news that the pack ice had cracked wide open between our ship and the observatory! We rushed on deck and over the side. Sure enough it was so. A little behind Dr. Ambler and the captain, I arrived at the edge of the rent, over a yard wide already and continuously growing wider. While we could still jump the gap, there was a wild dash to get our precious instruments out of the observatory and back across the opening to the ship, which (all the officers taking a hand) we shortly accomplished without mishap. That done, with varying emotions we watched as over the next few hours the chasm widened, with the dark sea water showing in strong contrast to the whiteness of the snow-covered ice. But not for long did we see really open water, for with the temperature far below zero, the water which was welling up to within two feet of the top of the parted edges of the floe promptly froze, even though it was salt, into a sheet of young ice. The gap nevertheless kept widening till by midnight it was perhaps ten fathoms across.
What was causing the rupture? One man’s guess was as good as another’s, and all were worthless, I suppose. There was little wind, no land in sight for the edge of the pack to strand on, no evidence of pressure from any direction, and plenty of water beneath us, for the soundings showed over twenty fathoms to a soft mud bottom. Chipp’s surmise, that a tidal action was responsible, was as good an explanation as any. But what is not satisfactorily explainable is always fearsome, and it was perhaps excusable that we looked with some anxiety toward our ship and were secretly relieved to see her as steady as Gibraltar there in the ice some fifty fathoms off, still heeled as usual to starboard with her masts and spars showing not even a quiver as they stood sharply outlined against the frosty polar sky. And so the day ended.
But morning brought a different scene. During the night from somewhere came a push on the pack which closed that chasm, forcing the layer of young ice which had formed over it up into broken masses on our floe. Then with all the young ice squeezed out, the two parted edges of the original pack came together under such great pressure that the advancing sheet was shoved up over the edge of the floe holding the ship, leaving broken masses seven to eight feet thick strewn helter-skelter in a long ridge along the line of junction.
As an engineer, I regarded that broken ice with severe misgivings. We fortunately were solidly frozen in, with our thick floe spreading in all directions interposed as a buckler between us and the pressing pack, but suppose our floe should split and leave us exposed? Could any ship withstand a squeeze in that Titan’s nutcracker? In spite of our thick sides and reenforcing trusses, the sight of those eight foot thick blocks of ice tumbled upon our floe was not reassuring.
On the Jeannette, men and officers alike questioningly scanned the scene while slowly the hours drifted by and we waited apprehensively in the silence of that Arctic morning for what was next, and while we waited even what light breeze there was died away to a perfect calm. Then without apparent reason and without warning, the gap in the ice suddenly yawned open to a width of some five fathoms and immediately down the canal thus formed, broken ice started to flow in a groaning, shrieking mass that so shook the floe in which the Jeannette was imbedded that to us there, only a few yards away clinging to the rail of our ship, it appeared each instant the sheet of ice protecting us must shatter and the Jeannette herself be sucked in to join that swirling maelstrom of hurtling ice cakes. Our eyes glued to the quaking floe into which we were frozen, we watched it shiver and throb under the battering of the broken blocks hurrying by, inwardly speculating on how long it would stand up. Occasionally I glanced furtively at the five sledges standing on the poop, packed with over a month’s provisions for men and dogs, ready at a moment’s notice to go over the side should we have to abandon ship. But if our ship, torn loose and caught in that mass of churning ice, was crushed and sank, how could we ever get safely away from her with our lives, let alone get clear those sledges carrying the food?
Five hours of that scene and of such thoughts we stood, and then, thank God, the flow of ice stopped. The Jeannette was unharmed. We were still safe. But how long a respite would we have? Who knew? Evidently not our captain. As I went below, worn and frozen, I heard him call out to our executive officer,
“Knock off all regular ship’s work, Chipp. Turn to immediately with all hands and make a couple of husky sledges to carry our dinghies over that ice if we have to abandon ship. And for God’s sake, shake it up!”
We got a day’s rest if one may call it that, while Nindemann, Sweetman, and both watches toiled feverishly on the sledges. Then came another day of strain, watching the moving ice grinding and smashing at our floe, breaking it away to within a hundred feet of us. Then a brief respite over night, only at 6 A.M. to have the motion start again worse than ever.
