So when late that night we got underway, we had two officers under arrest—the surly Collins who seemed to spend much of his time unburdening his wrongs in the ears of my fireman Bartlett, but in between times making himself useful as a hunter, and Newcomb who was thoroughly useless for anything.
The land which Dunbar weeks before had sighted across the ice, undoubtedly a newly discovered island not on the charts, was now in plain sight only a few miles off, bearing westward. Through bad gales and over broken pack, with occasional floebergs suddenly shooting into the air near us, we worked toward it. July 23rd, the captain’s sights showed no change in our latitude since the 16th; in that time between our own efforts and the erratic drift, we had been taken twenty-eight miles due west and were now fairly close to our new island. We struggled along toward it over badly moving ice, but at least this ice was firm and many of the floes were large. Collins finally shot another seal, but it sank before the dinghy could get to it, and we sadly saw our visions of a second feast dissolve into cold water. Next morning we pitched camp as usual, with the land tantalizing us not three miles off but mostly hidden in fog. Soon after turning in, the man on watch shouted,
“Bear!” and instantly out of their sleeping bags popped Alexey and Aneguin, eager to get the first bear sighted since our ship sank. We heard a couple of shots, and our mouths began to water. Um-m! Bear steaks for dinner! But it was all wasted for soon the two Indians were back, empty-handed and disgusted. The bear had been in such excellent trim that they had had to fire at a thousand yards on a rapidly reciprocating target as that bear humped himself over the ice, and they had of course missed. However, it didn’t matter much, claimed Alexey, as the bear was only a dirty brown one and not very big, a remark which prompted the captain to ask innocently,
“Sour grapes, Alexey?” but Alexey only looked at him puzzled. Grapes, sour or otherwise, never grew in his latitudes, so I’m afraid he missed the point. Quieting our disappointed stomachs as best we could, once more we turned in. But we got the bear. In the late afternoon, Seaman Görtz, who had the watch the while the rest of us slept, spotted him once again. This time Görtz kept his mouth shut while the bear advanced to within five hundred yards of our camp, and then, unnoticed, our lookout managed to crawl within a hundred yards of him to plant two bullets in that bear where they did the most good!
Now that we had him, he turned out to be a very fine bear indeed, even Alexey admitting that ungrudgingly, and soon the air over that floe was filled with an appetizing aroma of sizzling bear steaks that fairly intoxicated us. We envied no man on earth his evening meal that night as, disdaining pemmican, we gorged ourselves on bear. But we needed it. When we broke camp and started for the island ahead, we found ourselves with nothing but moving ice over which to work our sledges.
For two days, mostly in fog, we fought our way toward that island, with the floes breaking under us, sliding away from us, and the whole pack alive around us. A gale blew up, and on the off side of the hummocks about us, a bad surf broke and kept us drenched. Finally on the third day, we found ourselves opposite the dimly visible western tip of the island, with nothing but a forlorn chance left of ever making the solid ground that so desperately we ached to rest ourselves on. With but a few hundred yards remaining before the pack finally drifted us past it forever, we sighted ahead a long floe of heavy blue ice extending in toward the land, with only a few openings between the floe and ours. We bridged the gaps, bounced our sledges and boats over, and made good a mile and a half across that floe. There we found more broken ice and water, which with difficulty we started to cross in the fog by passing a line to a floe beyond and using a smaller cake as a ferryboat, when suddenly the fog lifted and there over our heads, some 2500 feet high, towered a huge cliff, and sweeping past it as in a millrace were the floes on which we rode!
We finished our ferry, ending on a moderate-sized floe drifting rapidly past the fixed ice piled up at the base of the cliff, with the southwest cape, our last slim chance to make the land, not far off. For over two weeks we had dragged and struggled toward that island; now in despair we found ourselves being helplessly swept by it!
Our little floe, covered with sledges, men and dogs, whirled and eddied in the race, spinning crazily, and threatening to break up any moment, when we noted that if only it should make the next spin in the right direction, it might touch a corner against the ice fringing the land. We waited breathlessly. It did!
“Away, Chipp!” shouted De Long, and in an instant our sledges started to move off that spinning floe. The first got away perfectly, the second nearly went overboard, the third sledge shot into the sea, carrying Cole with it, and the fourth was only saved by Erichsen who, with superhuman strength, shoved an ice cake in for a bridge. We couldn’t get the boat sledges over; our floe was already starting to crack up. Working frenziedly as it broke, the few of us left on the floe pushed the boats, their sledges still under them, off into the water and the men already landed started to haul the boats over to them, when away drifted the last remnant of that ice cake, carrying with it De Long, Iversen, Aneguin and me, together with six dogs! For a few minutes we were in a bad way, threatening to drift clear of the island on that tiny ice cake with no food, except perhaps the dogs; while the men ashore ran wildly along the ice-foot, unable to help us in any manner.
Fortunately for us, a little further along a swirl drove our floe in against a grounded berg for a second and dogs and all, we made a wild leap for it; successfully too, for only three of us landed in the water. Aneguin, the Indian, proved the best broad jumper. He landed safely enough on the berg and dragged the rest of us up and out.