After an hour of this, with nothing happening to relieve the strain, the tension became almost unbearable. De Long, looking over the silent groups of fur-clad seamen clustered there on deck alongside the boats, ordered Ah Sam to fire up the galley range and serve out hot coffee to the men, hot tea to the officers. He then told Cole to pipe down, but with all hands to stay in their clothes, ready for any call. So we lay below, but I doubt if anyone had much better luck than I getting to sleep again.
There was no need for reveille in the morning. The first streaks of light found the whole crew from Irish bosun to Chinese cook lining the bulwark, staring off to port. I climbed the bridge to get clear of the snarling dogs. There before me, already ensconced in the port wing was the skipper, rubbing his glasses to clear them of frost for a better view.
“What do you make of it, chief?” asked De Long, nodding in the direction of the distant pack.
I squinted off to port. A thin skin of young ice, possibly four inches thick, had formed over the exposed water. Across that, perhaps five hundred to a thousand yards away, was the bank of snow which the day before had been piled up against our bulwark.
“Well, captain, it’s a quarter of a mile off anyway,” I answered. “Maybe more.” From the overhanging wing of the bridge I glanced curiously down on our inclined side, exposed now for the first time in months. Near the waterline, still looking fresh and bright, were those gouges in our elm doubling we had received in early September while butting and ramming a way through that twisting lead into the pack. Looking at those battle scars, I wished fervently that we had had less luck that day in battering our way in. But that was a subject the rights and wrongs of which were now never discussed among the officers. Instead, scanning our listed masts and our unsupported port side, I asked,
“What in the name of all that’s holy is keeping us from sliding clear?”
“God knows, I don’t,” replied De Long solemnly. “I just can’t figure it out. When one side of our ice cradle slides away from us without so much as taking with it any splinters from our hull, it makes my theory that our planking’s solidly frozen to the ice on our starboard side seem crazy. For why should the ice attach itself so firmly to the planking on one side, and to the other side not at all? It’s beyond me, Melville, why we don’t slide off.” He adjusted the furry edge of the hood of his parka around his eyeglasses, peered down a second at the scarred side below him, then while his glasses were still bright and clear, stared off toward the wall of snow topping the edge of the departed pack and finally nodded his head as if agreeing with my estimate of its distance.
Looking worn and haggard, for if possible our captain had had even less sleep than any of us during the past week, De Long finished his examination, eyed for a long time his crew stretched out below us along the rail, then turned to me,
“Melville, you’re older than I. In the late war you were at sea fighting the rebels when I was still a midshipman, and you’ve been through lots besides. So I feel I can talk to you, and lean on you as on no one else on this ship, and God above us knows, I need someone here to lean on! Every morning I pray to Him for our safety, every night I give thanks to Him for our escapes during the day. But here in the Arctic, God seems so distant, and this steady strain on my mind is fearful! Look at my men below there, look at my ship! Neither my men nor my ship are secure for a second, and yet I can’t take a single step for their security. A crisis may come any moment to bring us face to face with death—and all I can do is to be thankful in the morning that it has not come during the night, and at night that it has not come since the morning! And that’s the Arctic exploration I’ve brought them on! Living over a powder keg with the fuse lighted, waiting for the explosion, would be a similar mode of existence! Melville, it’s hardly bearable!” And then looking down again at the crew, he muttered wearily,
“But I’ve got to keep on bearing it. Call me if anything happens, chief. So long as we’re still hanging on here, I’ll try to get some sleep now.” With sagging shoulders eloquently proclaiming his utter exhaustion, he slumped down the ladder and off the bridge, leaving me alone, figuratively to add an “Amen” to his estimate of our situation.