As the days went by and in the fog and snow we drifted westward with the pack before an easterly gale, the knowledge of that unapproachable island added to our aggravations. We could do little except repair our boats (which, using pemmican tallow, rags, and lampwick for caulking materials, Nindemann and Sweetman labored at) and wait for the pack to open, a constant watch night and day being set with orders that if a lead appeared, we should immediately launch our boats into it. But none showed up. In desperation at the delay, which was bringing us face to face with the prospect of starvation, De Long again sent for Chipp and me.
“Mr. Chipp,” he asked, “can you move your boat across this ice to the land?”
“No,” said Chipp flatly. “It’ll stave in her bottom trying to ride her on her keel.”
“Mr. Melville,” turning to me, “can you get the whaleboat across? Is this any worse than when you landed with the dinghy on Henrietta Island?”
“Captain,” I replied sadly, “no worse, but it’s as bad; the ice is just as much alive. And I didn’t take the little dinghy to Henrietta Island, even on her sledge; I left her at the edge of the moving pack. I can get the whaleboat across this ice to that island if you order me, sir, but when she gets there, she’ll be worthless as a boat.”
“Well, in that case,” remarked De Long, bitterly disappointed at our views, “it’s no use taking them there.” And while he didn’t voice it, there was little question but that he deeply regretted having ever cut up the boat sledges. In my opinion, however, sledges or no sledges, we couldn’t safely get those boats through to the land over that swirling ice between. We started to leave.
“Hold on a moment,” ordered De Long, pulling a book out from under his parka, “there’s something else.” He pushed his head out the tent flap, called to the man on watch in the snow. “Send Seaman Starr in here!”
In a moment or two, Starr, with his snow-flecked bulk practically filling the tent, stood beside us. The captain opened the book. It was in German, one of Petermann’s publications, the best we had on New Siberia and the Lena Delta. Starr, aside from his Russian, could also read German, and as he translated, De Long, Chipp, and I followed on the chart, putting down Petermann’s data on the islands, and especially on the Lena Delta, where near Cape Barkin were marked winter huts and settlements, a signal station similar to a lighthouse, and the indication that there we could get native pilots to take us up the Lena. At this time the captain warned me that should we be separated, Cape Barkin was to be our rendezvous. At that point the delta formed a right-angled corner. To the westward from Cape Barkin, the coast ran due west; but at the cape itself, the coast turned and ran sharply south for over a hundred miles, while through both the northern and the eastern faces of this corner-like delta, the Lena discharged in many branches to the sea. But Cape Barkin at this corner we must make—there between the pilots and the settlements shown by Petermann, our voyage would end and our troubles would be over. The remainder of our journey home would merely be a tedious and probably a slow trip on reindeer sledges southward from the Siberian coast inland fifteen hundred miles to Irkutsk, then a long jaunt westward by post coaches to Moscow, and so back to America. The captain marked it all out, made two copies of his chart, one for me and one for Chipp, and then dismissing Starr, told us,
“There are your charts with the courses laid out to Cape Barkin. As I informed you in my written order at Bennett Island, Melville, if unfortunately we are separated, you will continue on till you make the mouth of the Lena River, and without delay ascend the Lena to a Russian settlement from which you can be forwarded with your party to a place of safety and easy access. Try to reach some settlement large enough to feed and shelter your men before thinking about waiting for me. And the same for you, Chipp. That’s all, gentlemen. Be ready to start the instant the ice breaks.” He drew out his pipe, ending the discussion. We took our charts and departed, leaving the skipper trying to light off a pipeful of damp tea leaves.
On August 29th, after ten days of fuming in idleness during which time our pack drifted first westward and then southward, the weather cleared a bit and we found ourselves between Fadejovski and New Siberia Islands, and closer to Fadejovski, the western one of the pair. At noon, Dunbar scouting on the pack, reported a lead half a mile away. Immediately we broke camp, and carrying our provisions on our backs while we carefully skidded our boats along on their keels, we dragged across that half mile of floe to the water and launched our boats, thankful even for the chance the remainder of the afternoon to fight our way through swirling ice cakes to the southward. The drift in that lead was rapid, the broken ice there was violently tumbling and eddying, and as we swept down the bleak coast five miles off Fadejovski Island unsheltered from the intense cold, with oars and boat hooks savagely fending off those heaving floes on all sides of us to keep our frail boats from being crushed, it was like making passage through the very gates of hell! For two horrible days we worked along the coast fighting off impending death in that swirling maelstrom of ice, when with the pack thinning somewhat, we managed at last to work our way to land on the southerly end of Fadejovski, three weeks underway since leaving Bennett Island, and humbly grateful to find ourselves disembarking still alive.