Hell on ice

by Edward Ellsberg

CHAPTER XXX

De Long was left with the problem of how to make Collins and Newcomb useful members of our primitive community. While Collins, before the captain noticed him, had done useful work when it suited him to help, I have little doubt that it was only for the Machiavellian purpose of building up a brutal mistreatment case against the captain. Had he been ordered to work steadily in harness like the others, he would either have flatly balked or else have done it only as a martyr, neither of which situations the captain was prepared to cope with. Newcomb’s case was a little different. Had he been my problem, I am confident that the toe of my boot, properly applied a few times, would have startlingly changed his outlook both on work and on keeping his mouth shut when spoken to, but De Long was constitutionally opposed to physical persuasion. Casting his eye about the floes, the skipper observed that seals were again occasionally in evidence, and decided that since both our Indians, Alexey and Aneguin, were laboring like all the others as pack-horses, he might well substitute Collins and Newcomb for them as hunters. Hunting being in all civilized circles a gentleman’s privilege, neither of these pseudo-seamen officers could well maintain that it was beneath the stations for which they had shipped, and if they shot anything, it would be of real value in stretching out our precious food supply, let alone giving us a change from the pemmican which constituted the fish, flesh, fowl and vegetable of our unvaried menu.

So promptly providing Collins with a rifle and Newcomb with the shotgun which he had carried from the wreck, both were turned to on the floes to see what they could do in earning their passage while our straggling line of boats and sledges moved on over the pack.

But even so Collins was not satisfied. A member of the party messing and sleeping in the captain’s tent, his main business in life seemed to be sizing up what he could find wrong with De Long’s management of the retreat, to add in his private notes to whatever else he had accumulated in the way of (in his eyes) errors in the captain’s judgment. But he must have had a tough time of it, for the only thing that apparently displeased him now was as he related it to his confidant, Bartlett,

“The skipper’s always too infernally polite to me, seeing that I’m served before he helps himself to pemmican, and making sure my place in the tent’s all right before he’ll crawl into his sleeping bag.”

And under these embarrassing conditions, Collins began his life as a hunter.

July 10th, far to the southwest, Dunbar sighted a faint cloud which he announced as land, gravely assuring us that the New Siberian Islands were in sight. While the skipper was dubious of its being land at all, knowing (what Dunbar and most of the party did not) that the nearest charted land, those New Siberian Islands, were still a hundred and twenty miles off, so that what was seen was either a mirage or a new discovery, the effect on our progress was magical—over none too good ice we made three and a quarter miles that day! In the clearer atmosphere, the skipper got some sights for the first time in a week which when worked out placed us in latitude 77° 8′ N., longitude 151° 38′ E., to our joy showing that at last we were south of 77° 18′ N. from which we had started. But both the skipper and I stared in amazement at our new position, for having by dead reckoning and compass made sixteen miles to the southwest over the pack during the week, the sights showed that our actual change of position in those seven days was twenty-seven miles to the southeast. So once again the current had us, carrying us where it would, but since this time it was increasing our southing, we could only be thoroughly grateful.

That night when (still keeping our actual position a secret) it was announced that not only were we doing well over the ice, but that a southerly drift was helping us along, there was a roaring cheer as the straining men in harness leaned forward, and we got the boats away in grand style.

For two weeks we struggled on to the southwest, sometimes certain we saw land, sometimes certain we didn’t. But it was discouraging work. Fog, snow, and hail made our lives miserable, and between the everlasting ferrying over open leads and the plowing through pools of surface slush, we kept our clothes continuously soaked in ice water. Aside from the discomfort of stretching out in wet clothes to sleep in a wet bag on a rubber sheet sunk in a puddle on wet ice, the interminable wetness began to finish our moccasin and boot-soles, and now there wasn’t a tight pair left in the ship’s company. These soles, made of “oog-joog” skin, a rawhide from a species of seal, were fine when dry in ordinary snow or ice, but when wet, they softened to resemble tripe and then under the strain of men heaving hard against sharp ice with their feet to drag the sledges, they soon let go. As long as the spare “oog-joog” brought from the Jeannette held out, we patched away till all hands stood on a mass of patches as they worked, but when it gave out (and it very soon did), we were in a bad way for substitutes. First we tried leather, stripping it from the oar-looms, but leather was not only too hard and slippery for use on the ice but our supply didn’t last long, and we were quickly reduced to canvas, to sennet mats woven of hemp rope by the seamen, to rag mats, and even to wooden soles carved from what little planking our carpenter could strip out of the bottom boards in our boats. None were in any degree satisfactory—one hard heave on sharp ice would often tear the soles off a man’s boots—and frequently before the end of a night’s hauling I would have half a dozen men straining at the sledges with their bare feet on the ice, even their socks completely worn through, while the rest of the gang, whose soles still clung on, would be spurting a mixture of slush and water from their torn moccasins at each step.

Between the lodestone effect of the dim land ahead of us, less snow, a little smoother ice, and lighter sledges, we speeded up. The ice improved to the point where we could drag a boat with only half our party, thus advancing two loads at once and having to tramp only seven miles for each mile made, instead of thirteen as before. But the cracks in the ice increased in frequency and ferrying and bridging over them made our lives a nightmare, the mental strain of forever riding heavy sledges over bobbing ice cakes which threatened to capsize each instant, being indescribable. And to add to our worries, our dogs began to get fits, four of our best ones spinning dizzily in their harnesses before dropping on the ice, frothing at the mouth when we cut them out of the traces.

One pleasing incident occurred amidst all our hardships. After ten days of hunting, Collins finally shot a seal in an open lead, which prize was handsomely recovered by Ambler and Johnson in the dinghy before it sank. For this we were doubly thankful—after using his grease to tighten up our leaking boots, we dined most luxuriously on stewed seal, fried seal, and if only we had had an oven, we might have had roast seal. But he went very well as it was; after a month on cold pemmican, it was a feast long to be remembered!

July 16th we struck tough going. The ferrying grew worse than ever; Erichsen crossing a lead capsized with his sledge and we lost three hundred pounds of pemmican, a serious blow. A few minutes later, trying to get to a high hummock to inspect the distant land now more visible ahead. De Long tried to jump a wide lead, the ice broke under him and he went in up to his neck. He might well have gone completely and forever had not Dunbar, who was with him, at that point grabbed him by what he thought was his fur hood but which was actually his whiskers, and nearly jerked the skipper’s head off pulling him out by his mustaches!

