On the way, I bumped into Mr. Dunbar, just returning from a preliminary scouting trip over our next night’s route. Dunbar, hardly fifty, hale and hearty, a fine example of a seasoned Yankee skipper when first he joined us, now with his face wrinkled and worn, looked like a wizened old man staggering under a burden of eighty years at least, and ready to drop in his tracks at the slightest provocation.
“Well, captain,” I sang out jocularly to cheer him up a bit, “what’s the good word from the front? Sighted that open water we’re looking for yet?”
The whaler looked at me with dulled eyes, then to my astonishment broke down and sobbed on my shoulder like a baby. I put a fur-clad arm gently round his heaving waist to comfort him.
“What is it, old shipmate? Can’t you stand my jokes either?”
“Chief,” he sobbed, “ye know it ain’t that; I like everything about ye. But that ice ahead of us! It’s terrifically wild and broken, and so chock-full o’ holes, chief, I could hardly crawl across! We’ll never get our sledges over it!” The weeping old seaman sagged down in my arms, his gray head nestling in my beard.
“Don’t be so sure, mate,” I said with a cheeriness I didn’t feel. “My lads are getting so expert heaving sledges over hummocks, I’m thinking of putting ’em on as a flying trapeze act in Barnum’s Circus when we get back, and making us all as rich as Commodore Vanderbilt in one season! Come on, captain, forget it; let’s have a cup of coffee to warm us up—no, let’s belay the coffee. Come to think of it, I guess I still got drag enough with Dr. Ambler to work him for a shot of whiskey apiece for a couple of good old salts like us.” And I led him away to the hospital tent, where Ambler, after one look at Dunbar, hardly needed the wink from me to produce without a word his medical whiskey.
Leaving Dunbar with the doctor after swallowing a drink myself, I started again for my own tent, but once more I was stopped, by the captain this time, who beckoned me to join him in the snow alongside the deserted whaleboat. All hands were in their tents by now, working on their cold pemmican.
“What have you made our mileage to the south so far, chief?” opened the skipper listlessly.
“Being generous, about five and a half miles, sir.” I looked at him puzzled. The captain knew our progress, logged daily in his journal, even better than I. Surely he wasn’t keeping me from my supper just for that.
De Long nodded, continued,