“I can’t hold back, captain! It’s either run or swamp!”
Perhaps he heard me. I have a strong voice and I had the wind behind me to carry my words along. At any rate, he could see the situation and with another shout, also smothered in the wind, he waved energetically, motioning me on.
I needed no more. Promptly loosing sail, we filled away, still bailing our waterlogged craft, while I waved to him in acknowledgment. De Long turned in his tossing cockpit, and I then saw him motioning violently to Chipp, half a mile astern, possibly wanting him to come close enough aboard to toss over that forty-five-pound can of pemmican, the only food Chipp’s men would have, before the gale and the darkness separated them.
But I had my hands full in my own boat and paid little attention. We hoisted sail, shook out one reef, and shot ahead down the wind before another sea could catch us and finish the job of swamping us completely. Having gathered sufficient headway to maneuver a bit, I hauled the boat a few points closer to the wind, so that instead of heading southwest dead before it with the consequent grave danger of jibing the sail and broaching to before the oncoming seas, we now ran with the wind on our port quarter, heading roughly south and driving hard amidst heavy seas. We had our canvas weathercloths up on both sides, with the freezing men in the boat, their backs against the cloths to hold them in position, themselves all standing poised with pans ready to bail in the brief intervals when not actually bailing. And indeed, had it not been for those canvas weathercloths, so carefully fitted the day before at Semenovski, we should long since have foundered. As it was, we huddled behind them, all save Leach at the tiller, with huge seas rolling past our raised sides and sweeping heavily along the billowing canvas screens, over which even so, spray and some solid water from every crest dashed into the boat.
The sea was now running mountains. Our little boat was tossing wildly, rising dizzily to every crest as it swept up, then plunging madly down into the trough as the wave rolled by. The wind roared on, icy spray cutting like a knife drove into the boat, our sheets and halliards sang in the gale, while the mast in its step creaked dismally and our yard whipped so violently in spite of a double-reefed sail, that with each gust as we rose on a crest and the wind caught us squarely, I began to fear that both mast and sail would go flying from us down the wind like a suddenly released gull.
“Look!” shouted Leach at the tiller. “The skipper’s signalling us again, chief!”
“Never mind him!” I growled. “Watch your steering, Leach. We’re on our own now. Nobody sees any more signals for us!”
But nevertheless I looked aft myself through the twilight. We were fast outdistancing the first cutter where half a mile to windward already, I could see De Long gesticulating in the stern. But Leach was mistaken; De Long seemed to be waving to Chipp a thousand yards to windward of himself, and now a mile astern of us. As I stared, shielding my eyes as best I could from the sharp spray, I saw the second cutter rise against the sky on the crest of a breaking wave, then sink into the trough. Again she rose, when an immense sea swept over her and she broached, lying helplessly broadside to the gale! Instantly her sail jibed and the yard swung over, binding yard and sail against the mast. A man sprang up, sharply outlined against the horizon, struggling frenziedly to clear the jammed sail from the mast, then the heeling boat plunged broadside from my sight into the trough. The second cutter had evidently swamped!
Suddenly sick, I watched that spot as wave after wave rolled by, but nothing rose again, and only flying foam and breaking seas met my gaze. Broken-hearted, I stared across that mile of raging sea at the scene of that swift tragedy. There was nothing we could do. No boat could ever beat a mile dead to windward against such waves; long before we could even get our boat into the wind on the first tack, the icy waters and the tumbling seas had ended the agony of the men in the second cutter.
I sank back in the sternsheets, sobbing for the shipmates I had lost. Quiet, taciturn Chipp, who by sheer will power had conquered sickness to lead his men across the pack; grizzled old Dunbar, who had broken his health scouting paths for us over the ice; huge Starr, whose herculean back had many a time lifted my jammed boat over the hummocks in the pack; little Sharvell, whose comical seriousness had often lightened our months of tedious drifting; Sweetman, Warren, Johnson, Kuehne, good seamen every one—their struggles were forever ended. All their agonizing labors to escape from death in the pack had brought them only death in the foaming waves. Now their voyage over, they were slowly sinking through the cold depths to unmarked graves in the desolate Arctic Sea!