Only by dead reckoning could the commander tell where he was. He had so recently left Halifax that he could not be so very far astray in his calculations. But the Oneida had not been able to take a sight for three weeks, so it was not surprising, therefore, that when she gave her position to the Iroquois by wireless, and the Iroquois proceeded to the given spot, no cutter was to be seen. When Captain Hardwick found that the Oneida was not at the given position, he wired: “Iroquois is at the meeting point named. Will await you.” And at once the Oneida flashed back the reply: “There is some mistake. We are at the position named. Will await you.”
What a puzzle this situation would have been in the days before the radio compass was invented, and what a game of blind man’s buff those two little cutters would have played among the fogs and mists and icebergs of the Grand Banks. But now Captain Hardwick simply telegraphed the Oneida to remain at anchor and give him a compass bearing. Soon Mr. Sharp came out of the compass shack and told the commander which way to go. That was all there was to it. A few hours later the two ships lay side by side. The Oneida, unable to see the sun for so long, was a great distance from the position she thought she occupied.
As Henry was to learn, there was great reason why a ship should float far and wide in this region of moving mountains of ice. The Grand Banks, formed by the deposit of sediment carried north by the Gulf Stream, are enormous eminences in the bottom of the sea, like huge mountain plateaus rising in a vast valley. These banks rise upward to within two hundred feet of the ocean’s surface, while the bed of the sea around them is thousands of feet deep. Naturally these great banks of sand deflect the sea currents. The Gulf Stream itself bends farther to the east. There are currents and cross currents, and wind and sea are often terrible beyond description.
Icebergs float with seven-eighths of their bulk submerged, so no large bergs can ever cross the Grand Banks; they are too deep for the shallow waters there. But in the deeper parts of the sea they stream southward from the polar ice fields in droves, scattering in every direction with wind and current. Some go with the Labrador current. Coming south, some swing up again and go northeast. Others continue straight on down to the shipping lanes. Some get into the Gulf Stream and are further deflected from their courses. And all these companies of icebergs, scattered over vast areas, one little cutter is supposed to watch and guard. Of course she cannot herd them together and drive them away from the shipping lanes, but she can and does drive ships away from the icebergs. She does this by wireless.
Day after day the Iroquois cruised among the bergs, charting the position of each, noting the currents in which each floated, trying to plot the probable course of each moving mountain of ice. And every four hours the man at the wireless key sent flashing abroad a detailed warning to ships, telling where each menacing berg was located and what course it would probably take. And at night the Iroquois lay at rest, floating upon the bosom of the deep. It was dangerous enough to run through the ice fields in the daytime, when concealing mists made vision well-nigh impossible. To steam through them at night would be almost suicidal.
Anxious days were these for the commander of the Iroquois. At any moment his little cutter was likely to be disabled merely by the violence of the sea. At any moment the ship might crash into some fog-shrouded berg. Ceaseless vigilance was necessary to insure safety.
Almost greater vigilance was required to keep track of the huge bergs. Some of them towered two hundred feet in air, which meant that they were many hundred feet deep. Continually they were “calving,” or throwing off great shoulders of ice, called growlers. Every time a berg calved, its centre of gravity was disturbed and its contour altered. It rode at a new angle. Thus the berg that today resembled a cathedral might tomorrow look like a storage warehouse. Yet it was necessary, for the purpose of scientific observation, that each southward-floating berg be definitely identified. Oceanographers were now aboard the Iroquois, to study this matter of iceberg drift, that shipping might be better protected in future years. It was necessary that they should know each berg they met, no matter where they encountered it. But to recognize a berg that was continually altering its own appearance was an accomplishment that not even the learned oceanographers possessed. As yet, no way to identify bergs had ever been devised.
But Captain Hardwick was a resourceful man, and one day he declared that he had solved the problem. “I’m going to paint them,” he declared. His hearers laughed incredulously. But the captain cared little for their amusement. He ordered some shells brought from the magazine and some paints from the storeroom. Then, under the captain’s personal supervision, the gunner loaded shell after shell with paint. Bright reds and greens and blues and other startling colors were used. When all was ready, the captain smiled with satisfaction. “I’m going to try it out on the very next berg we see,” he laughed.
An hour later the lookout announced that a berg was visible. It took the cutter more than an hour to reach it, however, for it was sixteen miles away. It was two hundred and fifty feet high, and Henry was so astonished at this enormous mass of glittering white ice that he could find no words to describe it, or his astonishment either. The Iroquois worked up close to the berg, a spot was selected by the captain to aim at, high up on the broad side of the monster, the gunner elevated and sighted one of the guns, and a charge of paint went shooting out of a cannon’s mouth. A second later the shell crashed against the lofty berg, and a huge crimson stain began to spread over its side. Then the Iroquois steamed around to the other side of the berg and repeated the dose. “If that doesn’t do the trick,” laughed the commander, “my name isn’t Hardwick.”
They were still calling the commander by that name a week later, however, for when the Iroquois had cruised the length of her beat and was returning, she again came upon the crimson-sided ice mass. A cross current had brought it back close to where it had been painted. Other bergs were tinted with other colors, and there was something new under the sun. The wireless broadcasts now warned vessels to look out for the berg with the green, or the red, or the blue sides. A way had been found to brand these monsters of the deep.