The turn of the tide the morning of the 28th set us out again, and, impatient of the delay, and encouraged by the behaviour of the Roosevelt in crossing the channel at Cape Calhoun, fires were cleaned, machinery thoroughly inspected, and at 4:30 A. M. the Roosevelt was driven out for another contest with the channel pack in which at the time no pool or lane of water was visible.
Just off the point of Sumner a brief nip between two big blue floes which the swift current was swinging past the Cape, set the Roosevelt vibrating like a violin string for a minute or so before she rose to the pressure.
From this we pushed out and began the attempt to cross to the west side, through ice almost continuously up to our plank sheer and frequently of such height that the boats swinging from the deck house davits had to be swung inboard to clear the pinnacles. The delay and inaction of the past five days had become unendurable.
The Roosevelt fought like a gladiator, turning, twisting, straining with all her force, smashing her full weight against the heavy floes whenever we could get room for a rush, and rearing upon them like a steeplechaser taking a fence. Ah, the thrill and tension of it, the lust of battle, which crowded days of ordinary life into one.
The forward rush, the gathering speed and momentum, the crash, the upward heave, the grating snarl of the ice as the steel-shod stem split it as a mason’s hammer splits granite, or trod it under, or sent it right and left in whirling fragments, followed by the violent roll, the backward rebound, and then the gathering for another rush, were glorious.
At other times, the blue face of a big floe as high as the plank sheer grinding against either side, and the ship inching her way through, her frames creaking with the pressure, the big engines down aft running like sewing-machines, and the twelve-inch steel shaft whirling the wide-bladed propeller, till its impulse was no more to be denied than the force of gravity.
At such times everyone on deck hung with breathless interest on our movement, and as Bartlett and I clung in the rigging I heard him whisper through teeth clinched from the purely physical tension of the throbbing ship under us: “Give it to ’em, Teddy, give it to ’em!”
More than once did a fireman come panting on deck for a breath of air, look over the side, mutter to himself, “By G— she’s got to go through!” then drop into the stoke-hole, with the result a moment later of an extra belch of black smoke from the stack, and an added turn or two to the propeller.
At midnight all that could be said was that we were nearer the west side than the east, and steadily drifting southward with the pack. I quote from my journal: “Slow and heart-breaking work. The Roosevelt is a splendid ice-fighter and if she had her full boiler power she would be irresistible. The ice is very heavy, in large floes, some of them several miles in diameter and their edges sheer walls of blue adamant. I shall be glad when we are through.” In one of her charges the Roosevelt left a considerable piece of the stem just under the figurehead as a souvenir upon the top of a berg-piece which she was obliged to butt out of her path. In another, a blue floe twelve to fifteen feet in thickness was split fairly in two.
Until 4 A. M. of the 29th we continued slowly to near the Grinnell Land side. Then but little progress was made for several hours, then another start which was kept up with occasional interruptions until 4 P. M., when after thirty-five and one-half hours of incessant strain and struggle, we drove out into a small pool of water under the northern point of Wrangel Bay. The battle had been won by sheer brute insistence and I do not believe there is another ship afloat that would have survived the ordeal.