Chipp, the best seaman of us all, had swamped in the gale, and we were soon like to follow, for what chance was there for us where his skill was insufficient? But at least we in the whaleboat were still afloat. What of the first cutter? Fearfully, I looked aft again for her.
Still half a mile off our starboard quarter, there she was, plunging furiously along before the tumultuous waves, holding grimly to her original course, southwest, dead before the gale for Cape Barkin. I shook my head sadly. De Long should haul closer to the wind. As he was heading, it would be a miracle if the square-sterned first cutter lasted ten minutes, for one bad jibe would dismast his boat and broach her also, needing only another wave to send her tumbling on her side to follow in Chipp’s wake. But it made little difference. Regardless of course now, every sea combing past seemed ready to swamp our two insignificant cockle-shells. Chipp was already gone. Any minute now, I confidently expected to feel that strangling water in my throat, after a few feeble struggles to be overwhelmed by the breaking seas and, still gasping for air, to sink numbly through the frigid water to join Chipp on the bottom.
I saw no more of the first cutter. On different courses, she soon faded from our view into the night, and we were left alone, eleven freezing men huddling in a tiny whaleboat in a world of roaring winds, of mountainous seas, and of utter blackness.
We drove along before the storm, the wind on our port quarter, the rushing seas pressing madly against our port side, with the canvas weathercloth there billowing and sagging inboard as the crests swept along the canvas and poured in over the top. Each time we slid sickeningly down into a trough, all hands bailed for dear life, fighting to get the flood sloshing round beneath the thwarts overboard before we rose to the next crest and more water pouring aboard from the succeeding wave swamped us completely. Every pot and pan we had in the boat was pressed into service, and except for Leach, who braced in the sternsheets, clung to the tiller and steered, and except for me manning sheet and sail myself to keep us from capsizing, the others in the boat alternately pressed their shoulders back against the weatherscreen to hold it up while rising to the crests, and leaned forward, bailing furiously while sinking into the troughs.
Numbed fingers clung to ice-coated pans, icy water sloshed over our heads and down our necks, our frozen feet had long since lost all sensation, and the careening boat beneath us pitched, rolled, and heaved so dizzily that only by clinging continuously to the thwarts did we manage to escape being tossed bodily overboard.
Leach in the stern, the one man besides myself whose task required him to stand motionless in one spot, did a miraculous job of steering. Had he but once allowed her to swing off the course we should have broached immediately and capsized. But clinging to the tiller in the darkness, more by feel than by such vague sight as the foaming crests sweeping by gave him of the direction of the sea, he kept the wind on the port quarter, standing himself wholly unprotected, a fair target for each smashing wave breaking over the stern to drench him completely.
Straining my eyes through the blackness as I clung to the sheet, I watched the seas coming over and the men bailing. It was obvious that we were fighting a losing battle. Even though Leach at the helm and I at the sheet managed to keep her from broaching or jibing or both at once, and thus instantly ending the struggle, it was evident that those bailing could not indefinitely keep ahead of the water coming in over our stern, and sooner or later we should fill and founder. Oh, for some drifting floes! If only we might run into another field of ice which would at least deaden the seas if not allow us to haul out on a floe! The ice pack, which many times in the long months past I had cursed vehemently, I now earnestly prayed for as our only sure salvation. But we had long since dropped astern the last floe, and now we must battle it out with the turbulent sea. There was only one thing more I could do before my men, barely able now to keep us afloat by bailing, between numbness and exhaustion found themselves unable to keep the water going overboard as fast as the tempestuous seas poured it in. Regardless of the hazard involved, I must come about, head into the crests, heave to, and ride out the gale bows on, held that way by a sea anchor, while our canvas-decked forecastle, instead of our open stern, took the brunt of the oncoming waves.
But to heave to meant inviting quick destruction, for the maneuver involved turning broadside to the waves for an instant as we swung our bow about to head into the wind. To make matters worse, while in that critical position we must use our oars to swing the boat and that meant dropping our weathercloths down to the gunwales at the very instant when most of all we needed every inch of freeboard possible to avoid taking over a solid beam sea and foundering out of hand.
Just abaft me, huddled against the weathercloth was Danenhower. I leaned over in the darkness and shouted into his ear,
“Dan, it’s blowing like blazes! We’d better heave to!”