Finally on this day, the doctor discharged Chipp from the sicklist, though doubtful as to how long it might be before Chipp broke down again. This resulted in a shuffle in commands—Chipp relieved me in charge of the working force; I relieved Ambler in charge of the road gang; and Ambler with only Danenhower left as a regular patient, was detailed to work with Dunbar in scouting out the road. The doctor offered to join the sledge gang in harness, but we were doing better there, so the skipper refused. He preferred to use Ambler simply as scout and medical officer, hoping that his terribly calloused, corned, and chapped hands might recover enough for proper surgical work should an accident make any necessary.

The skipper worked out some sights. The latitude, reliable, was 76° 41′ N.—28 miles gained to the south in six days—fine progress, much more than we were logging over the ice. The longitude, doubtful, put us at 153° 30′ E., indicating we were still going southeast though we were heading southwest, but we were not greatly concerned over that. Anything to the south was cause for gratitude.

We dragged along five days more. Newcomb at last shot something, a gull he called a mollemokki, interesting ornithologically to him, perhaps, worthless to us for food, certainly. The ice grew rotten; we had more trouble with it. Our men, their eyes and minds affected by the ice, easily deluded by mirages, were now seeing land in nearly all directions, south of us, west of us, and even north of us! And not a day went by when someone didn’t see open water ahead of us, fine wide-open sea in which we could launch our boats, toss away our sledges, and sail homeward in comfort!

Instead of that we soon bumped into the worst mess of ice we had yet encountered, a jumble of small lumps and water, with numberless large floes tipped on end vertically. With my road gang and our solitary pick-ax, I started the herculean job of clearing away some of these hummocks so we might proceed, and was busily at it when the doctor, bless his soul, came in to report that by retracing our path northward half a mile, we could then go due west till we got on the flank of that broken ice, after which we might go southwest again. I snapped at that; the job ahead of me was like tunneling through a mountain with a toothpick. So back over our trail we went with our boats and sledges.

Getting across even that better path was a heartrending job, for the rotten floes would hardly stick alongside each other, till finally using all the lines we had, like Alpine climbers we lashed the floes together while we crossed over, seriously hampered by a dense fog. It was a long stretch. In the middle of it, we came to morning, our usual time for piping down to camp and rest during the day, but the captain, seriously alarmed at the prospect of that rotten and moving ice disintegrating under us while we slept, belayed the usual camp. So without rest and only a brief stop for supper, we kept on, till after twenty-three hours of terrific labor we came in the late afternoon to a solider floe and stopped at last to rest our weary bones.

The captain, feeling rightly enough that what we now most sorely needed was sleep rather than cold supper, gave the order for all hands to turn in. This the men in my tent thankfully did and were soon stretched out in their sleeping bags, but in the next tent, assigned to Danenhower, Newcomb, and five seamen, Newcomb immediately sounded off.

“This is a fine way,” he said sarcastically, “to treat men who have been working so hard; ordering them to turn in without anything to eat!”

Lieutenant Danenhower peered in surprise through his dark glasses at the naturalist who had done nothing all day but carry a small shotgun.

“Maybe it is hard for the men who are working, Newcomb,” he said quietly, “but for you and me who haven’t done a blessed thing, it isn’t, and we shouldn’t be the first to complain now.”

Newcomb ran true to form. Instead of taking the hint thus delicately conveyed, he retorted angrily,

“I wasn’t speaking to you; I was speaking to these men. I don’t count myself in the same category with you. I’m a worker!”

Newcomb a worker! Danenhower could hardly believe his ears. But not wishing to start a row before the men, and not wanting anyone, least of all a man who passed as an officer with them, to encourage them in the belief that they were ill-treated, he ordered curtly,

“Pipe down, Newcomb! That’s enough on that!”

But piping down was one thing not in Newcomb’s psychology. Answering back suited him better.

“No, I won’t!” he piped up. “I don’t take orders from you. And now that the crisis has come, I’m going to meet the issue! You’ve made yourself disagreeable to me right along, but I’m an officer too, and it’s got to stop!”

Had Dan been able to see in more than a vague blur, the issue would undoubtedly have met Newcomb’s jaw then and there. As it was, without further words, Dan stumbled from the tent to report the still spouting naturalist to the captain for endeavoring to foment trouble in the crew.

In five minutes, Newcomb was placed under arrest to be taken home for courtmartial on two charges:

I. Using language tending to produce discontent among the men; and

II. When remonstrated with by Lieutenant Danenhower, using insolent and insubordinate language.

There being little further De Long could then do, he deprived Newcomb of his shotgun, ordered him to keep in the rear as we proceeded, and sternly warned him meantime not to annoy anyone working.

So when late that night we got underway, we had two officers under arrest—the surly Collins who seemed to spend much of his time unburdening his wrongs in the ears of my fireman Bartlett, but in between times making himself useful as a hunter, and Newcomb who was thoroughly useless for anything.

The land which Dunbar weeks before had sighted across the ice, undoubtedly a newly discovered island not on the charts, was now in plain sight only a few miles off, bearing westward. Through bad gales and over broken pack, with occasional floebergs suddenly shooting into the air near us, we worked toward it. July 23rd, the captain’s sights showed no change in our latitude since the 16th; in that time between our own efforts and the erratic drift, we had been taken twenty-eight miles due west and were now fairly close to our new island. We struggled along toward it over badly moving ice, but at least this ice was firm and many of the floes were large. Collins finally shot another seal, but it sank before the dinghy could get to it, and we sadly saw our visions of a second feast dissolve into cold water. Next morning we pitched camp as usual, with the land tantalizing us not three miles off but mostly hidden in fog. Soon after turning in, the man on watch shouted,

“Bear!” and instantly out of their sleeping bags popped Alexey and Aneguin, eager to get the first bear sighted since our ship sank. We heard a couple of shots, and our mouths began to water. Um-m! Bear steaks for dinner! But it was all wasted for soon the two Indians were back, empty-handed and disgusted. The bear had been in such excellent trim that they had had to fire at a thousand yards on a rapidly reciprocating target as that bear humped himself over the ice, and they had of course missed. However, it didn’t matter much, claimed Alexey, as the bear was only a dirty brown one and not very big, a remark which prompted the captain to ask innocently,

“Sour grapes, Alexey?” but Alexey only looked at him puzzled. Grapes, sour or otherwise, never grew in his latitudes, so I’m afraid he missed the point. Quieting our disappointed stomachs as best we could, once more we turned in. But we got the bear. In the late afternoon, Seaman Görtz, who had the watch the while the rest of us slept, spotted him once again. This time Görtz kept his mouth shut while the bear advanced to within five hundred yards of our camp, and then, unnoticed, our lookout managed to crawl within a hundred yards of him to plant two bullets in that bear where they did the most good!

