“That’s right, over the ice of course. Melville, I’m sorry to say that today I got some good sights of the sun for the first time since we started. Chief,” and his voice broke as he looked at me, “the northwest drift has got us! We’re twenty-five miles further north tonight than the day we started!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Twenty-five miles further north than when we started! Coming on top of all else, that was a knockout blow. With sagging knees, I leaned against the gunwale of the whaleboat, looked at the haggard captain, asked faintly,
“Sure?”
“Yes,” he replied mournfully, “sure. Two meridian altitudes of the sun and a couple of Sumner lines and they all check. I couldn’t believe the first sight myself; I thought my sextant was bad. But after checking that with nothing wrong, I spent all day getting check sights; you saw me shooting some of them. No question about it now. But, for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone! Not even another officer. If the men knew, I couldn’t get ’em to lay a hand on another sledge. They’d just sit down here and wait to die!”
I nodded at that. Who could blame them? Caught on a treadmill, why should they torture themselves with such labor as slaves would lie down under and suffer themselves to be lashed to death rather than rise and endure, when the only result was that they were being carried backward five times as fast as their puny efforts pushed them forward? If the men learned the results of those disastrous sights, we were finished! But weren’t we finished anyway, whether they knew it or not?
“That’s bad, captain,” I mumbled, my brain numbed at the news. “What can we do now?”
“I haven’t figured it out fully yet, chief; I want your advice on what I have in mind. That’s the only reason I told you; that, and maybe the thought that at least one other officer ought to know where we are and where we’re going in case something happens to me. Since Chipp and Danenhower, both my deck officers, are knocked out, you’re the only officer left I can talk to. But this mustn’t get out! It’d kill Chipp, who’s in a bad way anyhow, like hitting him with an ax. And what it’d do to the men, you can guess!” He finished with a ghastly smile.
Vaguely I felt that that might be a mercy to Chipp; indeed it might well be a mercy to all of us should a kindly Providence then and there somehow brain us all with an ax and end our sufferings. But of that I said nothing. The captain had hinted at something further to be done. What, I wondered, was it? Abandon the boats, speed up our progress, trusting to luck the ice held out under us till we got to the New Siberian Islands, there to live (or starve rather) on moss and Arctic willow till perhaps some year a chance party of ivory hunters landed and rescued us? A thin chance, that! I looked curiously at De Long.
“Well, skipper, no thanks for telling me. I could’ve got more work out of my gang if I were still in blissful ignorance like the others than I can now, but I’ll keep on doing my best. And if my advice is any good, you’re welcome to it. What’s your idea?”