Breakfast? Who really wanted breakfast? What each of us earnestly wished was only to be far to the south, away from that dreaded pack ready to crush us, but seemingly delaying the fatal moment as a cat delays, knowing that the mouse with which it toys cannot get away.
CHAPTER XIV
Nothing else happened that day. Our dogs, which in the face of disaster we had rounded up and penned inside the bulwarks, where they relieved themselves by staging a continuous battle, we now let loose and they joyously celebrated their freedom in chasing each other over the broken ice. Watching their antics was some relief, little though it might be, to frayed nerves and helped take our imaginations off what that broken ice threatened to our ship.
As a further distraction, we had a clear day and far to the southward sighted mountains, which we made out to be the familiar north coast of Wrangel Land, some sixty miles away.
And that was all. The day which for us had dawned in imminent peril, ended quietly with the Jeannette still frozen in that two months old cradle of ice, still uncomfortably heeled well over to starboard. We began to breathe more freely.
We took no more meteorological observations, but so far as I was concerned, I had more to do than before. Though the fires were out in my boilers and all the machinery laid up, at De Long’s direction I spent a great part of my time below during this period continually scanning the sides and the trusses for any signs of giving way, and inspecting the bilges to see if the ship was making any water. Of such troubles there were no indications, but I had constantly while below to be wary of my head, for I found that the banging of the ice shook down a good deal of loose matter in the holds, and particularly in the bunkers.
November 13, one week from the day the pack first opened up on us and inaugurated our reign of terror, brought new excitement. Sleeping as before in my clothes, I was wakened at 2 A.M. by a loud crack which seemed to come directly from our keel. I slid from my bunk, in the passage outside bumped into the captain, and together we ran on deck, there to meet Collins who, on the midwatch taking the hourly temperature readings, had rushed over the side and now was coming back aboard. He reported that there was nothing new except a crack in the ice not over an inch wide running out from our stem. This was disquieting, but nothing else happened during the night and the daylight hours passed quietly enough without further disturbance; so much so that by afternoon the skipper (full of scientific zeal and expecting apparently some days of peace) ordered our meteorological instruments reinstalled in a temporary observatory. This we accordingly erected on one of the newly-formed hills of ice as far from the ship as we dared but still, fairly close aboard our starboard side.
From the grumbling of the seamen at this task as they dug into the flintlike ice for anchorage for the guys holding down the canvas tent over the instruments, I would say that the captain’s optimism was hardly shared by his crew, but that was neither here nor there and by 5 P.M. when the twilight faded and night fell, the job was done.
Chipp took the first sets of readings. At eight o’clock, after supper, I relieved him, to trek over the broken ice and by the dim light of an oil lantern inside that flapping tent, read the dip circle, the barometer, the anemometer, and a varied assortment of thermometers. All the time as I struggled for footing on the rough ice pinnacle I wondered what earthly good it all was, considering the negligible chances of any of this data ever being returned home for scientific minds to study.
At 10 P.M., I turned the job over to the captain (who, staying up anyway the while he wrote in his journal, ordinarily took the readings till midnight when Collins relieved him), and as was now my habit after a week of alarms, I turned in with my fur boots on, earnestly hoping to get some sleep to make up for the past week’s wear and tear.