Now that we had him, he turned out to be a very fine bear indeed, even Alexey admitting that ungrudgingly, and soon the air over that floe was filled with an appetizing aroma of sizzling bear steaks that fairly intoxicated us. We envied no man on earth his evening meal that night as, disdaining pemmican, we gorged ourselves on bear. But we needed it. When we broke camp and started for the island ahead, we found ourselves with nothing but moving ice over which to work our sledges.

For two days, mostly in fog, we fought our way toward that island, with the floes breaking under us, sliding away from us, and the whole pack alive around us. A gale blew up, and on the off side of the hummocks about us, a bad surf broke and kept us drenched. Finally on the third day, we found ourselves opposite the dimly visible western tip of the island, with nothing but a forlorn chance left of ever making the solid ground that so desperately we ached to rest ourselves on. With but a few hundred yards remaining before the pack finally drifted us past it forever, we sighted ahead a long floe of heavy blue ice extending in toward the land, with only a few openings between the floe and ours. We bridged the gaps, bounced our sledges and boats over, and made good a mile and a half across that floe. There we found more broken ice and water, which with difficulty we started to cross in the fog by passing a line to a floe beyond and using a smaller cake as a ferryboat, when suddenly the fog lifted and there over our heads, some 2500 feet high, towered a huge cliff, and sweeping past it as in a millrace were the floes on which we rode!

We finished our ferry, ending on a moderate-sized floe drifting rapidly past the fixed ice piled up at the base of the cliff, with the southwest cape, our last slim chance to make the land, not far off. For over two weeks we had dragged and struggled toward that island; now in despair we found ourselves being helplessly swept by it!

Our little floe, covered with sledges, men and dogs, whirled and eddied in the race, spinning crazily, and threatening to break up any moment, when we noted that if only it should make the next spin in the right direction, it might touch a corner against the ice fringing the land. We waited breathlessly. It did!

“Away, Chipp!” shouted De Long, and in an instant our sledges started to move off that spinning floe. The first got away perfectly, the second nearly went overboard, the third sledge shot into the sea, carrying Cole with it, and the fourth was only saved by Erichsen who, with superhuman strength, shoved an ice cake in for a bridge. We couldn’t get the boat sledges over; our floe was already starting to crack up. Working frenziedly as it broke, the few of us left on the floe pushed the boats, their sledges still under them, off into the water and the men already landed started to haul the boats over to them, when away drifted the last remnant of that ice cake, carrying with it De Long, Iversen, Aneguin and me, together with six dogs! For a few minutes we were in a bad way, threatening to drift clear of the island on that tiny ice cake with no food, except perhaps the dogs; while the men ashore ran wildly along the ice-foot, unable to help us in any manner.

Fortunately for us, a little further along a swirl drove our floe in against a grounded berg for a second and dogs and all, we made a wild leap for it; successfully too, for only three of us landed in the water. Aneguin, the Indian, proved the best broad jumper. He landed safely enough on the berg and dragged the rest of us up and out.

Soon reunited again, behind our dripping captain the entire ship’s company straggled across the ice-foot to solid ground (the steep face of the cliff), where clinging to the precipice with one hand, the captain for the third time on our voyage displayed his silken banner, proudly rammed its staff for a moment into the soil, and exclaimed,

“Men, this is newly discovered land. I therefore take possession of it in the name of the President of the United States, and name it,

“Bennett Island!”

The men, most of them (except the five who had landed with me on Henrietta Island) with their feet on solid ground for the first time in two years, cheered lustily. Jack Cole then sang out,

“All hands, now. Three cheers fer Cap’n De Long!” in which all again joined except Collins and (for the first time in his life managing to keep his mouth shut when anybody gave him an order) Newcomb.

But our happy captain, not noticing that, turned to his executive officer and jocularly remarked,

“We’ve been a long time afloat, Mr. Chipp. You may now give the men all the shore leave they wish on American soil!”

It was July 28th when we landed; we stayed a week on Bennett Island, resting mainly, while Nindemann and Sweetman worked strenuously repairing our boats. All were badly damaged and unseaworthy from the pounding they had received in the pack. The whaleboat especially, our longest boat, had suffered severely and every plank in its stern was sprung wide open. Sweetman did the best he could in hurrying repairs, pouring grease into the leaking seams and refastening planks, but it was a slow job nevertheless.

While this was going on, the men explored Bennett Island, which we found to be of considerable extent (we never got to its northwest cape), probably thirty miles long and over ten miles wide, very mountainous, with many glaciers, running streams, no game we ever saw, and thousands of birds nesting on the cliffs. This island, at least three times the size of Henrietta Island, nicely finished off the honors due the Bennett family, for we now had one each for Mr. Bennett, his sister, and his mother.

Geologically, we found the island interesting. I discovered a thick vein of bituminous coal, and Dr. Ambler found many deposits of amethyst crystals, but what took our fancy most were the birds. We knocked down innumerable murres with stones, which, fried in bear’s grease, we ate with great relish. But they proved too much for Dr. Ambler’s stomach, laying him in his tent for over a day.

On August 4th, with the boats all repaired, we made ready to leave. To the southward of Bennett Island, the pack looked to us badly broken up with enough large water openings to make it seem that thereafter we could proceed mostly in the boats among drifting floes, keeping the sledges for use when required. To this end, since the dogs would be less necessary and feeding them on our pemmican an unwarranted further drain on our stores, De Long ordered ten broken-down dogs to be shot to avoid their suffering should we abandon them, keeping only the twelve best for future sledging, including husky Snoozer who was by now quite the captain’s pet.

By sledge over the pack we had travelled almost exactly a hundred miles in a straight line from where the Jeannette had sunk to Bennett Island, though over the winding track as we actually crossed the drifting ice we had dragged our sledges more than a hundred and eighty miles and in so doing had ourselves tramped far beyond a thousand miles on foot. We prepared hopefully to rely from then on mainly on our boats, and for this purpose the captain rearranged the parties, breaking up the sledge and tent groups in which we previously had journeyed.

Into the first cutter with himself he took a total of thirteen—Dr. Ambler, Mr. Collins, Nindemann, Erichsen, Kaack, Boyd, Alexey, Lee, Noros, Dressler, Görtz and Iversen.

