Till 11 P.M., De Long in his cabin scratched away industriously at his journal. Then six bells struck, he dropped his pen, drew on his parka, and went over the side to take the hourly observations.
Being the commanding officer, and not one of his subordinates (in whom such an appreciation of the beauties of nature at the expense of punctuality in observations might have seemed a fault), De Long on his way to the observatory paused a few moments to stand on an ice hummock and admire a splendid auroral exhibition, a magnificent prismatic arch to the northward, filling the sky from east to west and reaching almost to the zenith. The beauty of this phenomenon was no longer a novelty to any of us, but still he stood awestruck in the silent night drinking in that soundless electrical play of colored light, when he heard behind him a crisp crackling as one of our dogs walking on the snow. Turning, he saw to his surprise no dog but instead two men, our so-called “anchor watch,” racing down the starboard gangway and over the ice to our stern.
Both the aurora and the still unread instruments were forgotten as the captain ran immediately for the bow. To his astonishment, there he found the ice pack peaceably floating away from our port side, leaving it completely exposed with open water lapping our hull for the first time in months!
And as he watched in dazed amazement, the gap opened so that in a few minutes we had alongside the Jeannette thirty fathoms of rippling water in which was gorgeously reflected the northern lights (a detail the beauty of which I think our captain now took little note). The split in the pack was as clean and as straight along our fore and aft centerline as if a giant hand had cut the ice with our keel, leaving the ship still imbedded in the starboard floe toward which she heeled. Meanwhile the port side pack, intact even to the bank of snow which had built up above our gunwales, was sliding noiselessly away to the northward, carrying with it, still asleep, three of our dogs who had bedded themselves down in its white crust!
A glimpse at our heeled over clipper bow and at our bowsprit thrusting forward over his head, quickened De Long into action. Nothing visible now remained to hold that tilted ship from sliding any second out of her bed and into open water! Back aboard he rushed, and once more the quiet of the night was torn by the whistling of the bosun’s pipe and Cole’s hoarse cry,
“All hands! Shake a leg! On deck wid yez!”
And again no sleep, as hastily in the darkness we hurried our meteorological instruments back aboard, struck the observatory we had so laboriously rigged only a few hours before, chased on board all the dogs we could catch, rigged out our dinghies and our other boats for immediate lowering, dug our steam-cutter out of the ice alongside and hoisted it aboard, ran in our gangway, and lastly rigged out a fall for lowering provisions over the side and into the boats.
That all this, on the sloping deck of the Jeannette, was done in the darkness at fifteen below zero and completed by midnight in less than an hour, indicates what speed and strength fear gave to our fingers and our feet. For the men tumbling up from below had to look but once at the precarious perch to which the Jeannette clung to send them flying to their tasks.
Midnight came.
Our work done, we stood by in the inhuman cold momentarily expecting to feel the ship lurch under our feet, slide suddenly off into the water, and without rudder, without steam, and without sails go adrift in the darkness in that ever widening rift in the parted pack.