So promptly providing Collins with a rifle and Newcomb with the shotgun which he had carried from the wreck, both were turned to on the floes to see what they could do in earning their passage while our straggling line of boats and sledges moved on over the pack.
But even so Collins was not satisfied. A member of the party messing and sleeping in the captain’s tent, his main business in life seemed to be sizing up what he could find wrong with De Long’s management of the retreat, to add in his private notes to whatever else he had accumulated in the way of (in his eyes) errors in the captain’s judgment. But he must have had a tough time of it, for the only thing that apparently displeased him now was as he related it to his confidant, Bartlett,
“The skipper’s always too infernally polite to me, seeing that I’m served before he helps himself to pemmican, and making sure my place in the tent’s all right before he’ll crawl into his sleeping bag.”
And under these embarrassing conditions, Collins began his life as a hunter.
July 10th, far to the southwest, Dunbar sighted a faint cloud which he announced as land, gravely assuring us that the New Siberian Islands were in sight. While the skipper was dubious of its being land at all, knowing (what Dunbar and most of the party did not) that the nearest charted land, those New Siberian Islands, were still a hundred and twenty miles off, so that what was seen was either a mirage or a new discovery, the effect on our progress was magical—over none too good ice we made three and a quarter miles that day! In the clearer atmosphere, the skipper got some sights for the first time in a week which when worked out placed us in latitude 77° 8′ N., longitude 151° 38′ E., to our joy showing that at last we were south of 77° 18′ N. from which we had started. But both the skipper and I stared in amazement at our new position, for having by dead reckoning and compass made sixteen miles to the southwest over the pack during the week, the sights showed that our actual change of position in those seven days was twenty-seven miles to the southeast. So once again the current had us, carrying us where it would, but since this time it was increasing our southing, we could only be thoroughly grateful.
That night when (still keeping our actual position a secret) it was announced that not only were we doing well over the ice, but that a southerly drift was helping us along, there was a roaring cheer as the straining men in harness leaned forward, and we got the boats away in grand style.
For two weeks we struggled on to the southwest, sometimes certain we saw land, sometimes certain we didn’t. But it was discouraging work. Fog, snow, and hail made our lives miserable, and between the everlasting ferrying over open leads and the plowing through pools of surface slush, we kept our clothes continuously soaked in ice water. Aside from the discomfort of stretching out in wet clothes to sleep in a wet bag on a rubber sheet sunk in a puddle on wet ice, the interminable wetness began to finish our moccasin and boot-soles, and now there wasn’t a tight pair left in the ship’s company. These soles, made of “oog-joog” skin, a rawhide from a species of seal, were fine when dry in ordinary snow or ice, but when wet, they softened to resemble tripe and then under the strain of men heaving hard against sharp ice with their feet to drag the sledges, they soon let go. As long as the spare “oog-joog” brought from the Jeannette held out, we patched away till all hands stood on a mass of patches as they worked, but when it gave out (and it very soon did), we were in a bad way for substitutes. First we tried leather, stripping it from the oar-looms, but leather was not only too hard and slippery for use on the ice but our supply didn’t last long, and we were quickly reduced to canvas, to sennet mats woven of hemp rope by the seamen, to rag mats, and even to wooden soles carved from what little planking our carpenter could strip out of the bottom boards in our boats. None were in any degree satisfactory—one hard heave on sharp ice would often tear the soles off a man’s boots—and frequently before the end of a night’s hauling I would have half a dozen men straining at the sledges with their bare feet on the ice, even their socks completely worn through, while the rest of the gang, whose soles still clung on, would be spurting a mixture of slush and water from their torn moccasins at each step.
Between the lodestone effect of the dim land ahead of us, less snow, a little smoother ice, and lighter sledges, we speeded up. The ice improved to the point where we could drag a boat with only half our party, thus advancing two loads at once and having to tramp only seven miles for each mile made, instead of thirteen as before. But the cracks in the ice increased in frequency and ferrying and bridging over them made our lives a nightmare, the mental strain of forever riding heavy sledges over bobbing ice cakes which threatened to capsize each instant, being indescribable. And to add to our worries, our dogs began to get fits, four of our best ones spinning dizzily in their harnesses before dropping on the ice, frothing at the mouth when we cut them out of the traces.
One pleasing incident occurred amidst all our hardships. After ten days of hunting, Collins finally shot a seal in an open lead, which prize was handsomely recovered by Ambler and Johnson in the dinghy before it sank. For this we were doubly thankful—after using his grease to tighten up our leaking boots, we dined most luxuriously on stewed seal, fried seal, and if only we had had an oven, we might have had roast seal. But he went very well as it was; after a month on cold pemmican, it was a feast long to be remembered!
July 16th we struck tough going. The ferrying grew worse than ever; Erichsen crossing a lead capsized with his sledge and we lost three hundred pounds of pemmican, a serious blow. A few minutes later, trying to get to a high hummock to inspect the distant land now more visible ahead. De Long tried to jump a wide lead, the ice broke under him and he went in up to his neck. He might well have gone completely and forever had not Dunbar, who was with him, at that point grabbed him by what he thought was his fur hood but which was actually his whiskers, and nearly jerked the skipper’s head off pulling him out by his mustaches!