A Storm
We were in the centre of this large area of open water when the gale broke upon us from the north. We were near foundering. Our false bow of India-rubber cloth was beaten in, and our frail weather-boarding soon followed it. With the utmost exertion we could hardly keep our boat from broaching to: a broken oar or an accidental twitch would have been fatal to us at any time. But M’Gary handled that whaler’s marvel, the long steering-oar, with admirable skill. None of us could pretend to take his place. For twenty-two unbroken hours he stuck to his post without relaxing his attention or his efforts.
I was not prepared for such a storm. I do not think I have seen a worse sea raised by the northern wind of the Gulf of Mexico. At last the wind hauled to the eastward, and we were glad to drive before it for the in-shore floes. We had passed several bergs; but the sea dashed against their sides so furiously as to negative all hope of protection at their base; the pack or floe, so much feared before, was now looked to for a refuge.
I remember well our anxiety as we entered the loose streams of drift after four hours’ scudding, and our relief when we felt their influence upon the sea. We fastened to an old floe, not fifty yards in diameter, and, with the weather-surf breaking over our heads, rode out the storm under a warp and grapnel.
The obstacle we had now to encounter was the pack that Stretched between us and the south.
When the storm abated we commenced boring into it,—slow work at the best of times; but my companions encountered it with a persevering activity quite as admirable as their fortitude in danger. It had its own hazards too; and more than once it looked as if we were permanently beset. I myself knew that we might rely on the southerly wind to liberate us from such an imprisonment; but I saw that the men thought otherwise, as the ice-fields closed around us and the horizon showed an unchanging circle of ice.
A slackening of the ice to the east enabled us after a while to lay our course for Hakluyt Island. We spread our canvas again, and reached the in-shore fields by one in the afternoon. We made our camp, dried our buffalo-skins, and sunned and slept away our fatigue.
We renewed our labours in the morning. Keeping inside the pack, we coasted along for the Cary Islands, encountering now and then a projecting floe, and either boring or passing around it, but making a satisfactory progress on the whole toward Lancaster Sound.
For the next three days we worked painfully through the half-open leads, making in all some fifteen miles to the south. We had very seldom room enough to row; but, as we tracked along, it was not difficult to escape nippings, by hauling up the boat on the ice. Still she received some hard knocks, and a twist or two that did not help her sea-worthiness, for she began to leak; and this, with the rain which fell heavily, forced us to bale her out every other hour. Of course we could not sleep, and one of our little party fell sick with the unmitigated fatigue.
A Gale