Thursday, July 9. Yesterday and to-day the fog lifted sufficiently at times to permit us to see the land, about forty miles distant. A good observation places us in latitude 74° 51′, and longitude about 60° W. Mr. Peary fixed the points with his pocket sextant and the ship’s compass, and then made a sketch of the headlands. The ice looks rotten, but yet it holds together too firmly to permit us to force a passage. We measured some of the floes, and found the thickest to be two and a half feet. It has seemed very raw to-day, owing largely to a slight northwest wind; and for the first time the average temperature has been below the freezing-point, being 31½° F.
Sailing Through the Pack.
Friday, July 10. This morning the rigging was covered with hoar-frost, making the “Kite” look like a “phantom ship.” The fog hung heavily about us, shutting out the land completely. In the forenoon a sounding was made, but no bottom was found at 343 fathoms. While we were at dinner, without any warning the “Kite” began to move, steam was immediately gotten up, and for an hour and a half we cut our way through the ice, which had become very rotten, large floes splitting into several pieces as soon as they were struck by the “Kite.” We made about three knots, when we were again obliged to halt on account of a lowering fog. Our little move was made just in time to keep up the courage of some of the West Greenland party, who were beginning to believe that we should be nipped and kept here for the winter.
Although we realized that we were still ice-bound in the great and much-dreaded Melville Bay pack, we could not but enjoy at times the peculiar features of our forced imprisonment. Efforts to escape, with full promise of success, followed by a condition of impotency and absolute relaxation, would alternately elevate and depress our spirits to the extent of casting joy and gloom into the little household. The novelty of the situation, however, helped greatly to keep up a good feeling, and all despondency was immediately dispelled by the sound of the order to “fire up,” and the dull rumbling of the bell-metal propeller. We never tired of watching our little craft cut her way through the unbroken pans of ice. The great masses of ice were thrust aside very readily; sometimes a piece was split from a large floe and wedged under a still larger one, pushing this out of the way, the commotion causing the ice in the immediate vicinity fairly to boil. Then we would run against an unusually hard, solid floe that would not move when the “Kite” struck it, but let her ride right up on it and then allow her gradually to slide off and along the edge until she struck a weak place, when the floe would be shivered just as a sheet of glass is shivered when struck a sharp, hard blow. The pieces were hurled against and on top of other pieces, crashing and splashing about until it seemed as though the ice must be as thick again as it was before the break-up; but the good old “Kite” pushed them aside, leaving them in the distance groaning and creaking at having been disturbed. The day has been pleasant, in spite of an average temperature of 27½°.
Tuesday, July 14. How different everything looks to us since I last wrote in this journal! Saturday the weather was, as usual, cold and foggy; and when, at 5.30 P. M., we found ourselves suddenly moving, every one was elated, hoping we would be able to get into the clear water ahead, which the mate said could be seen from the crow’s-nest. Mr. Peary was particularly pleased, as he said we should then reach Whale Sound by July 15, the limit he had set for getting there. After supper he and I bundled up and went on deck, and watched the “Kite” cut through the rotten ice like butter. We had been on the bridge for some time, when Mr. Peary left me to warm his feet in the cabin. Coming on deck again, he stepped for a moment behind the wheel-house, and immediately after, I saw the wheel torn from the grasp of the two helmsmen, whirling around so rapidly that the spokes could not be seen. One of the men was thrown completely over it, but on recovering himself he stepped quickly behind the house, and I instantly realized that something must have happened to my husband. How I got to him I do not know, but I reached him before any one else, and found him standing on one foot looking pale as death. “Don’t be frightened, dearest; I have hurt my leg,” was all he said. Mr. Gibson and Dr. Sharp helped, or rather carried, him down into the cabin and laid him on the table. He was ice-cold, and while I covered him with blankets, our physicians gave him whisky, cut off his boot, and cut open his trousers. They found that both bones of the right leg had been fractured between the knee and the ankle. The leg was put into a box and padded with cotton. The fracture being what the doctors pronounced a “good one,” it was not necessary to have the bones pulled into place. Poor Bert suffered agonies in spite of the fact that the doctors handled him as tenderly as they could. We found it impossible to get him into our state-room, so a bed was improvised across the upper end of the cabin, and there my poor sufferer lies. He is as good and patient as it is possible to be under the circumstances. The accident happened in this way. The “Kite” had been for some time pounding, or, as the whalers say, “butting,” a passage through the ice, slowly but steadily forging a way through the spongy sheets which had already for upward of a week imprisoned her. To gain strength for every assault it was necessary constantly to reverse, and it was during one of these evolutions, when going astern, that a detached cake of ice struck the rudder, crowding the iron tiller against the wheel-house where Mr. Peary was standing, and against his leg, which it held pinned long enough for him to hear it snap.
Wednesday, July 15. Mr. Peary passed a fairly comfortable night, and had a good sleep without morphine to-day, consequently he feels better. As for myself, I could not keep up any longer, and at 11 A. M., after Dr. Cook had dressed the leg and made an additional splint, I lay down, and neither moved nor heard a sound until after five o’clock. This was the first sleep I have had since Friday night. Dr. Cook, who has been more than attentive, has made a pair of crutches for the poor sufferer, but he will not be able to use them for a month.
We find to-day that our latitude is 75° 1′, and our longitude 60° 9′; consequently our headway has been very slow. It seems as if when the ice is loose the fog is too thick for us to travel in safety, and when the fog lifts the ice closes in around us. Once to-day the ice suddenly opened and a crack which visibly widened allowed us to make nearly four miles in one stretch. Throughout much of the night and day we steamed back and forth and hither and thither, trying to get through or around the ice, and to prevent the “Kite” from getting nipped between two floes. A little after supper the fog suddenly closed in upon us, and before we could complete the passage of a narrow and tortuous lead, through which we were seeking escape from the advancing floes in our rear, we were caught fast between two large pans. The ice was only about fourteen inches thick, and there was but little danger of the “Kite” being crushed; still, Captain Pike, with the memories of former disasters fresh in his mind, did not relish the situation, and blasted our way out with gunpowder at 8.15 P. M. This is our first “nip.”
Bruin at Rest.