For two weeks we stood on to the southwest, boating and sledging. With luck in pushing away the ice with boathooks, we might make five or six miles between broken floes before we met a pack we could not get through afloat, when it was a case of unload the boats, mount them on their sledges, and drag across the ice. By the second day of this, we were down to two dogs, Snoozer and Kasmatka, all the rest having deserted, but these two special favorites were kept tied and so prevented from decamping. The boat work, whether under sail or oars, was hard labor. There was no open sea, merely leads in the open pack, and over most of these leads, the weather was now cold enough to freeze ice a quarter of an inch thick over night. We found we could not row through this, so the leading boat, usually the first cutter, had to break a way, and all day long men were poised in her bows with boathooks and oars breaking up the ice ahead. And we had before us several hundred miles of this!
The weather was bad, mostly fog, snow squalls, and some gales, but because of the vast amount of floating ice, there was no room for a heavy sea to kick up, and when a moderate sea rose, we always hauled out on the nearest floe. And so camping on the ice at night, hauling out for dinner, and making what we could under sail or oars in between when we were not sledging over the pack, we stood on to the southwest for the New Siberian Islands. At the end of one week’s journeying, the snowfalls became frequent and heavy, troubling us greatly, though they did provide us with good drinking water which was an improvement over the semi-salted snow we got on the main pack. By now it was the middle of August, sixty days since we had left the Jeannette, and the expiration of the period for which originally we had provided food. We were hundreds of miles from our destination, and our food was getting low. Of course had it not been for our going on short rations soon after our start, our position would now be precarious, since the few seals, birds, and the solitary bear we got, while luxurious breaks in our menu so long as they lasted (which wasn’t long) meant little in the way of quantity.
By August 16th, nine days underway from Bennett Island, we had made only forty miles—not very encouraging. Next day we did better—ten miles under sail with only one break, but the day after, it was once more all pulling with the oars and smashing ice ahead and slow work again. But on August 19th we saw so much open water that we joyfully imagined we were near the open sea at last. We loosed our sails and until noon went swiftly onward with the intention of getting dinner in our boats for the first time without hauling out on the ice, and then continuing on all night also. Suddenly astern of us we saw Chipp’s boat hastily douse sail, run in against a floe, and promptly start to unload.
There was nothing for the rest of us (cursing fluently at the delay) to do except to round to and secure to the ice till Chipp came up, and long before he had managed that, the ice came down on us from all sides before a northeast wind, so that shortly it looked as if there was nothing but ice in the world. Chipp finally sledged his boat over the pack to join us and we learned the ice had closed on him suddenly, stove a bad hole in his port bow, and he had to haul out hurriedly to keep from sinking.
By three p.m., Chipp had his boat repaired, using a piece of pemmican can for a patch, and we were again ready. Each boat had its sledge, a heavy oaken affair, slung athwartships across the gunwales just forward of the mast. Abaft that, the boats were jammed with men and supplies, the result being that they were both badly overloaded and topheavy.
With great difficulty we poled our way through ice drifts packed about us to more open water and made sail again before a freshening breeze, De Long in the first cutter leading, my whaleboat in the middle, and Chipp with the second cutter astern of all. We felt we must be nearing the northerly coasts of the New Siberian Islands, which we hoped to sight any moment and perhaps even reach by night.
The breeze grew stronger and the sea started to kick up. My whaleboat began to roll badly, taking in water over the gunwales, and at the tiller I found it difficult to hold her steady on the course, though with some bailing we got along fairly well, and so it seemed to me did the first cutter ahead. But the second cutter astern, the shortest boat of the three, was behaving very badly in that sea—rolling heavily, sticking her nose into the waves instead of rising to them, and evidently making considerable water. Hauling away a little on my quarter and drawing up so he could hail the captain ahead, Chipp bellowed down the wind,
“Captain! I’ve either got to haul out on the ice or heave overboard this sledge! If I don’t, I’ll swamp!”
De Long decided to haul out. He waved to Chipp and me (he being to leeward, we couldn’t hear him) indicating that we were to haul out on a floe nearby on our lee side. The near side of that floe, its windward side, had a bad surf breaking over the ice, so we tried to weather a point on the floe and get around to its lee where we could see a safe cove to haul out in, but our unwieldy boats would not sail close enough to the wind, and we failed to make it. Chipp’s case by this time was desperate; his boat was badly flooded and in spite of all the bailing his men could do, the waterlogged cutter seemed ready to sink under him. There was nothing for it but to land on the weather side of the ice, which dangerous maneuver, with a rolling sea breaking badly on the floe and shooting surf high into the air, was skilfully accomplished without, to our intense relief, smashing all our boats beyond repair.
The gale grew worse. It was now 7:30 P.M. and beginning to get dark. (Between the later season of the year and our being farther south, we no longer had the midnight sun with us, but instead about eight hours of darkness.) There was no hope of further progress that night, so we pitched camp on the floe, while the gale started to push ice in about us from all directions.