Into the second cutter (a smaller boat) under Lieutenant Chipp’s command, he put ten—Mr. Dunbar, Sweetman, Sharvell, Kuehne, Starr, Manson (later transferred to my boat), Warren, Johnson, and Ah Sam (who later to lighten still further the second cutter, was transferred to De Long’s boat).

Into the whaleboat, of which he gave me the command, also went ten—Lieutenant Danenhower, Mr. Newcomb, Cole, Bartlett, Aneguin, Wilson, Lauterbach, Leach, and Tong Sing.

Thus we made ready, with De Long commanding the largest and roomiest boat, Chipp commanding the smallest boat, and me in command of the whaleboat, considerably our longest craft though not our greatest in carrying capacity. And promptly there flared up in the Arctic an echo of that Line and Staff officer controversy agitating our Navy at home. (At home, it lasted until the Spanish War showed that we engineers were as important in winning battles as deck officers, and maybe more so.)

I, as an engineer officer, belonged to the Staff; Danenhower, as a deck officer, belonged to the Line, which alone maintained the claim to actual command of vessels afloat. A whaleboat was not much of a vessel, but nevertheless Danenhower, when he heard of the assignments, promptly informed me he was going to protest to the captain.

“Go ahead, Dan,” I said. “That’s perfectly all right with me.” So the navigator went to the captain to object to a staff officer being given command while he, a line officer, was put under my orders. In that congested camp on Bennett Island, he didn’t have far to go to find the skipper.

“Captain,” asked Dan, “what’s my status in the whaleboat?”

“You are on the sicklist, sir,” replied De Long.

“Who has command of the boat?” persisted Dan.

“Mr. Melville, under my general command.”

“And in case of a separation of the boats?” questioned the navigator. “Suppose we lose you?”

“In that case,” said the captain, “Mr. Melville has my written orders to command that boat and what to do with her.”

“Am I under his orders?”

“Yes, so far as it may be necessary for you to receive orders from him.”

“But that puts me under the orders of a staff officer!” objected Dan strenuously.

“Well, you’re unfit to take command of the boat yourself,” pointed out the skipper. “You can’t see, Mr. Danenhower. I can’t put you on duty now. So long as you remain on the sicklist, you will be assigned to no military control whatever.”

“Why can’t I be put in a boat with a line officer, then?” asked Dan, the idea of having to report to a staff officer rankling badly.

“Because I have no line officer left to put in that boat with you, and because I have seen fit so to distribute our party. I want one line officer in each boat. In an emergency, Mr. Melville may wish to have your advice on matters of seamanship.”

“Well then,” replied Danenhower vehemently, “I remonstrate against being kept on the sicklist.”

“But you’re sick and that’s nonsensical,” said De Long curtly.

“Why, sir, haven’t I the right to remonstrate?”

“You have, and I’ve heard you, and your remonstrance has no effect,” replied the captain bluntly. “I’ve had the anxiety of your care and preservation for two years and your coming to me on these points now is simply an annoyance. I will not assign you to duty till you’re fit for it, and that will be when the doctor discharges you from the sicklist. I will not put other people’s lives in jeopardy by committing them to your charge, and I consider your urging me to do so is very un-officer-like conduct.”

Taken aback at this barbed comment on his complaint, Danenhower asked hesitantly,

“Am I to take that as a private reprimand?”

“You can take it any way you please, Mr. Danenhower,” concluded the irritated De Long, walking away to supervise the loading of the first cutter, leaving the crestfallen navigator no alternative but to come back to join me in the whaleboat.

“Don’t take it so hard, Dan,” I suggested. “Too bad about your eyes, of course, but it can’t be helped now. We’ve always been the best of friends and we’re not going to let this change things. As long as you’re in the whaleboat, you can count on me, old man, not to say or do anything that’ll hurt your feelings as an officer. Hop in, now; we’re shoving off!”

Already delayed two days by bad weather, on August 6th we got away from Bennett Island, with intense satisfaction, though the wind had died away, being able to get underway in our boats under oars, carrying the sledges and our twelve remaining dogs. The boats, of course, packed with men, food, records, sledges, and dogs, were heavily overloaded and in no condition to stand rough weather, but we had smooth water and we made two miles before bringing up against a large ice island. Here we lost most of our dogs, who not liking water anyway, and objecting still more to the unavoidable mauling they were getting in the crowded boats from the swinging oars, promptly deserted the moment they saw ice again, by leaping out on the floe, and we were unable to catch them. We worked around the ice pack in the boats, by evening getting to its southern side, where we camped on the ice, with five miles between us and Bennett Island, a good day’s work and a heaven-sent relief from sledging.

The weather was startlingly clear. Looking back, we got a marvelous view of the island. When we had first reached it in late July, its appearance was quite summery with mossy slopes and running streams, but now winter had hit it with a vengeance. Everything on it was snow-covered and the streams were freezing. We regarded it with foreboding. The first week of August and the brief Arctic summer was fading away, with four hundred miles before us still to go on our journey to the Lena Delta. We must hurry, or the open leads we now had for the boats would all soon freeze over.

For two weeks we stood on to the southwest, boating and sledging. With luck in pushing away the ice with boathooks, we might make five or six miles between broken floes before we met a pack we could not get through afloat, when it was a case of unload the boats, mount them on their sledges, and drag across the ice. By the second day of this, we were down to two dogs, Snoozer and Kasmatka, all the rest having deserted, but these two special favorites were kept tied and so prevented from decamping. The boat work, whether under sail or oars, was hard labor. There was no open sea, merely leads in the open pack, and over most of these leads, the weather was now cold enough to freeze ice a quarter of an inch thick over night. We found we could not row through this, so the leading boat, usually the first cutter, had to break a way, and all day long men were poised in her bows with boathooks and oars breaking up the ice ahead. And we had before us several hundred miles of this!

The weather was bad, mostly fog, snow squalls, and some gales, but because of the vast amount of floating ice, there was no room for a heavy sea to kick up, and when a moderate sea rose, we always hauled out on the nearest floe. And so camping on the ice at night, hauling out for dinner, and making what we could under sail or oars in between when we were not sledging over the pack, we stood on to the southwest for the New Siberian Islands. At the end of one week’s journeying, the snowfalls became frequent and heavy, troubling us greatly, though they did provide us with good drinking water which was an improvement over the semi-salted snow we got on the main pack. By now it was the middle of August, sixty days since we had left the Jeannette, and the expiration of the period for which originally we had provided food. We were hundreds of miles from our destination, and our food was getting low. Of course had it not been for our going on short rations soon after our start, our position would now be precarious, since the few seals, birds, and the solitary bear we got, while luxurious breaks in our menu so long as they lasted (which wasn’t long) meant little in the way of quantity.

