At this, Lee, my machinist, who was also in the doctor’s tent, very gravely informed the doctor of the best way to make Rhode Island clam chowder, which he felt was the only proper dish for any July 4th banquet, and the poor doctor, with all this gastronomical advice bringing back recollections of past Independence Day feasts back in old Virginia garnished with everything from savory baked hams to candied sweet potatoes, found his mouth watering so that he lost all interest in his cold pemmican and fled from the tent.
Underway again that evening, we stumbled along as before, heaving, holding back, building ice bridges, ferrying on bobbing floes across the water leads when we did not fall into them. De Long, his mind a little relieved about the drift, spent fewer hours in the rear and most of the night tramping over our route, for the first time beginning to take some notice of individuals and what they were doing. Coming up to one bridging job, where I had a piece of floating ice jammed into a crack some fifteen feet wide while the crew were dragging sledges across it to the southern side, he noticed that Collins, standing at the edge of the gap, was holding the line securing the makeshift bridge in place.
“Mr. Collins,” said the captain icily, “you have many times in disrespectful language informed me that you didn’t ship to be treated as a seaman. I can’t allow you to go home, claiming that I forced you to work as one even to save your own life. Give that rope to one of the men!”
Collins made no move to obey. Instead for perhaps half a minute he stood glaring like a tiger at De Long, till the latter, noting Seaman Dressler close alongside, sternly ordered,
“Mr. Collins, give that rope to Dressler, and don’t let me catch you putting your hand to another line until I order you! You are still under suspension awaiting trial and don’t you forget it!”
Collins, ready to burst with anger, slowly passed over the line and without a word dropped to the rear.
We moved along. Under the continued burning rays of the sun, the snow melted and drained away from the surface, making the going a little easier, and our consumption of food lightened up our loads, still further aiding our speed, but our personnel troubles increased.
Ambler was particularly burdened. Ten days of riding on the sledge and careful medical attention had so built up Chipp that he could walk again, and with that little improvement, he began to nag the doctor to put him off the sicklist and restore him to duty in command of one of the parties. Danenhower also, his physique improved by the enforced exercise he was getting in walking after his long confinement aboard ship, began to make the same demand, though he could hardly see through his one heavily shielded eye. Ambler naturally enough refused both requests. As a result, daily when he came into his tent after having wielded a pick-ax all night long on the roads, and crawled horribly tired into his sleeping bag to rest, it was only to listen to his two blessed invalids exchanging sneering remarks about his medical competence because he would not restore them to duty. Finally, unable to stand it further, he burst out,
“For God’s sake, shut up, both of you! Dan, if you’d obeyed my orders on the ship, one of your eyes would be well now! And you, Chipp, a little while ago were begging us to leave you on the ice to die! Now that you’re both barely able to get yourselves along, you want me to risk other men’s lives by putting them in your charge, and I’ll be damned if I will! Was ever a doctor cursed by two such patients!”
But if his patients aggravated him, his helpers on the road work tried his very soul. In charge of the road-building gang, Ambler had as assistant laborers Lee and Newcomb, and to draw along the sledge with the dinghy which was assigned to him for working in the open leads, seven of such miserable, broken-down dogs that they were worthless for any work on the heavy sledges and only an irritation on his lighter one. But even so, Ambler might philosophically have accepted the situation and kept on as he was, doing most of the work with a pick-ax himself, had it not been for Newcomb. For both the broken-down dogs and Lee with his shaky legs were at least doing their poor best. Quite to the contrary, our naturalist, though fully recovered from his indisposition, infuriated the doctor, himself manfully swinging a pick, by the piddling efforts which he was pleased to pass off as work. Patiently Ambler showed him how to swing a pick on the hummocks; then getting no results from him, sharply ordered him to turn to, only to find Newcomb more interested in pertly answering back than in obeying. For two days Ambler, with his southern temper slowly rising, stood it, merely remarking grimly to me one night,