“Fourteen months without anything but ice and sky makes this look like an oasis in the desert! Look at it, it’s our all in all! How bears must swarm on our island, Dunbar! And if you want to tell me that it contains a gold mine that’ll make us all as rich as the treasury without its debts, I’ll believe you! Our island must have everything!”
Even the sick, who came up on deck for a glimpse, were cheered by the sight, all, that is, save poor Danenhower, who nevertheless came up with the others, at least to look in that direction, knowing well enough that he alone of all of us would never see our island; that through the heavily smoked glass over his one remaining eye he could hardly see the bulwarks, let alone the distant island we had at last discovered!
Longer than anyone else, De Long stayed on deck that night, gazing off toward the island, criticizing it, guessing its distance, wishing for a favorable gale to drive us towards it, and finally before going to bed, looking carefully again at it to make sure it had not melted away.
And when at last I dragged him below to rest, he murmured knowing well the island could be only at most a little mass of volcanic rock,
“Melville, beside this stupendous island, the other events of the day sink into insignificance!”
For the next week, we drifted northwest with fair speed toward our island, with the water shoaling and the ice getting more active. By several bearings as we moved along, we discovered that when first sighted our island was thirty-four miles off. The question of making a landing began immediately to be debated, but obviously for the first few days, we were not yet at the closest point, so no decision was then arrived at. For the next three days, it blew hard, during which time we caught but few glimpses of our island as we drove northwest with the ice. When the gale abated on May 24, we got some sights and found to our pleased surprise that we were in latitude 77° 16′ N., longitude 159° 33′ E. 77° North! Another parallel of latitude left in our frozen wake; we were now moving steadily on toward the Pole!
But that was not all for May 24. Going aloft himself in the morning, De Long saw another island! Off to the westward it lay, closer to us even than our first island; and in addition, from all the lanes which had opened up in the pack, more water than he had seen since September, 1879. This second island, a little more calmly added to our discoveries than the first one, was a most welcome sight. The water however was nothing but a tantalizing vision, for none of the lanes were connected nor did they lead anywhere, least of all toward our islands, both about thirty miles away from us and from each other.
Having two islands now on our hands, we could no longer refer to the first simply as our island, as we had before lovingly done in mentioning it, for was not the second equally ours? So it becoming necessary to distinguish between them in the future, De Long took thought like Adam of old, and named them—the first after our ship and our ship’s godmother, Jeannette Island; and the second after our sponsor’s mother, Henrietta Island. Having thus taken care of our sponsor’s sister and his mother, De Long looked confidently forward to new discoveries on which he might bestow the name of our sponsor himself.
Meanwhile, the question of landing on either or both of our islands came again to the fore, the weather having cleared once more. Jeannette Island had dropped astern during our strong drift in the gale, while on Henrietta Island we were closing steadily. De Long decided therefore on May 30, six days after we had discovered it, to send a landing party over the ice to take possession of Henrietta Island and to explore it.
The journey would evidently be a dangerous one over broken and moving ice, with worst of all, the ship steadily moving with the ice away from the land. Most opinions were adverse to success, but Captain De Long ordered the trip, feeling that a knowledge of that island as a base to fall back on would be invaluable in case of disaster to the ship, and exceedingly desirous also of erecting a stone cairn there in which to leave a record of our wanderings and whereabouts (this, I think, though De Long never expressed it so, as a permanent clue to our fate should we be swallowed forever by the pack threatening us).