The dangers of the sea and of the ordinary pack had still another and novel phase. When matters seemed to be at their worst the watch cried out: "We are drifting on a high iceberg!" They stood immovable as the lofty berg loomed far above their heads, close on them, and after hanging a ghastly object over their tiny floe for a moment vanished in the mist while their hearts were yet in their mouths.
They had barely gathered together and arranged their few remaining effects when another frightful storm came upon them. While there were ice-movements around them all went to sleep except the watch, when with a thundering sound their quivering floe broke in two, a broad fissure passing through the floor of the house. Captain Hegemann says: "God only knows how it happened that in our flight into the open none came to harm. In the most fearful weather we all stood roofless on the ice, waiting for the daylight which was still ten hours off. As it became quieter some crept into the captain's boat. Sleep was not to be thought of; it was a confused, unquiet half-slumber, from utter weariness, and our limbs quivered convulsively from cold (it was forty-one degrees below freezing) as we lay packed like herrings in our furs."
With a heroic devotion to duty the energetic cook had the courage to make coffee in the shattered house, on the very edge of the gaping ice-chasm that ran down into the sea. Hegemann says: "Never had the delicious drink awakened more creatures to life." This cook was a notable character, never discomposed, but invariably self-possessed even in the most critical moments. While the shattered coal house seemed in danger of falling into the sea he was busy repairing a kettle. When the captain suggested that he leave the house owing to the peril, he said: "If only the floe would hold together until I finish the kettle, then I can make tea so that you all may have something warm before you enter the boats." No pains or trouble was too great for him when the comfort of his shipmates was in question.
The poor doctor of the expedition did not have the iron nerves of the cook, and under the influence of constantly recurring dangers he developed melancholia, which lasted to the end. Of the crew in general captain Hegemann says: "Throughout all of the discomforts, want, hardships, and dangers of all kinds the frame of mind among the men was good, undaunted, and exalting."
All denied themselves to give comfort and to show consideration to the afflicted doctor.
At a gloomy period there came to them amusement and distraction through the visit of a frisky fox from the main-land, who remained with them many days. With growing boldness he came up quickly without signs of fear when bits of meat were thrown to him from the cook's galley. His gay antics and cunning ways were the source of much fun. Finally he became so tame that he even let the men he knew best stroke his snow-white fur.
On May 7, 1870, they were near Cape Farewell, the southerly point of Greenland, where they expected to quit the ice-field. It was now two hundred days since their besetment, and they had drifted more than six hundred miles, with all in health save the doctor. Snow had now given place to rain, the pack was rapidly dissolving, and at the first opening of the ice toward land they left their old floe and faced in their three boats the perils of an ice-filled sea. Afflicted by snow-blindness, worn out by strenuous, unceasing labor, storm-beset at times, encompassed by closely packed broken ice—through which the boats could not be rowed or pushed and over which man could not travel—they at last reached Illuidlek Island. The voyage at starting was supposed to involve four days of navigation, but it took twenty-four days to make it.
Now food became scarce for the first time, neither seals nor bears being killed, so that they were always hungry. Hegemann writes: "Talk turns on nothing but eating. Konrad was quite sad this morning; in his sleep he had consumed ham and poached eggs, one after another, but on waking felt so dreadfully hollow within."
Threatened by a closing pack they hauled up, with great difficulty, their boats on a large floe. They found a low shelving edge of the ice and emptied the large boat of its contents. Rocking the boat backward and forward, head on, when it had gained a free motion, the whole crew hauled together on the painter when the boatswain cried loudly: "Pull all!" When the bow caught the edge of the ice the boat could in time be worked gradually up on the floe, but it was a heart-breaking, exhausting, prolonged labor.
Storm-bound for four days, they resorted to various devices to pass the time and divert their minds from hunger. The loquacious carpenter spun old-time sea yarns, Vegesack tales of astounding character. In one story he related his experiences as captain of a gun-boat when, having no sailing directions for the North Sea, he steered by the help of a chart of the Mediterranean from Bremen to Hull. When he arrived off Hull he verified his position exactly by a sounding, which proved conclusively that he was at Ramsgate, south of the Thames. Thus did folly beguile misery.