By August 16th, nine days underway from Bennett Island, we had made only forty miles—not very encouraging. Next day we did better—ten miles under sail with only one break, but the day after, it was once more all pulling with the oars and smashing ice ahead and slow work again. But on August 19th we saw so much open water that we joyfully imagined we were near the open sea at last. We loosed our sails and until noon went swiftly onward with the intention of getting dinner in our boats for the first time without hauling out on the ice, and then continuing on all night also. Suddenly astern of us we saw Chipp’s boat hastily douse sail, run in against a floe, and promptly start to unload.

There was nothing for the rest of us (cursing fluently at the delay) to do except to round to and secure to the ice till Chipp came up, and long before he had managed that, the ice came down on us from all sides before a northeast wind, so that shortly it looked as if there was nothing but ice in the world. Chipp finally sledged his boat over the pack to join us and we learned the ice had closed on him suddenly, stove a bad hole in his port bow, and he had to haul out hurriedly to keep from sinking.

By three p.m., Chipp had his boat repaired, using a piece of pemmican can for a patch, and we were again ready. Each boat had its sledge, a heavy oaken affair, slung athwartships across the gunwales just forward of the mast. Abaft that, the boats were jammed with men and supplies, the result being that they were both badly overloaded and topheavy.

With great difficulty we poled our way through ice drifts packed about us to more open water and made sail again before a freshening breeze, De Long in the first cutter leading, my whaleboat in the middle, and Chipp with the second cutter astern of all. We felt we must be nearing the northerly coasts of the New Siberian Islands, which we hoped to sight any moment and perhaps even reach by night.

The breeze grew stronger and the sea started to kick up. My whaleboat began to roll badly, taking in water over the gunwales, and at the tiller I found it difficult to hold her steady on the course, though with some bailing we got along fairly well, and so it seemed to me did the first cutter ahead. But the second cutter astern, the shortest boat of the three, was behaving very badly in that sea—rolling heavily, sticking her nose into the waves instead of rising to them, and evidently making considerable water. Hauling away a little on my quarter and drawing up so he could hail the captain ahead, Chipp bellowed down the wind,

“Captain! I’ve either got to haul out on the ice or heave overboard this sledge! If I don’t, I’ll swamp!”

De Long decided to haul out. He waved to Chipp and me (he being to leeward, we couldn’t hear him) indicating that we were to haul out on a floe nearby on our lee side. The near side of that floe, its windward side, had a bad surf breaking over the ice, so we tried to weather a point on the floe and get around to its lee where we could see a safe cove to haul out in, but our unwieldy boats would not sail close enough to the wind, and we failed to make it. Chipp’s case by this time was desperate; his boat was badly flooded and in spite of all the bailing his men could do, the waterlogged cutter seemed ready to sink under him. There was nothing for it but to land on the weather side of the ice, which dangerous maneuver, with a rolling sea breaking badly on the floe and shooting surf high into the air, was skilfully accomplished without, to our intense relief, smashing all our boats beyond repair.

The gale grew worse. It was now 7:30 P.M. and beginning to get dark. (Between the later season of the year and our being farther south, we no longer had the midnight sun with us, but instead about eight hours of darkness.) There was no hope of further progress that night, so we pitched camp on the floe, while the gale started to push ice in about us from all directions.

That night before supper, the captain called Chipp and me to his tent. The question for discussion was the boat sledges. We had since leaving Bennett Island broken up all our other provision sledges and burned them for fuel. Chipp strenuously insisted that the boat sledges be treated likewise immediately.

“Captain,” he said, “I’m surprised I’m here to talk about it even! My boat’s so topheavy with that sledge across her rails, a dozen times I thought she’d either founder or capsize. And a man can’t swim a minute in these clothes in that ice water. If she’d sunk under me, long before you or the chief could’ve beat back against that wind to pick us up, we’d all be gone!”

With Chipp’s facts, honestly enough stated, De Long was inclined to agree and so was I, but the question was too serious to be decided out of hand. On our first journey across the pack, the sledges were our salvation, and it was the heavy boats (holding us back like anchors) which we then gravely considered abandoning lest our party perish before we ever reached water. Now the situation was reversed; it was those boats, dragged across the ice at the cost of indescribable agony, which had become our main hope of escape, but still could we afford to abandon the sledges which so obviously now imperilled our safety in the boats? We were not yet out of the pack; one had only to poke his head through the tent flap to see as much ice as ever we had seen. And if we had to sledge over much more of the pack to get south, without those boat sledges we couldn’t do it. What then should be done with the sledges?

With our lives very likely depending on that decision, we considered it deeply. The conclusion, concurred in by all, was that the certainty of disaster if we kept the sledges, outweighed the possibility of being now caught permanently in pack ice, unable to move except by sledging, and De Long finally give the order to burn the sledges. In a few minutes, knives and hatchets in the hands of sailors eager to make an end of those incubi before the captain could change his mind, had reduced them to kindling and they were burning merrily beneath our pots. No man regretted seeing them go who had toiled in the harnesses dragging them and their bulky burden of boats across the ice pack, laboring as men have never done before, and as I hope may never have to again.

Further to help Chipp, the captain in expectation next morning of a long voyage among the New Siberian Islands, decided to even matters somewhat more by removing from Chipp’s stubby cutter, only sixteen feet long, part of its load. Accordingly he decreased its crew by two men, taking Ah Sam (our Chinese cook who had since the sinking of the Jeannette with nothing but pemmican on the menu, not cooked a meal, serving instead only as a beast of burden like all others) into the first cutter with him, and sending Manson, a husky Swedish seaman, to join my crew in the whaleboat. In addition, De Long took into the first cutter part of Chipp’s supply of pemmican, still more to lighten his boat which was certainly a worse sea boat than either my twenty-five foot long whaleboat or his own twenty foot long cutter.

With these rearrangements, we camped for the night in the midst of a howling gale drifting snow about our tents, the while we earnestly hoped that the wind would break up the pack in the morning, and allow us to proceed.

But instead, for ten wearing days we lay in that camp, unable to launch a boat and unable of course to sledge them over the broken pack, while the weather varied between gales with heavy snow and dismal fogs, and we ate our hearts out in inaction, watching our scanty food supplies constantly melting away with no progress to show for it. Our hard bread gave out altogether, our coffee was all used up, and our menu came down to two items only, pemmican and tea three times a day, with an ounce of our fast-vanishing lime-juice for breakfast to ward off scurvy. To save what little alcohol we had left (we had been using it for fuel for making tea and coffee) we continued to burn up the kindling from our boat sledges, but long before we broke camp, even that was all gone, and we started again on our precious alcohol.

