After a few hours of rowing south, the water began to shoal rapidly and the cutter ran into a skim of young ice, through which it broke its way. Soon low-lying land was sighted to the south, undoubtedly some part of the northern side of the Lena Delta. With redoubled energy the men heaved with their cracked and bleeding hands at the oars, driving through thickening ice toward the coast. A little to starboard an open lead in the young ice was sighted, seemingly running inshore toward a river mouth, and into this lead the boat was rammed through the intervening ice, keeping on in this open water till at about 9 A.M., still more than a mile offshore, the boat grounded solidly in less than two feet of water with new ice freezing constantly all about her in the bitter cold.
After a fruitless effort to get inshore through the invisible shoals, De Long tried to work out again to the northward, hoping then to go further west and perhaps find a better channel into the river, which so far as could be judged from the width between the headlands, seemed to be one of the main northern mouths of the Lena. But the thickening ice had closed in behind, and stuck fast in the hidden shoal, the boat could be moved neither ahead nor astern with the oars.
De Long after a futile effort to push out, using the oars as poles, became desperate.
“All hands over the side to lighten the boat!” he ordered. “We’ll push her off!”
Silently, all except the helmsman, the men started to obey, but first began to remove their wet boots, not wishing to fill them with mud. Off came the worn and leaking footgear, exposing to view badly swollen feet, many already black with frostbite and with blisters breaking as the skin, stuck to the boots, tore away from the frozen flesh. Dr. Ambler took one swift glance at them, then leaning over the helpless captain, whispered in his ear. De Long bent forward, looked himself, then said,
“Belay going over the side, men. Put on your boots. We’ll try shoving her off again with the oars instead.”
But the enfeebled seamen had little luck. An all day struggle with the shallow water moved the boat hardly a hundred yards, and night fell on an exhausted boat crew, caught amidst ice and shoals, unable either to get the cutter ashore or get it to sea.
Once more they spent a cheerless night in the cramped boat, tantalized by that unapproachable shore a mile and a half away, unable to sleep, wet, freezing, and thirsty on the crowded thwarts.
At daybreak, they tried again. Managing to get free of the ice and the mud, they made a few yards, only to ground on another shoal. Getting clear of that, the ice soon blocked them. It made little difference which way they headed, north or south, east or west, shoals and young ice were everywhere. Bitterly De Long looked from his heavy cutter and his fast-fading men across a mile and a half of thin ice, strong enough to block the boat, too weak to sustain a man, toward the low coast of Siberia. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. He would never get the boat free—eight hours of labor today on top of all of yesterday and no progress made either toward shore or toward sea and nothing to look forward to now except another terrible night in the boat in the fierce cold.
De Long made up his mind. Regardless of their condition, they must abandon the cutter, wade ashore. He still had two hours of daylight in which to work, and despite frost-bitten feet, there was no alternative; into that icy water they must plunge. But three of the men, Boyd, Erichsen, and himself, hardly able to stand without toppling headlong, could never make that mile and a half wading through ice and shoals to the land. They would have to get the boat closer first.