Dunbar, absorbed like the rest of us in his thoughts, surprised me by the speed, so unusual for him, with which without even looking up he snapped out his reply,
“No, cap’n, we won’t!” Then more slowly as he turned his grizzled face toward the head of the table, he added vehemently, “And what’s more, while God’s giving us the chance, I’d wind her in that little water hole astern of us and head out of this ice back to open water before the bottom drops out of the thermometer and we’re frozen in here for a full due!”
Astonished by the heat of this unexpected reply, De Long looked from the old whaler, who in truth had hurled a lance into the very heart of each man’s thoughts, to the rest of us, all suddenly straightened up by the thrust.
“And why, Mr. Dunbar?” in spite of a pronounced flush he asked mildly. “Where can we do better, may I ask?”
“Further east, off Prince Patrick’s Land, to the north’ard of the coast of North America,” replied Dunbar shortly. “A whaler’ll stay in open water further north’n this over on the Alaska side most any time; the current sets that way toward Greenland, not this side toward Siberia.”
De Long calmly shook his head.
“No use, pilot; we’re not whaling and we’ll not go east. That would take us away from Wrangel Land, and sledging north along the coasts of Wrangel Land’s our only hope for working into the real north from Behring Strait. No, we can’t do it. We’ll have to take our chances here.”
Dunbar, his suggestion overruled, made no reply, masking his disappointment by hunching a little lower over his plate and hacking away once more at the chunk of mutton before him. And as suddenly as it had flared up, all conversation ceased.
September 6 dawned, for us on the Jeannette a day to which we often looked back with mingled feelings. During the night our water lead froze up behind us. In the morning, as far as the eye could see in every direction now was only ice—no water, no open leads anywhere. A fog hung over the sea, blotting out Herald Island, but a light northerly wind gave some promise of clearing the atmosphere later on.
We gathered at breakfast in the cabin, a somber group. Under way for a week since leaving Cape Serdze Kamen, we had made but 240 miles to the north, to reach only lat. 71° 30′ N., a point easily to be exceeded by any vessel all year round in the Atlantic. But here we were, completely surrounded by ice. Was this the exceptionally open Arctic summer, so free of ice, that in Unalaska we had been informed awaited us?