CHAPTER XXXIV
Before the steadily rising Arctic gale, the Jeannette’s three boats in broken formation were scattering in the storm. Dismayed at this sight, De Long who had the only navigating outfit in the flotilla and in addition was carrying all Chipp’s meager food supply, rose in the sternsheets of his cutter and waved vigorously to the other boats to get back in position astern of him. But seeing the whaleboat nearly swamp attempting to drop back, he signalled her on.
Taking a second reef in his own sail to deaden still further his speed, De Long continued waving to Chipp, hopeful at least of getting him close enough aboard to toss over his can of pemmican before in the storm and the night, he lost him to view. Badly flooded himself by oncoming seas, he nevertheless held back, till Chipp and his boat, suddenly engulfed in the waves, disappeared forever from sight.
Sadly then, De Long shook out one reef and picking up headway, stood away dead before the wind, heading southwest for Barkin. Blonde and bearded Erichsen, tall and brawny, a sailor from his childhood in far-off Denmark and in stature a royal Dane indeed, the best seaman in the boat, steered. Crowded into the cockpit before him were De Long, Ambler, and Collins, while forward of them on each side of the boat, backs to the weather cloths holding them up against the sea, were the rest of the crew—Nindemann, the quartermaster, tending the sheet, Lee, Kaack, Noros, Görtz, Dressler, Iversen, Alexey, Ah Sam, and Boyd. Jammed under the thwarts, practically filling all the spaces there were the sledge, the tin cases containing the Jeannette’s records, the navigating gear, the silken ensign in its oilskin case, the rifles, tents, sleeping bags, cooking pots, and a few cans of pemmican, with Snoozer, the last Eskimo dog, crouching on the sleeping bags and whimpering piteously as the spray soaked him.
The heavily-laden first cutter, only twenty feet long but wider of beam than any other of the Jeannette’s boats and with all that ballast on her bottom, therefore more stable and more resistant to capsizing than either of the other two, lumbered on before the wind, pitching heavily as the curling seas swept up under her square stern, and yawing badly in spite of all that Erichsen at the tiller could do to hold her on her course. Darkness fell, the seas grew worse, the crew bailed steadily.
Twice the boat yawed suddenly and the sail jibed violently, straining the mast, but each time Erichsen managed to catch her and the yard and sail were again squared and the boat stood on with the wind screaming by and the merciless seas breaking heavily over the stern, soaking Erichsen continuously and spraying everyone else with freezing water.
For an hour the boat stood on before the storm with the water coming in over both sides and the stern, while her crew bailed vigorously to keep up with it. And then, riding on the crest of a tremendous wave roaring up astern, came disaster. The boat took a bad yaw as the sea struck, the stern swung off to port with the crest. Immediately the sail, caught flat aback by the wind, jibed over and the yard banged viciously round to leeward, heeling the boat sharply down on her port side and riding the lee gunwale completely under! Instantly solid water came pouring in over the submerged rail. In another split second, the half-capsized cutter would have been bottom up with her crew spilled into the raging seas, had not at that instant the mast, already weakened by the previous jibes, broken clean off, and with the flapping sail shot overboard, momentarily relieving the fatal strain!
For one horrible second, the listing boat hung with her gunwale under, poised uncertainly between going completely over and rolling back, while her agonized crew, clinging desperately to the thwarts to avoid being tossed out, felt cold death in the form of the inrushing water lapping round their bodies! Then slowly, very slowly, under the influence of the heavy ballast jammed along the bottom boards, the dismasted cutter rolled back on an even keel, awash to the thwarts and so deep in the water that her gunwales barely showed above the foaming surface!
“Bail!” roared De Long. “All hands! Bail!”
A waterlogged wreck, the first cutter lay broadside in the trough of the sea with every man in her buried in salt water to his waist, frenziedly bailing to regain a semblance of buoyancy before the next wave swept over her side and finished her. Fortunately at that instant, the broken mast and the ballooning sail, dragging alongside by the halliards streaming over the bow, caught the water, began acting as a sea anchor, and the startled men in the boat, too busy bailing to lift a hand for any other purpose, saw in amazement their submerged cutter swing slowly round in the trough into the wind and sluggishly rise head on to the next crest, heaving herself to!
Had even another moderate sea swept up at this moment, the boat would unquestionably have finished filling and foundered, but by some freak of the storm, only a succession of lazy billows came rolling by until with the boat half-emptied and higher in the water, De Long could get out some oars to hold her steady the while he sent Görtz and Kaack racing forward to clear away the wreckage.
Holding his cutter head on with oars and rudder while he finished bailing and dragged in the impromptu sea anchor by the halliards, the captain hastily made a drag of his sail only and an empty water breaker to hold it up, and then rode the gale to that, taking in the oars and raising the weathercloths again, while Erichsen, still clinging to the tiller, steered into the wind and the rest of the crew bailed to keep afloat.
For the men crowded in the boat, it was a night of utter misery and terror, wet through, freezing in the gale, tossing madly in the cutter, and with Collins slumped in the cockpit too weak or too heedless to reach the rail, violently and continuously seasick to add the final touch.
At midnight their sea anchor carried suddenly away and with it went the sail. Instantly out went a pair of oars to hold her up, while another drag, made of the broken mast and the rest of the oars, with the expedition’s solitary pick-ax hung to it to hold it down, was sent out over the bow. This proved a poor substitute for the sail, for having insufficient surface, it failed to catch the water properly and rode off the cutter’s beam, instead of ahead, with the result that the boat, no longer bows-on to the waves, wallowed in the troughs and rolled horribly, making water worse than ever.