The tobacco gave out (each man had been permitted to take one pound with him from the Jeannette). To the captain, an inveterate pipe smoker, this was a severe trial and left him perfectly wretched, till Erichsen, who still had a trifle left, generously shared with him the contents of his pouch. De Long declined to take more than a pipeful, but Erichsen insisting on an even division of his trifling remnant, the skipper found he had enough for three smokes. Immediately seeking out the doctor and Nindemann, he divided with them and together they puffed on their pipes, in a mixed state of happiness and despair watching the last tobacco from the Jeannette curling upward in smoke wreaths into the Arctic air.

Next day, like the others, they were smoking used tea leaves and getting little solace from them.

Our second day in this camp, through a rift in the fog we sighted land twenty miles to the southward, in the captain’s opinion the island of New Siberia, one of the largest islands of the New Siberian group and the one farthest eastward in that archipelago.

As the days went by and in the fog and snow we drifted westward with the pack before an easterly gale, the knowledge of that unapproachable island added to our aggravations. We could do little except repair our boats (which, using pemmican tallow, rags, and lampwick for caulking materials, Nindemann and Sweetman labored at) and wait for the pack to open, a constant watch night and day being set with orders that if a lead appeared, we should immediately launch our boats into it. But none showed up. In desperation at the delay, which was bringing us face to face with the prospect of starvation, De Long again sent for Chipp and me.

“Mr. Chipp,” he asked, “can you move your boat across this ice to the land?”

“No,” said Chipp flatly. “It’ll stave in her bottom trying to ride her on her keel.”

“Mr. Melville,” turning to me, “can you get the whaleboat across? Is this any worse than when you landed with the dinghy on Henrietta Island?”

“Captain,” I replied sadly, “no worse, but it’s as bad; the ice is just as much alive. And I didn’t take the little dinghy to Henrietta Island, even on her sledge; I left her at the edge of the moving pack. I can get the whaleboat across this ice to that island if you order me, sir, but when she gets there, she’ll be worthless as a boat.”

“Well, in that case,” remarked De Long, bitterly disappointed at our views, “it’s no use taking them there.” And while he didn’t voice it, there was little question but that he deeply regretted having ever cut up the boat sledges. In my opinion, however, sledges or no sledges, we couldn’t safely get those boats through to the land over that swirling ice between. We started to leave.

“Hold on a moment,” ordered De Long, pulling a book out from under his parka, “there’s something else.” He pushed his head out the tent flap, called to the man on watch in the snow. “Send Seaman Starr in here!”

In a moment or two, Starr, with his snow-flecked bulk practically filling the tent, stood beside us. The captain opened the book. It was in German, one of Petermann’s publications, the best we had on New Siberia and the Lena Delta. Starr, aside from his Russian, could also read German, and as he translated, De Long, Chipp, and I followed on the chart, putting down Petermann’s data on the islands, and especially on the Lena Delta, where near Cape Barkin were marked winter huts and settlements, a signal station similar to a lighthouse, and the indication that there we could get native pilots to take us up the Lena. At this time the captain warned me that should we be separated, Cape Barkin was to be our rendezvous. At that point the delta formed a right-angled corner. To the westward from Cape Barkin, the coast ran due west; but at the cape itself, the coast turned and ran sharply south for over a hundred miles, while through both the northern and the eastern faces of this corner-like delta, the Lena discharged in many branches to the sea. But Cape Barkin at this corner we must make—there between the pilots and the settlements shown by Petermann, our voyage would end and our troubles would be over. The remainder of our journey home would merely be a tedious and probably a slow trip on reindeer sledges southward from the Siberian coast inland fifteen hundred miles to Irkutsk, then a long jaunt westward by post coaches to Moscow, and so back to America. The captain marked it all out, made two copies of his chart, one for me and one for Chipp, and then dismissing Starr, told us,

“There are your charts with the courses laid out to Cape Barkin. As I informed you in my written order at Bennett Island, Melville, if unfortunately we are separated, you will continue on till you make the mouth of the Lena River, and without delay ascend the Lena to a Russian settlement from which you can be forwarded with your party to a place of safety and easy access. Try to reach some settlement large enough to feed and shelter your men before thinking about waiting for me. And the same for you, Chipp. That’s all, gentlemen. Be ready to start the instant the ice breaks.” He drew out his pipe, ending the discussion. We took our charts and departed, leaving the skipper trying to light off a pipeful of damp tea leaves.

On August 29th, after ten days of fuming in idleness during which time our pack drifted first westward and then southward, the weather cleared a bit and we found ourselves between Fadejovski and New Siberia Islands, and closer to Fadejovski, the western one of the pair. At noon, Dunbar scouting on the pack, reported a lead half a mile away. Immediately we broke camp, and carrying our provisions on our backs while we carefully skidded our boats along on their keels, we dragged across that half mile of floe to the water and launched our boats, thankful even for the chance the remainder of the afternoon to fight our way through swirling ice cakes to the southward. The drift in that lead was rapid, the broken ice there was violently tumbling and eddying, and as we swept down the bleak coast five miles off Fadejovski Island unsheltered from the intense cold, with oars and boat hooks savagely fending off those heaving floes on all sides of us to keep our frail boats from being crushed, it was like making passage through the very gates of hell! For two horrible days we worked along the coast fighting off impending death in that swirling maelstrom of ice, when with the pack thinning somewhat, we managed at last to work our way to land on the southerly end of Fadejovski, three weeks underway since leaving Bennett Island, and humbly grateful to find ourselves disembarking still alive.

We stayed one night on a mossy slope trying to thaw our frozen feet by tramping on something other than ice, and as Dunbar expressively put it, “Sanding our hoofs.” They needed it. The most pleased member of our party was Snoozer, now our sole remaining dog, who joyously tore round chasing lemmings, while we sought for real game which we didn’t find. And that night was served out our last ration of lime-juice which so heroically salvaged by Starr from the sinking Jeannette, had shielded us from scurvy for two and a half months on our tramp over the ice. But we saw the last drops of that unsavory medicine disappear without regret and without foreboding for the future, for now we were nearing the open sea and our voyage was nearing its end.

