For one horrible second, the listing boat hung with her gunwale under, poised uncertainly between going completely over and rolling back, while her agonized crew, clinging desperately to the thwarts to avoid being tossed out, felt cold death in the form of the inrushing water lapping round their bodies! Then slowly, very slowly, under the influence of the heavy ballast jammed along the bottom boards, the dismasted cutter rolled back on an even keel, awash to the thwarts and so deep in the water that her gunwales barely showed above the foaming surface!
“Bail!” roared De Long. “All hands! Bail!”
A waterlogged wreck, the first cutter lay broadside in the trough of the sea with every man in her buried in salt water to his waist, frenziedly bailing to regain a semblance of buoyancy before the next wave swept over her side and finished her. Fortunately at that instant, the broken mast and the ballooning sail, dragging alongside by the halliards streaming over the bow, caught the water, began acting as a sea anchor, and the startled men in the boat, too busy bailing to lift a hand for any other purpose, saw in amazement their submerged cutter swing slowly round in the trough into the wind and sluggishly rise head on to the next crest, heaving herself to!
Had even another moderate sea swept up at this moment, the boat would unquestionably have finished filling and foundered, but by some freak of the storm, only a succession of lazy billows came rolling by until with the boat half-emptied and higher in the water, De Long could get out some oars to hold her steady the while he sent Görtz and Kaack racing forward to clear away the wreckage.
Holding his cutter head on with oars and rudder while he finished bailing and dragged in the impromptu sea anchor by the halliards, the captain hastily made a drag of his sail only and an empty water breaker to hold it up, and then rode the gale to that, taking in the oars and raising the weathercloths again, while Erichsen, still clinging to the tiller, steered into the wind and the rest of the crew bailed to keep afloat.
For the men crowded in the boat, it was a night of utter misery and terror, wet through, freezing in the gale, tossing madly in the cutter, and with Collins slumped in the cockpit too weak or too heedless to reach the rail, violently and continuously seasick to add the final touch.
At midnight their sea anchor carried suddenly away and with it went the sail. Instantly out went a pair of oars to hold her up, while another drag, made of the broken mast and the rest of the oars, with the expedition’s solitary pick-ax hung to it to hold it down, was sent out over the bow. This proved a poor substitute for the sail, for having insufficient surface, it failed to catch the water properly and rode off the cutter’s beam, instead of ahead, with the result that the boat, no longer bows-on to the waves, wallowed in the troughs and rolled horribly, making water worse than ever.
After thirty-six hours of this torture, the gale finally abated, and with only a fresh breeze and a heavy sea still running, De Long prepared again to get underway, but he had no sail. Nindemann searched the boat for substitutes; out of a hammock and the sledge cover, sewed together by Görtz and Kaack, Nindemann provided a jury sail. The drag was hauled in to recover the mast; with a chisel, Nindemann refitted the broken end of the mast to its step, rerigged it, and soon with the two insignificant bits of canvas spread at the yard, the first cutter resumed her journey for the Lena Delta, making hardly one knot through the water, and because the breeze had now hauled to the south, unable to sail closer to the wind than a course due west instead of the desired southwest.
But what the course should be to make Cape Barkin and where the boat was, God alone knew. It was impossible to get a sight, and even had it not been, De Long’s hands were so badly frozen he could not work his sextant. So willy-nilly, the boat went west for two days with De Long and his frozen crew, barely crawling along under the tiny jury rig, till early on the morning of September 16th, having been four days at sea since leaving Semenovski Island, the wind failed altogether, and in a dead calm sea, De Long ordered out the oars and headed due south, feeling that he had made more than enough westing.
By this time, from long-continued watchfulness and exposure, both De Long’s hands and his feet were so badly frozen and had swollen to such size that he was wholly unable to move himself. Tenderly Dr. Ambler got out his soaked sleeping bag, and helped by Görtz, slipped the captain into it and then propped him up in the sternsheets so he could see to maneuver the boat.