March opened with a violent storm, which kept all in their igloos save the indefatigable hunters. Then Ebierbing shot a monster harp seal about nine feet long, the largest that Tyson had ever seen, which gave about seven hundred pounds of its rich, nutritious meat and blubber. So delirious were the quite starved seamen that they rushed at the body, carved out pieces and ate them raw, soon being so frightfully besmeared with blood that they looked like ravenous brutes devouring their prey. The heedless men, who turned to Tyson in all cases of dire distress, now ignored his advice not to eat the liver of the seal, and paid for their imprudence by fits of sickness, fortunately not fatal.
With a persistent, fatuitous belief that they would drift to Disco, the seamen were first aroused to the extreme seriousness of their situation by a most violent gale of sixty hours in which they barely escaped death. As has been said, their igloos were built near the centre of an enormous floe nearly a hundred feet in thickness and fifteen miles in circumference. When the storm began the sea seemed covered by floes of similar size and of equally unbreakable ice. The party again failed to have in mind the many insecure and dangerous icebergs which dotted the ice-plain that covered the sea. Throughout the first night the cracking and breaking of the floes sounded like the firing of heavy artillery and the explosion of high-powered shells. Under stress of anxiety the men passed the second night dressed and ready for the worst.
The howling of the gale, the snow-filled air making everything invisible, the recurring roar of the sea, the sound of splitting floes within a few yards of the igloos, and the awful moaning of the moving pack around them, with the steady grinding of colliding bergs, made it a night of horrors. With the gale ended they found themselves saved almost as by miracle, for though their igloos were safe in the centre of a tiny fragment of the great floe, its area was less than a hundred square yards. Surrounding them were hundreds of icebergs and huge floes of all sizes and shapes inextricably entangled and disrupted. Yesterday they could walk miles on their own floe, now they were confined to a floe-fragment.
Dangerous as was the gale it brought about their safety, for the open pack made seal-hunting more productive. The twenty-three seals which were killed during the succeeding two weeks gave needful food, revived their courage, and renewed their strength. Tyson then arranged to save for emergencies their little remaining bread and pemmican. As they were now off the entrance to Hudson Strait, on the breeding grounds of the seal, their safety as regards food seemed to be assured. But another gale brought fresh and unlooked-for disaster, for while they collided with a large iceberg without destruction they were driven far to the eastward, into the open ocean, where their floe was by itself away from the main ice, with only water in sight.
Tyson knew that separation from the icebergs and floes meant speedy death, and as soon as the sea calmed, April 1, he ordered the party to prepare for the abandonment of the floe. Many objected to leaving their comfortable igloos, with plenty of meat, to seek ice so far to the west that it could not be seen, but they finally obeyed Tyson's orders.
The short-sightedness of the seamen in burning a boat was now evident to all. There were nineteen persons to be crowded into a whale-boat intended for eight. Some of the selfish would have left the natives behind, for taking them meant the leaving behind of nearly all meat and other dead weights. Bread, pemmican, some ammunition, the tent, and sleeping-gear were put in the boat, and with a spirit of loyalty criticised by the seamen, Tyson took on board the desk and records of Captain Hall. If this man lived it would be with honor; if he died it should be with his self-respect. The fearfully overcrowded boat barely escaped swamping several times—saved only through Tyson's skilful seamanship. Some men were so alarmed that in panic they threw overboard seal meat to lighten the boat. Three days of unremitting labor brought them to a floe that seemed solid, which they occupied in face of bad weather.
They had barely put up igloos when an awful gale burst on them, and for four days it was a steady battle against death. Their floe began to crumble under pressure from other bergs, and Ebierbing's hut was carried off as the floe split. Seeking the centre of the ice they built a new igloo, which lasted for the night only. Next day the floe, caught between two giant bergs, burst with a mighty roar, splitting completely in two, the crack running through the floor of the igloo. They were left on a piece of ice so small that they could not make arrangements for all to lie down together. Everything was put into the boat, and all through the night they stood watch, half-and-half, ready to launch her at a moment's notice. Again the floe split while breakfast was being cooked in the tent, the crack running through the tent; the cook escaped but the breakfast fell into the sea. The tent was again pitched alongside the whale-boat. The tent could not shelter all the party, but by turns they got a little sleep.
About midnight there was heard a fearful crash, and, as Hans relates, "The ice which served us as a camping-place parted between the boat on which I slept and the tent. I jumped out to the other side, while that piece on which the boat was placed moved off quickly with Mister Maje [Meyer] who was seated in the boat, and we were separated from it by the water. Our Master [Tyson] asked the sailors to make a boat out of a piece of ice and try to reach it, but they refused. We had never felt so distressed as at this moment, when we had lost our boat. At last I said to my comrade [Ebierbing]: 'We must try to get at it!' Each of us then formed an umiardluk 