Next morning we shoved off from the south end of Fadejovski, only to discover despondently that we had embarked on a twelve days’ odyssey through the New Siberian Archipelago before which our previous sufferings seemed nothing. We had not wholly lost the ice; instead we had only added to our previous perils some new ones—vast hidden shoals, bitter freezing weather, long nights of sitting motionless and cramped in our open boats, while the Arctic winds mercilessly pierced our unshielded bodies, and the hourly dread of drowning in a gale.

It was seventy miles over the sea to Kotelnoi, the next island westward in the group. To get there, instead of being able to sail directly west, we found we had to stand far to the southward of Fadejovski to clear a shoal, getting out of sight of land. When night caught us far out in the open sea, we discovered even there shoals with less than two feet of water, over which a heavy surf was breaking badly. Standing off into deeper water, we beat all night into the wind to save ourselves from destruction, for we had no anchors in our boats. Wet, miserable, frozen by spray coming over, we stayed in the boats, so crowded we could not move our freezing legs. At dawn we stood on again westward, with streaming ice bobbing all about us, traveling before a fresh breeze all day. In the late afternoon, having lost sight of Chipp and the second cutter, his boat being unable to keep up, we finally spotted a floe sizeable enough to camp on. De Long signalled me to stop; we promptly secured to it and waited for Chipp to catch up, meanwhile for the first time in thirty-six hours stretching our wet forms out in our sleeping bags on the ice, while a gale blew up, snow fell, and the sea got very rough, which gave us grave concern over our missing boat. By daylight there was so much pack ice surrounding our two boats, it seemed unbelievable we had arrived there by water, and our anxiety for Chipp increased. We lay all day icebound, all night, and all next day, occasionally sighting the mountains on Kotelnoi Island, perhaps ten miles to the westward. And then Chipp and the second cutter finally showed up, coasting the north side of our floe, half a mile away across the pack, and soon Chipp and Kuehne, walking across the ice, were with us. They had had a terrible time the night we lost them; long before they sighted any floes, the gale caught them, and over the stern where Chipp and Dunbar sat steering, icy seas tumbled so badly that all hands bailing hardly kept the boat afloat till they finally found a drifting floe. When at last he steered in under the lee of the ice, but one man, Starr, was still able to jump from the boat and hold her in with the painter while the others, badly frozen, could barely crawl out over the gunwale. He himself and Dunbar in the sternsheets found themselves so cramped from sitting at the tiller that they could not even crawl and had to be lifted by Starr from the boat. To warm up his men, Chipp had served out immediately two ounces of brandy each, but Dunbar was so far gone that he promptly threw his up and fainted. The second day, underway again, he had kept westward for thirty miles before sighting us in the late afternoon, and there he was, with his crew badly knocked out, in the open water on the edge of the pack surrounding us completely.

To get underway next morning, there was nothing for it but to move our two boats over the ice to where Chipp’s was, and with no sledges, we faced that portage over bad ice with deep trepidation. Five men, headed by Nindemann, went ahead with our solitary pick-ax and some carpenter’s chisels to level a road. We carried all our clothes and knapsacks on our backs, but De Long dared not take the pemmican cans from the boats, for so scanty was our food supply getting that the chance of any man’s stumbling and losing a can of pemmican down a crack in the ice was a major tragedy not to be risked. So food and all, the boats had to be skidded on their keels over the ice, leaving long strips of oak peeled off the keels by the sharp floe edges as we dragged along. As carefully as we could, all hands at a time on one boat, we lightered them along that half mile, and when after seven fearful hours of labor we got them into the water, it was with unmitigated joy we saw they still floated.

We made a hasty meal of cold pemmican, and all hands embarked. De Long, last off to board his cutter, was bracing himself on the floe edge to climb aboard, when the ice gave way beneath him, and he went overboard, disappearing completely beneath the surface. Fortunately, Erichsen in the cockpit got a grip on him while he was still totally submerged (for he might not ever have risen except under the widespread pack) and hauled him, completely soaked to the skin, in over the stern. Without delay, except to wipe the water from his eyes, the captain signalled us to make sail.

We fought again fog, ice, and shoals for six hours more to cover the last ten miles to Kotelnoi, and when night finally caught us, all we knew was that we were on a sandbank where we gladly pitched camp, in total ignorance of whether we had made the island itself or an offshore bank and caring less so long as we could stop. We found some driftwood on the bank, made a fire, and soon, most of all the captain still in his soaked clothes, we were trying to warm ourselves around it. So ended September 4th.

The next two days we tried to struggle west along the south coast of Kotelnoi, largest island of the archipelago, but a blinding snow-storm and ice closing in held us to our sand spit. Going inshore, some of the men found the long-deserted huts of the fossil ivory hunters, and even a few elephant tusks, but not a trace of game, and our supply of pemmican kept on shrinking.

Signs of physical breakdown were becoming plain enough in our company. Our rations were slender and unsatisfying. Long hours on end of sitting cramped and soaked in wet clothes and icy water, often unable in the overcrowded boats even to stretch a leg to relieve it, no chance in the boats to stretch out and sleep at all, and the mental strain of working those small boats in tumbling seas and through tossing ice, were beginning to tell. On the pack at least, each night we could camp and stretch ourselves in our bags to rest after each day of toil; now except when bailing, we were compelled to endure the cold motionless.

Captain De Long’s feet were giving way. Swollen with cold and with toes broken out with chilblains, he could barely move about, and then only in great pain. Dunbar looked older than ever, fainted frequently, and the doctor said his heart showed a weakness that might carry him off under any strain. De Long admonished the ice-pilot to give up all work and take things easy, but even merely sitting up in the boat was a strain which could not be avoided. To keep him braced up, the doctor gave him a flask of brandy with orders to use it regularly. Danenhower’s eyes continued the same—poor, but with one eye at least partly usable when the sun did not shine, which fortunately for Dan in all that fog and snow was most of the time. But Dan continued to pester the doctor to put him off the sicklist, driving Ambler nearly wild that he should be nagged to consider such an unethical request. Others too began to complain—Erichsen of his feet, Cole of a general dullness in his head. As for all the rest of us, gaunt and underfed, with seamed and cracked faces, untrimmed whiskers, haggard eyes, shivering bodies, and raw and bleeding hands and feet, against a really well man we would have stood out as objects of horror, but there being none such amongst us, our appearance excited no special comment among ourselves.

