Bartlett and I went to our rooms, worn with the long tension, and I fell asleep instantly.
It was the second birthday of a man-child in the distant home, and in my dreams I saw the round face with its blue eyes and crown of yellow hair, smiling at me from the savage mass of black clouds which shrouded the summit of the cape under which we lay. God bless you, little man.
Soon after getting into Wrangel Bay, and while I was asleep, a piece of heavy ice whirling under the stern twisted the back nearly off the rudder, and the entire night was occupied in temporarily repairing the damage. A hunting party of Eskimos sent out during the night returned the forenoon of the 30th with eleven hares and six musk-oxen. Late in the afternoon an unsuccessful attempt was made to reach Lincoln Bay, from which we were driven back by heavy floes moving southward, and at midnight we were again in Wrangel Bay dodging about to keep clear of the shifting ice, while past the capes the big floes were going south with almost race-horse velocity, the channel and summits of all the land dark with fog. The 31st was spent in the bay keeping clear of the floes which swung into and around it, the night thick with falling snow. Made an early start at 3:30 A. M. September 1st, in fog and a blinding snowstorm, and steamed to the north side of Lincoln Bay, where the unbroken pack again barred our passage and we moored to the exposed face of the ice-foot.
Again I quote from my journal: “A wild morning with snow driving in horizontal sheets across the deck, the water like ink, the ice ghastly white, and the land invisible except close to us as we almost scrape against it on the port side. Summer is at an end and winter has commenced.” Scarcely had we made fast to the ice-foot when the ice filled the bay completely.
With the ebb-tide at night much of the ice inside of us passed out, grazing against our side, but no lead formed at the Cape and no opportunity occurred to get north.
With the turn of the flood, the ice came in again with a rush, and the corner of a large floe caught the stern, bent the back of the rudder over to the other side and forced the ship bodily ashore. Here she hung until high-water, with a heavy berg-piece pressing against her stern and threatening momentarily to press her up the shore beyond possibility of floating again.
Almost unmanageable with her twisted rudder, it was a slow and difficult job to work her through the running ice farther up the bay to a supposedly less-exposed berth, snowing and blowing all this time. Here the back of the rudder was straightened somewhat.
Early in the morning of the 3d, a moving floe forced the Roosevelt ashore again, where she hung until the next high-water, and she was hardly pulled off when another floe jammed her hard and fast aground again. I was very anxious to get out of this dangerous and trying position, where the rapid and vicious movements of the ice were a constant menace, but a reconnoissance from an elevation near the Roosevelt indicated that the channel north of us was simply solid with ice.
Shortly after midnight of the 3d, the Roosevelt floated again and, a southerly breeze forming a little water at the mouth of the bay, we steamed out at 3:30 A. M. and succeeded in getting under the delta of Shelter River just south of Cape Union, and in butting into a natural dock among some stranded berg-pieces. Here the ship had one foot of water under her keel and as we moored her, the slack ice through which we had come jammed tight with floes packing against the barrier at Cape Union. Here we enjoyed a fine day with the temperature in the low twenties and experienced a few hours of peace. The river delta to the north and stranded berg-pieces to the south protected us from the attacks of the heavy floes passing rapidly a few yards outside of us.
Eskimos sent out for hare here obtained thirty-six. We were now only some fifteen miles from the Alert’s winter quarters, and a clear run of two or three hours would enable us to beat the record for ships in this region, and save the game for us.