Eight bells struck, the watch was changed, the men relieved tumbling below to the forecastle with great alacrity for in spite of the southeast breeze, there was a sharp chill in the cutting wind as the Jeannette, with all sails drawing, plunged ahead at full speed. Deeply laden and well heeled over by a stiff beam wind, we were running with the lee scuppers awash, and the cold sea threatened momentarily to flood over our low bulwark. What with the icy water and the chilly air, the contrast with the warmth of the boiler room I had just left was too much for me. With a final glance overhead at our straining cordage and taut canvas and a wave to Dunbar who with dripping whiskers dimly visible in the binnacle light on the bridge above me, had just taken over the watch on deck, I ducked aft into the poop and wearily slid into my bunk.
On the starboard tack with the wind freshening, the Jeannette stood on through the night. One bell struck. In the perfunctory routine drone of the sea, the lookout reported the running lights burning bright and the report was gravely acknowledged by Mr. Dunbar, though we might just as well have saved our lamp oil, for what ship was there besides ourselves in that vast polar solitude to whom those lights, steadily burning in the darkness, might mean anything in the way of warning?
Nevertheless we were underway. Habit and the law of the sea are strong, so on deck the incongruity of the reports struck no one. Hans Erichsen, a huge Dane posted in the bow as lookout, turned his eyes lazily from the gleaming lights in the rigging toward the bowsprit once more, gradually accustoming them again to the darkness ahead.
And then hoarse and loud, nothing perfunctory this time about the call, came Erichsen’s cry,
“Ice ho! Dead ahead and on the weather bow!”
On the silent Jeannette, that cry, cutting through the whistling of the wind and the creaking of the rigging, echoed aft in the poop to bring up in the twinkling of an eye, tumbling half clad out of their bunks, Captain De Long, Mr. Chipp, and all the other officers.
“Hard alee!” roared Dunbar to the helmsman, desperately endeavoring to bring her into the wind to avoid a collision, for with ice alee, ahead, on the weather bow, there was no way out except to tack.
But the Jeannette, heavily laden and with a trim by the stern as she then was, had never successfully come about except with the help of her engines. And now the fires were banked! But she must tack or crash!
“All hands!”
Through the darkness echoed the rush of feet tumbling up from the forecastle, racing to man sheets and braces, the shrill piping of the bosun, hoarse orders, then a bedlam of curses and the howling of dogs as all over the deck, men and animals collided in the night.