After thirty-six hours of this torture, the gale finally abated, and with only a fresh breeze and a heavy sea still running, De Long prepared again to get underway, but he had no sail. Nindemann searched the boat for substitutes; out of a hammock and the sledge cover, sewed together by Görtz and Kaack, Nindemann provided a jury sail. The drag was hauled in to recover the mast; with a chisel, Nindemann refitted the broken end of the mast to its step, rerigged it, and soon with the two insignificant bits of canvas spread at the yard, the first cutter resumed her journey for the Lena Delta, making hardly one knot through the water, and because the breeze had now hauled to the south, unable to sail closer to the wind than a course due west instead of the desired southwest.
But what the course should be to make Cape Barkin and where the boat was, God alone knew. It was impossible to get a sight, and even had it not been, De Long’s hands were so badly frozen he could not work his sextant. So willy-nilly, the boat went west for two days with De Long and his frozen crew, barely crawling along under the tiny jury rig, till early on the morning of September 16th, having been four days at sea since leaving Semenovski Island, the wind failed altogether, and in a dead calm sea, De Long ordered out the oars and headed due south, feeling that he had made more than enough westing.
By this time, from long-continued watchfulness and exposure, both De Long’s hands and his feet were so badly frozen and had swollen to such size that he was wholly unable to move himself. Tenderly Dr. Ambler got out his soaked sleeping bag, and helped by Görtz, slipped the captain into it and then propped him up in the sternsheets so he could see to maneuver the boat.
After a few hours of rowing south, the water began to shoal rapidly and the cutter ran into a skim of young ice, through which it broke its way. Soon low-lying land was sighted to the south, undoubtedly some part of the northern side of the Lena Delta. With redoubled energy the men heaved with their cracked and bleeding hands at the oars, driving through thickening ice toward the coast. A little to starboard an open lead in the young ice was sighted, seemingly running inshore toward a river mouth, and into this lead the boat was rammed through the intervening ice, keeping on in this open water till at about 9 A.M., still more than a mile offshore, the boat grounded solidly in less than two feet of water with new ice freezing constantly all about her in the bitter cold.
After a fruitless effort to get inshore through the invisible shoals, De Long tried to work out again to the northward, hoping then to go further west and perhaps find a better channel into the river, which so far as could be judged from the width between the headlands, seemed to be one of the main northern mouths of the Lena. But the thickening ice had closed in behind, and stuck fast in the hidden shoal, the boat could be moved neither ahead nor astern with the oars.
De Long after a futile effort to push out, using the oars as poles, became desperate.
“All hands over the side to lighten the boat!” he ordered. “We’ll push her off!”
Silently, all except the helmsman, the men started to obey, but first began to remove their wet boots, not wishing to fill them with mud. Off came the worn and leaking footgear, exposing to view badly swollen feet, many already black with frostbite and with blisters breaking as the skin, stuck to the boots, tore away from the frozen flesh. Dr. Ambler took one swift glance at them, then leaning over the helpless captain, whispered in his ear. De Long bent forward, looked himself, then said,
“Belay going over the side, men. Put on your boots. We’ll try shoving her off again with the oars instead.”
But the enfeebled seamen had little luck. An all day struggle with the shallow water moved the boat hardly a hundred yards, and night fell on an exhausted boat crew, caught amidst ice and shoals, unable either to get the cutter ashore or get it to sea.
Once more they spent a cheerless night in the cramped boat, tantalized by that unapproachable shore a mile and a half away, unable to sleep, wet, freezing, and thirsty on the crowded thwarts.
At daybreak, they tried again. Managing to get free of the ice and the mud, they made a few yards, only to ground on another shoal. Getting clear of that, the ice soon blocked them. It made little difference which way they headed, north or south, east or west, shoals and young ice were everywhere. Bitterly De Long looked from his heavy cutter and his fast-fading men across a mile and a half of thin ice, strong enough to block the boat, too weak to sustain a man, toward the low coast of Siberia. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. He would never get the boat free—eight hours of labor today on top of all of yesterday and no progress made either toward shore or toward sea and nothing to look forward to now except another terrible night in the boat in the fierce cold.
De Long made up his mind. Regardless of their condition, they must abandon the cutter, wade ashore. He still had two hours of daylight in which to work, and despite frost-bitten feet, there was no alternative; into that icy water they must plunge. But three of the men, Boyd, Erichsen, and himself, hardly able to stand without toppling headlong, could never make that mile and a half wading through ice and shoals to the land. They would have to get the boat closer first.
“Except the sick and the doctor, all hands over the side! We’re going to abandon the boat and wade ashore! Keep your boots on this time, men!”
Slowly the rest of the crew crawled over the side into the water, finding it knee deep. Leaving in the boat only the four men and Snoozer, and taking as heavy a load on his back as each could carry, the crew set out for shore, Nindemann first to break a path through the half inch ice, then in succession Kaack, Görtz, Iversen, Lee, Dressler, Collins, Alexey, Noros, and finally Ah Sam, whose feet were in such bad shape that not to impede the others he was ordered to go last. It was hard work, especially for Nindemann smashing ahead through the ice, with the chilly water changing irregularly in depth from knee deep to over his waist, sinking unexpectedly into mudholes from which he could hardly drag his feet, and all the while pounding away at the sheet ice with hips and thighs, unable to use his arms because of the load on his shoulders.
Finally the panting quartermaster reached the shore, a low and swampy slope. Behind him trudged the others, and thankfully coming up out of the sea, squeezing mud and slush from their boots at every step, they dumped their loads on the beach. Siberia at last! A feeble cheer burst from husky throats and cracking lips.
But looking round at that dismal shore, covered with snow, bare of all vegetation, utterly desolate and devoid of any trace of human habitation then or ever, it is doubtful that there could have been found on earth any group of human beings save only these few who had gone through hell on ice to reach that shore, who would not have cursed instead of cheered at setting foot on that bleak tundra.