This time, hell seemed to have broken loose. From the pack came a noise the like of which I never heard before on land or sea, in war or peace, sounding like the shrieking of a thousand steamer whistles, the thunder of heavy artillery, the roaring of a hurricane, and the crash of collapsing houses all blended together as down that canal in the pack, a terrifying sight to behold, came stupendous pieces of floe ice as high as two and three story buildings. Sliding by crazily upended, they churned and battered against each other and against the thick edges of our floe with such unearthly screeching and horrible groanings that my eardrums seemed in a fair way to split under the impact of that sound!
Occasionally a berg would jam in the canal blocking the current. With that, under the force of the ice pressing behind, our floe would groan and heave up into waves till several feet of its edge cracked off, easing the pressure and relieving the jam—but each time leaving us with less and less of the floe between us and disaster.
Half an hour of this in the dim light of the early dawn, and then the movement ceased, leaving our tortured ears and jumping nerves to return to normal as best they could while the day broke. But our relief was considerably tempered when in the better light we discovered that a new crack had formed a little distance ahead across our bows and that into this opening an advancing floeberg was being driven along like a wedge towards our port side, threatening to cut into the undisturbed pack there and leave us imbedded in a tiny island of ice, to be exposed then to the wear of churning bergs on both sides of us!
With no further noticeable movement of the pack, we were left in peace to contemplate the possibilities of this situation till late afternoon, when the main stream again got underway and bombarded our floe to starboard heavily for four hours so strenuously that it seemed to all of us that this time we must surely go adrift. But at about 8 p.m., the motion ceased again, leaving us all in such a state of mind that the captain’s order for all hands to sleep in their clothes with knapsacks close at hand ready for instant flight, seemed to us the most natural thing in the world.
We didn’t get much sleep. Hardly had the midwatch ended, when little Newcomb, who unable to rest at all, had in spite of the bitter cold stayed on deck till 4 A.M., darted into De Long’s cabin, seized his shoulder, woke him with a shout,
“Turn out, captain! It’s all over this time! That ice is coming right down on us!”
De Long, already fully clothed, sprang from his bunk, seized his knapsack, and rushed on deck. The rest of us in the poop, none too sound asleep ourselves, were roused by the noise and hurriedly followed him up to find that Newcomb had hardly exaggerated.
On the starboard side, like buildings being poured through a chute, the broken floes were cascading along the channel at a livelier rate than ever, but that at least was hardly novel to us now. What froze our blood as we stood there in the cold light of the moon was the sight ahead. The rift in the pack which yesterday was headed across our bows, had changed direction squarely for our bowsprit, and now along that opening was coming toward us irresistibly and steadily, towering as high as our yardarms, a torrent of floebergs, thundering down on the yet unbroken pack between with a violence that made the sturdy Jeannette quiver under our feet like jelly!
Hardly audible in the roaring of the ice, Jack Cole shrilled away on his bosun’s pipe, then his hoarse voice bellowed along the berth deck,
“All hands! Stand by to abandon ship!”
Our entire crew poured up from below to shiver in a temperature of twenty below zero and shake, I have no doubt for other good reasons, as they stood helpless round the mainmast, all eyes riveted on that fearful wall of advancing ice, with a crest of hummocks, weighing twenty to fifty tons each, toppling forward like surf breaking on our floe. Another crash, another startling advance of the floebergs, and on top of the deckhouse I saw De Long suddenly grasp the mainstay with both hands and hang on for dear life, awaiting the final smash as that Niagara of ice struck us.
The blow never came. God alone knows why, but hardly twenty-five feet from our bows, the onrushing wall of ice suddenly halted, the pressure vanished, and we on the Jeannette were left to contemplate, in the deathly Arctic silence which ensued and in the growing light, the indescribable wreckage that had been wrought in the level floe that had once surrounded us. And then like a feeble anti-climax, the stillness was broken by the whistling of the bosun’s pipe, followed by his call,
“All hands! Lay below for breakfast!”
Breakfast? Who really wanted breakfast? What each of us earnestly wished was only to be far to the south, away from that dreaded pack ready to crush us, but seemingly delaying the fatal moment as a cat delays, knowing that the mouse with which it toys cannot get away.