[[88]]
CHAPTER VIII
THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED
On Tuesday the third of August we arrived in Upernivik again, with Melville Bay safely behind us. And we knew that our trip would have to end right there as we could not fix the leaks in the Morrissey. Coming down she had been leaking about ten gallons a minute. That in itself wasn’t so bad, but the danger was that at any minute it might get worse, especially if any strain came or we hit ice or anything else.
It was my turn at the pumps when we came in. When the engine was not running we had to pump almost continually, for the engine itself used up water from the bilge in its cooling system with a rig Robert Peary fixed up, which helped the pumping a lot. [[89]]
At once we got some Eskimos on board to do the pumping. Cap’n Bob went ashore to see how deep the water was on the beach and what the slope was, to see if he could beach the Morrissey. Later in the afternoon the Governor and his assistants told us that there was a place about ten English miles (the Danish mile is about four of ours) up a fjord from Upernivik where the vessel could be beached easily. It was a place they used for their own vessels to get at their bottoms.
We left right away and it took about two hours and a half to get there. On the way over we went through a kind of natural gate in the rocks that seemed about as wide as the length of the ship. It was very, very deep because there was a mountain on either side with sheer cliffs going straight down for probably a great many fathoms.
They anchored the boat to wait for a big tide while Cap’n Bob got things ready to try and get her out so work could be done on the [[90]]bottom. The trouble was that the damage was on the very bottom of the keel so that just to keel her over on her side did no good. From Upernivik Dad had arranged to take up with us a dozen Greenlanders to help with the heavy work, like shifting ballast. Also we borrowed from the Governor his blacksmith and some tools.