“Aye, aye, sir. But ninety-five miles over this tundra! In our state now, it’s worse than that drag over the pack. We’ll never get there!”
“Some of us may, and we’ll all try. It’s our last chance. And it’s up to you, doctor. See what you can do to save our feet!”
All day on one man after another, Surgeon Ambler worked with lint, with vaseline, and with his scalpel, opening blisters, cutting away dead skin and flesh, gently massaging frozen feet and legs to restore circulation, and finally bandaging up. When evening fell, De Long, Boyd, and Ah Sam could hobble again. Even Erichsen, whom the long motionless hours at the tiller during the storm at sea had left with a far worse frostbite than anyone, whose two feet, stinking with festering sores nauseated even the doctor as he worked on those horribly swollen and blistered lumps from which protruded black and feelingless toes, claimed to be improved and able to walk a little.
While this (during a storm of snow, hail and sleet) was going on, De Long ordered a cache made on the beach of the navigating gear, most of the cooking utensils, the sleeping bags, and other miscellaneous articles, so that the baggage to be carried was reduced to the clothes the men wore, the ship’s records, four rifles and ammunition, medicine and surgical tools, blankets, tents, and their four days’ food supply, consisting only of some tea and the unopened can of pemmican which should have gone to Chipp.
Leaving a written record in the cache to direct anyone who might ever come after, searching for them, on the early afternoon of September 19th, the ragged seamen shouldered their burdens and dragging the expedition’s records on their little sledge, set out under a bright sun over the snow-covered tundra for Ku Mark Surk, ninety-five long miles to the south over the trackless delta.
It was a forlorn scene as De Long and his men took leave of the Polar Sea which for two years had held them prisoner—to the west flowed the Lena, a broad swift stream tumbling on its swirling bosom broken floes from further up the frozen river; to the north spread the Arctic Ocean, covered as far as eye could reach with young ice, through which, sticking up gaunt and bare, the only objects visible on its desolate surface, were the mast and the low gunwales of the abandoned cutter. To east and south lay the flat snow-covered tundra, and over this straggled the dismal caravan of the first cutter’s crew—Iversen and Dressler dragging the sledge, Alexey out ahead to break a path, De Long following him with the Jeannette’s ensign in its oilskin case slung across his back, and behind him the rest of the seamen staggering under their loads, with Lee, whose weakened hips frequently gave way under him, constantly falling in the snow, and Erichsen, Boyd, and Ah Sam hobbling painfully along at the rear.
It was terrible going, not helped much by a fifteen minute pause every hour for rest. The snow-covered ground was swampy, with many ponds covered with thin ice and hidden under the snow, and into these pitfalls the men stumbled frequently, burying themselves to their knees in the mossy tundra beneath, and coming up with their leaking boots or moccasins filled, to plunge along again through the snow and the freezing wind, oozing a slimy mixture of mud and water from between their toes at every step.
Big Erichsen could barely even hobble, hardly able to lift one numbed foot after another. At the second stop for rest, Ambler drew Nindemann aside,
“Quartermaster, can’t you make a pair of crutches for Erichsen? His arms are still strong; with crutches, he’ll make out better.”
“Yah, doc, but with what should I make ’em?” asked Nindemann. “I ain’t got tools no more.”