And this was all we learned. The steamer, whatever her name, had stayed only one day, then departed to the southward, loaded according to George with “plenty coals.”
With some bread and canned meat in return for this sketchy information, we eased George and his followers, greatly disappointed at not being signed on as whalers, over the side before we lost anything. For while these Tchuchees appeared dirty, lazy, and utterly worthless, their unusual size made them potentially dangerous enemies when in force, and we posted an armed watch on deck as a precaution.
Our schooner arrived soon after we did, and we finished hoisting out of her all the coal down to the last lump, ending up with 132 tons stowed in our bunkers, which was their total capacity, and with 28 tons more as a deckload, giving us a total of 160 tons with which to start into the Arctic, nearly twice the amount of coal the Jeannette was originally designed to carry.
On August 27 we finished coaling and steamed out towing the schooner astern of us, for it seemed unsafe with her little crew of only six to leave her to get underway in desolate St. Lawrence Bay amidst that ugly-looking crowd of brawny Tchuchees, all experts at handling harpoons and looking none too scrupulous over what they chose to hurl them at.
Once clear of the harbor, we headed north for Cape East, while the lightened Fanny A. Hyde, carrying now as cargo only the last mail we ever sent back, spread her sails and with (for her but not for us) a fair wind was soon hull down to the southward, our last link with home finally severed.
Steaming steadily into a strong head wind, we stood on through Behring Strait and during the night passed between East Cape and the Diomede Islands, three barren rocks jutting from the sea, forming stepping stones almost between the continents of Asia and America, over which may very well have passed ages ago that immigration at the time of the dispersion of the human race which brought man first to North and then to South America.
But this human migration of former ages, even if so, interested us little in comparison with what the migratory waters of the ocean might be doing now. At the captain’s orders, Collins prepared a set of thermometers and dropped them overboard strung out on a line. If the Kuro-Si-Wo Current actually flowed northward into the Arctic Sea as we hoped, through this narrow funnel it must pass, and as we steamed slowly northward through the strait, Collins periodically read the thermometers to get the temperatures at varying depths, while Newcomb tended a dredge towed astern to obtain samples of the marine life at the bottom.
To our keen chagrin, the most that could be said for the results of our observations was that they were neutral—they proved or disproved nothing. The water was about the same in temperature from top to bottom and did not differ appreciably from the temperature of the air, a result which certainly did not indicate the presence of any marked warm current thereabouts. But then on the other hand, as we passed through, the fresh breeze we encountered from the northwest, blowing down through the strait, might well on that day have upset or even reversed the normal flow of water in a channel only twenty-eight fathoms deep. The thermometers proved nothing. How about the dredge? Eagerly we awaited a report from Newcomb with respect to his examination of its contents. Were the specimens in any degree symptomatic of the tropical waters of the Kuro-Si-Wo Current?
But there also we got scant comfort. The catch in the dredge was nondescript, and no deductions could safely be drawn. If the Kuro-Si-Wo Current on which we were banking so heavily for the success of our expedition flowed into the polar seas, at least we found no evidence of it.
As the day dawned with the empty horizon widening out before us to the north, we found ourselves at last in the Arctic Ocean, our gateway to the Pole. We stood to the northwest with somewhat overcast skies, coasting along the northern shores of Siberia before striking off for Wrangel Land, our thorough-going captain determined to steam a little out of his way to make one more stop at Cape Serdze Kamen to check Chief George’s story of the Vega’s actually having been there and left.