But unfortunately for my clumsy efforts to pour oil on the troubled waters, Collins’ eyes, gazing out over the ice, happened to fall at that moment on the two little wood and canvas outhouses a ship’s length off the starboard beam, which served officers and men as toilets, since frozen in as we were, the regular ship’s “heads” on the Jeannette itself had been placed out of commission. To these “heads” on the ice all hands of course went freely as nature called. Collins’ eyes lighted up as he contemplated them. He faced me with a queer grin.
“Well, chief, I’ll modify a bit what I just said about asking permission to leave the ship. In such simple language that he can’t possibly misunderstand, I’ll beg the captain’s royal permission every time I have to visit the ‘head’ and I’m going to start right now!” He turned aft toward the poop.
Amazed at Collins’ intended action, I grabbed his arm and stopped him short.
“Look here, old man, none of that! Do you want to insult the captain openly?”
Collins twisted out of my grip.
“What do you think he’s trying to do to me, chief? I’ll merely be carefully obeying his order. By God, I’m going to ask him to let me go on the ice right now!” He strode aft, stopped before the skipper, saluted him elaborately.
What he said to De Long, I can only imagine, since I was too far away to hear, but I judge he phrased his request in about as plain old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon as it could be put, for De Long, obviously startled, flushed a fiery red, retorted angrily, and then turned on his heel.
And from that time forth, Mr. Collins and Captain De Long remained separate in all things as much as they could, simply carrying on the duties of the ship. And from that time also, Collins, fancying offense to himself in almost every remark made in the wardroom mess, withdrew more and more from association with the rest of us, sticking only the more closely to Newcomb, who as the sole other non-seagoing civilian aboard, he may have considered as a sort of fellow victim.
CHAPTER XII
September passed, and the hoped-for gales which might break up the pack and allow us to escape, or at least to work into a winter harbor in distant Wrangel Land, failed to materialize. October came and went in the same manner, no real gales, no winds strong enough to have any effect on the ice, nothing but daily gusts of fine snow which cut our faces and spoiled our footing for exercise. Frozen in, we went with the ice drift, in a general northwesterly direction, till the rocky outline of Herald Island faded into the hummocky horizon to the south, while our continued failure to sight land to the westward made it less and less likely every day that Wrangel Land stretched northward as we had been led to expect. But we were not idle. After all, our expedition was a scientific one. Aside from attempting to reach the Pole, aside from discovering new lands in this unexplored ocean, our major aim was to add to the world’s knowledge of the Arctic seas, of the Arctic skies, of magnetic phenomena, of meteorological information and of animal life in the unknown north. For these purposes we were the most elaborately equipped expedition which had ever gone north. We carried two scientists and God only knew what varieties of scientific instruments gathered from the Smithsonian Institution and the Naval Hydrographic Office.