Our third day on Kotelnoi, we managed to work a few miles to the westward along the coast, rowing and dragging our boats along the sand, making perhaps thirteen miles inshore of the ice pack which we could not penetrate to the sea beyond. But on September 7th, before an early morning northeast breeze with the temperature well below freezing, the pack opened up and we sailed away through drifting ice streaming before the wind, for Stolbovoi Island, sixty-five miles southwest. By noon, I concluded that somehow I must have stove in the bottom of my boat, for we were making water faster than it could be bailed and the boat started to sink. Signalling the others, I hastily ran alongside a nearby floe, where my crew had a lively time getting the whaleboat up on the ice before she went from under us. Capsizing her to learn the damage, I was much relieved to find we had only knocked the plug up out of the drain hole. We found the plug beneath the overturned boat, tried it again in the hole, and found it projected through an inch. Evidently bumping on some ice beneath the bilge had knocked it out, so I sawed off the projection to prevent a recurrence, righted and floated my boat again. Meanwhile being on the ice, we all had dinner and shoved off again.

With a fair breeze, we stood southwest for Stolbovoi Island, fifty miles off now. The breeze freshened and we made good progress, too good indeed for Chipp and the second cutter, as both De Long and I had to double reef our sails to avoid completely losing Chipp astern again. The sea increased somewhat, the boats rolled badly, and we had to bail continuously, but as we were getting along toward the Lena, that didn’t worry us, nor did the fact that being poor sailors, Collins, Newcomb, and Ah Sam became deathly seasick again.

We kept on through the night, delayed a bit from midnight until dawn by streaming ice we couldn’t see and cold, wet, and wretched as usual. Several times during the night we were nearly smashed by being hurled by surf against unseen floes. Once, under oars, I had to tow the captain’s boat clear of a lee shore of ice from which he couldn’t claw off, to save him from destruction. But after daybreak, we could see better our dangers and avoid them in time, so that we stood on all day till four in the afternoon, when having been underway thirty-three hours in extreme danger and discomfort, the captain signalled to haul out and camp on a solitary floe nearby. Long before this, we should have hit Stolbovoi, but a shift in the wind had apparently carried us by it to the north.

After a cold night on this floe, at four in the morning on September 9th we were again underway through rain and snow. By afternoon we were picking a path through an immense field of drifting floes which luckily we penetrated and got through to the southwest, when sighting a low island to the westward, evidently Semenovski, the last island of the New Siberian Archipelago between us and the Lena, we abandoned all idea of searching to the southward for Stolbovoi which we had never sighted, and headed west instead for Semenovski. As luck would have it, the wind of which we had too much the day before to suit some members of our party, now died away completely and out went our oars. Through a calm sea we rowed the lumbering boats for six hours, warming up the oarsmen at any rate, though horribly chafing their frozen hands. Then, a fog setting in at 10 P.M., and it being impossible to see the other boats, the captain sang out through the night to haul out on the ice, where by candlelight we ate our pemmican.

Next day, September 10th, still rowing through the fog, we made Semenovski by noon, and after a passage of one hundred and ten miles from Kotelnoi, we beached our boats and camped for a much needed rest. We were all of us stiff, frozen, and sore, but Dunbar especially was quite feeble and looked indeed to be on his last legs.

Semenovski, a tiny island, was to be our last stop before crossing ninety miles of open ocean to Cape Barkin on the Lena Delta, with little chance on that leg of meeting any floes large enough to haul out on for shelter in case the sea kicked up. So while a few men went out with rifles to look for game, we turned to in a final effort to make our boats more seaworthy for this last ocean leg, our experiences so far in rough water strongly indicating the need for improvement. On my whaleboat, I took the canvas boat cover, and by nailing it firmly to both bows and securing it tightly around the mast, I decked over my bow, forming a sort of canvas forecastle. The rest of the boat cover, from the mast aft to the stern, I split in half lengthwise, giving me two long strips of canvas which I nailed fore and aft to the sides. Then making a set of small stanchions which were lashed to the gunwale on each side as supports, I had both starboard and port a flexible canvas weathercloth eighteen inches high which the men on the windward side could hold up with their backs against the fixed stanchions, in effect raising our rail eighteen inches above the gunwale on either or both sides, but allowing us to drop the weatherscreens instantly should it become necessary to get out the oars. Cole and Bartlett did this work on my whaleboat. Nindemann on the first cutter, and Sweetman on the second cutter, fitted them out in a generally similar manner.

While this was going on, our hunters, accompanied by a dozen others as beaters, spread across the narrow island and started to sweep it from north to south. They soon started up a doe and its fawn, which fled in fright, but before long a rifle shot knocked down the doe which, quickly tossed over a small cliff onto the beach, was brought in a boat to our camp. Needless to say, all else was suspended, driftwood gathered, and at four o’clock, though it was long before our supper hour, we turned to on a pound of venison steak apiece, which I have little doubt surprised our astonished stomachs, as, accompanied by hot tea, it went down our throats instead of the usual pemmican. That held us until 8 P.M., when we had our regular supper (slightly delayed), consisting of somewhat more than a pound each this time of roast deer, which cleaned up the deer completely except for her bones. Out of these we intended to make soup next day, all except one meaty bone which went to the overjoyed Snoozer. And with that, we felt well fed for the first time since Görtz provided us with bear steaks a month and a half before off Bennett Island, bear steaks so far removed from us now in point of time and suffering between, that it seemed almost in a previous incarnation we must have enjoyed that bear!

During our second supper, it blew up half a gale and started to snow, so the captain announced that since the next day was Sunday, instead of getting underway, we would rest on Semenovski, finish our boat work, and if we could, get that fawn, shoving off Monday for the Lena. I thought this suited all hands, but apparently it didn’t for I heard Collins grumbling to Bartlett,

“Losing over a day for the sake of a feed of meat!”

I looked at the sullen Collins curiously. Whatever the captain did or didn’t do was wrong with him. Yet he had downed his “feed of meat” as voraciously as anybody, but perhaps since he expected to taste it again when he heaved it up after we got into the tossing boats, another feed didn’t mean as much to him as to a sailor.

Sunday, as on every Sunday without exception which we had passed whether on the pack or in the boats since the Jeannette went down, after mustering the crew and reading them the Articles of War, De Long held Divine Service in his tent, attended as usual only by Chipp, Ambler, Dunbar, Danenhower, and myself. Solemnly we listened, seamen about to embark in frail shells for a long and dangerous voyage across the open Arctic Sea, as De Long reverently read the service, and never were we more sincere in our lives than when at the end our rough voices, mingling with the freezing gale howling outside, rose in the final fervent plea,

“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee

For those in peril on the sea!”