Meanwhile, in spite of our dreary outlook, we had to stick to the ship, for what else could we do? But would the ship stick to us? What would the ice do to the Jeannette during this winter? Our memories of the horrors of the winter past were not reassuring.
The month drew along. We ate our tasteless food, we drank our distilled water, we kept ourselves alive. Two things only broke up our unvarying daily routine—Divine Service on Sunday, and the weekly issue (begun now for the first time on the cruise) on Wednesday of two ounces of rum per man. Jack Cole did not have to pipe long of a Wednesday afternoon to get the complete roster round the whiskey barrel. But his long piping of a Sunday morning drew no such crowds. To Divine Service, conducted weekly in the cabin by the captain, came not a single seaman, and of the officers, just Chipp, Ambler, Dunbar and myself—a congregation of four only to hear George Washington De Long, acting chaplain, feelingly invoke the blessing of the Almighty upon our enterprise and ask His mercy upon us—distressed, worn mortals trapped in the Arctic wastes.
As October drew toward its close, distant rumblings in the pack, cracks in the floes roundabout caused by contracting ice, ridges of broken floe thrown up hither and yon, and the pistol-like snappings of shrinking bolts in our timbers, warned us of trouble. November came; we viewed its advent with trepidation, for the previous November had inaugurated our reign of terror. On November 6th, the sun departed from us and the long Arctic night commenced, our second. It would be longer this time till the sun reappeared, ninety days or more instead of seventy-one, for we were further north.
True to form, the thundering of the ice and the grinding of the pack recommenced as per schedule in November and the tremors coming through the thick floes shook the Jeannette as in a storm. But we were more calloused. Let the pack screech and roar! So long as nothing was happening close aboard we merely listened. Newcomb and Collins, however, who were more nervous than the rest, were forever running up on deck at these shocks. They came back even more disturbed when they could see nothing than when moving ice within eyesight gave the explanation.
November drew along without visible disaster, but the dread and anticipation of terrors yet to come caused trouble in other ways. Newcomb, childish always, became mum as a clam at meals, and at other times talked to no one, except perhaps to Collins. Whatever De Long thought of this, he said nothing till one day passing through the taxidermy room while Newcomb was mounting a crab, the latter stopped him, queried,
“Captain, will you ask Mr. Dunbar whether he saw that Uria Grylle he shot with his rifle yesterday, in flight?”
De Long, a little piqued perhaps at being thus asked by a very junior officer to serve as a messenger boy, said,
“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Mr. Newcomb?”
“Because,” replied our naturalist, “he has declined any relations with me.”
De Long looked at him puzzled.