So we lay for the next two hours, with the poor Jeannette groaning and panting like a woman in labor as the pack worked on her. At six bells, the captain, confident now that the worst was over and that she would pull through, took sudden thought of the future. The ship was a remarkable sight; what a picture she would make to print in the Herald on her return.
“Melville,” said the captain, puffing calmly away at his meerschaum, “take the camera out on the ice and see what you can get in the way of a photograph.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Early in the voyage, when Collins had been relieved of that task, I had become official photographer. I went to the darkroom, got out the camera, tripod, black hood, and a few of the plates which I myself had brought along and for which I had a developer. Stepping from our badly listed starboard rail directly onto the ice there, I picked a spot about fifty yards off on the starboard bow and set up my clumsy rig.
The view was marvelous. Heeling now 23° to starboard, the spar deck, covered with men clinging to the rigging, the rails, and the davits to keep from sliding into the scuppers, showed up clearly; while with her black hull standing sharply out against the white pack, and with bow and bowsprit pointing high in air and stem almost buried, the Jeannette looked like a vessel lifting while she rolled to a huge ice wave. Never again would I see a ship like that!
I exposed a plate, then, for insurance, another; and folding up my rig, stumbled back over the ice to the ship, laid below to the darkroom on the berth deck, poured out my chemicals and proceeded with much difficulty (because of the extraordinary list) to develop the plates, which in that climate had to be done immediately or they would spoil. In the vague red light of a bull’s-eye lantern, I was struggling in the darkroom with this job, when the ship got a tremendous squeeze, the berth deck buckled up under my feet, and amidst the roar of cracking timbers, I heard Jack Cole’s shout,
“All Hands! Stations for Abandon Ship!”
Leaving the plates in the solution but extinguishing the red lantern, I hastily closed the darkroom door and ran on deck.
“Water coming up now in all the holds! I think that last push tore the keel out of her!” announced the captain briefly as I ran by him toward the cabin to get out the chronometers and the compasses. “I’m afraid she’s through at last, chief!”
Behind me as I ran, I heard in rapid succession the orders to lower away the boats, to push overboard the sledges, and to commence passing out on the ice our emergency store of pemmican. Carefully I lifted out the two chronometers and the four small compasses which it was my job to save. Below me I could hear water gushing up into the afterhold, while from above on the poop deck came the creaking of frozen cordage and blocks as the falls ran out and our heavy boats dropped to the ice. As tenderly as I could, I gripped the chronometers, sprang out on the ice, and deposited my burden in the first cutter, already hauled a little clear of the ship’s side.