In response to her hard over rudder, the Jeannette’s bow swung slowly to starboard while from ahead, plainly audible now on our deck, came the roar of the waves breaking high on the solid pack.
Would she answer her helm and tack?
Breathlessly we waited while with jibs and headsails eased and spanker hauled flat aft, the Jeannette rounded sluggishly toward the wind and the open sea and away from that terrible ice.
Then she stopped swinging, hung “in irons.” With our useless sails flapping wildly and no steam to save us, helplessly we watched with eyes straining through the darkness as the Jeannette drove broadside to leeward, straight for the ice pack!
CHAPTER IX
We struck with a shivering crash that shook the Jeannette from keel to main truck, and hung there with yards banging violently. Lucky for us now, that nineteen inch thickness of heavily reenforced side and the stout backing of those new trusses below—that impact would have stove in the side of any ordinary vessel!
But though we had survived that first smashing blow, we were in grave danger. Impotent with sails and rudder to claw off that ice bank, we lay there in a heavy seaway, rolling and grinding against the jagged shelf on which the wind was pushing us.
That put it up to the black gang. I rushed below into the fireroom.
“Bartlett!” I yelled. “Wide open on your dampers! Accelerate that draft!”
“Sharvell! Iversen!” I sang out sharply to my two coalheavers. “Lively with the slice bars! Cut those banked fires to pieces! Get ’em blazing!”