By afternoon, the fog cleared enough for us to haul in our ice-anchor, spread fires and get underway along our lead, which running now in a northeasterly direction we followed for two hours, poking and ramming our way between drifting floes. Then to our delighted surprise, we emerged into the open sea again, open, that is, between east and north only, with ice filling the horizon in all other directions.
With some searoom to work in, we speeded the engines and headed north, where we soon passed a drifting tree, torn up by the roots, an odd bit of flotsam to encounter in those waters, but which as it must have come from the south encouraged us since it lent some weight, however slight, to the Japanese Current theory about which we were beginning to entertain serious doubts. But we had little time to speculate on this, for soon from the lookout came the cry,
“Land ho!”
Sure enough, bearing northwest, apparently forty miles off and much distorted by mirage, was land which from our position and its bearings we judged to be Herald Island. This island I must hasten to explain was so named, not after the New York Herald whose owner, Mr. Bennett, was financing our expedition, but after H.M.S. Herald, whose captain, Kellett, had discovered and landed on that island thirty years before, in 1849.
Immediately from alow and aloft all hands were scanning the island, through binoculars, through telescopes, and with the naked eye. There was much animated discussion among us as to its distance, but regardless of that we could do nothing to close on it, for the ice-field lay between. So as night fell, we merely steamed in circles at dead slow speed, just clear of the pack.
Day broke fine and crisp with a light northerly breeze off the ice. Picking the most promising lead toward Herald Island, we pushed the Jeannette into it, and for two hours amidst drifting floes we made our way with no great trouble, when, to our dismay, we began to meet new ice in the lead, from one to two inches in thickness. For another two hours, we pushed along through this, our steel-clad stem easily breaking a path through which we drove our hull, with the thin ice scratching and gouging our elm doubling, when we came at last smack up against the thickest pack we had yet seen, some ten to fifteen feet of solid ice. This, needless to say, brought us up short. Since we could do nothing else, we ran out our ice-anchor to the floe ahead, while we waited hopefully for some shift in the pack to make us a new opening.
With clearer weather, several times during the morning as we lay in the ice, we made out distinctly not only Herald Island but other land beyond, above, and also to the southwest of it, which from everything we had been told, should be part of that Wrangel Land on which we were banking so much to afford us a base for our sledging operations toward the Pole. Consequently we searched the distant outlines of this continent with far greater interest than we had bestowed on the nearer profile of Herald Island, but to no conclusion. Danenhower, Chipp, and De Long, all experienced seamen, strained their eyes through glasses, scanning what could be seen of the coast of Wrangel Land, but so far even from agreeing on its remoteness, looking across ice instead of water so upset their habits of judging, that their estimates of its distance varied all the way from forty to one hundred miles, while De Long even doubted whether what he saw beyond Herald Island was land at all but simply a mirage. Being only an engineer, I took no part in these discussions, more concerned myself in staring at the unyielding edges of the nearby floes and wondering, if our navigation for the next few weeks was to consist mostly of traversing leads filled with such floating ice cakes, how long we could hope to go before an ice floe sucked in under our counter knocked off a propeller blade, and how long a time would elapse before our four spare blades were all used up. But there was no great occasion for such worry on my part. Not till afternoon could we move at all, and then only for a couple of hours, when once more we were brought up by solid ice ahead and with banked fires again anchored to a floe, called it a day, and laid below for supper.
Supper was an unusually somber meal. Such an early season encounter with the ice-fields and at so low a latitude, was a sad blow to our hopes of exploration. De Long, at the head of the table, served out silently as Tong Sing placed the dishes before him; I, on his left, carved the mutton and aided him at serving—to Chipp first, then to the others on both sides of the table down to Danenhower, who as mess treasurer sat at the foot of the table opposite the captain. Potatoes, stewed dried apples, bread, butter, and tea made up the rest of our unpretentious meal, the simplicity of which perhaps still further emphasized our situation and put a damper on any conversation. Only the shuffling of the Chinese steward’s feet on the deck as he padded round the little wardroom with the plates broke the quiet.
De Long, brooding over the ship’s situation, was gradually struck by the absence of conversation and its implications. More I think to make conversation than in the hope of gaining any information, he picked out the ice-pilot on my left, sawing earnestly away at his mutton, and asked him,
“Well, Mr. Dunbar, do you think we’ll get through this lead to Herald Island?”