"O, dat it! Dey tell me we come to fish. Tank you, sar."
The old cook pulls his greasy cap over his bald head and thinks. "Science!" "De Nort Pole!" He don't get the meaning of these through his cap, and he "tumbles up" the companion-ladder, and goes to the galley to enjoy his guernsey.
Dr. Hayes and Knorr went ashore and climbed to the top of the cliffs, twelve hundred feet. The wind was fearfully breezy, and Knorr's cap left and went sailing like a feather out to sea. The view was full of arctic grandeur, but not flattering to the storm-bound navigators. Ice was evidently king a little farther north.
Soon after the explorer's return to the vessel the storm gathered fresh power, and the anchors began to drag. Soon one hawser parted, and away went the schooner, with fearful velocity, and brought up against a berg. The crash was appalling, and the stern boat flew into splinters. The spars were either bent or carried away; and, as they attempted to hoist the mainsail, it went to pieces. The crippled craft was with difficulty worked back into the projecting covert of Cape Alexander. Her decks were covered with ice, and the dogs were perishing with wet and cold, three having died.
Having repaired damages as well as they could, they again pushed into the pack of Smith's Sound, which lay between them and open water, visible far to the north. Entering a lead under full sail, they made good progress for awhile; but suddenly a solid floe shot across the channel, and the vessel, with full headway, struck it like a battering ram. The cut-water flew into splinters, and the iron sheathing of the bows was torn off as if it had been paper.
Pushing off from the floe, and passing through a narrow lead, they emerged into an area of open water. But the floe was on the alert. This began to close up, and, taking a hint of foul play, the explorers steered toward the shore. But the ice battalions moved with celerity, piled up across the vessel's bow, and closed in on every side. In an hour they held her as in a vice, while the reserve force was called up to crush her to atoms. The foe was jubilant, for the power at his command was kindred to that of the earthquake. An ice-field of millions of tons, moved by combined wind and current, rushed upon the solid ice-field which rested against the immovable rocks of the shore. Between these was the schooner—less than an egg-shell between colliding, heavily laden freight trains. As the pressure came steadily, in well assured strength, she groaned and shrieked like a thing of conscious pain, writhing and twisting as if striving to escape her pitiless adversary. Her deck timbers bowed, and the seams of the deck-planks opened, while her sides seemed ready to yield.
Thus far the closing forces were permitted to strike severely on the side of the helpless vessel, to show that they could crush her as rotten fruit is crushed in a strong man's hand. Then He, without whose permission no force in nature moves, and at whose word they are instantly stayed, directed the floe under the strongly timbered "bilge" of the hull, and, with a jerk which sent the men reeling about the deck, lifted the vessel out of the water. The floes now fought their battle out beneath her, as if they disdained, like the lion with the mouse in his paw, to crush so small a thing. Great ridges were piled up about her, and one underneath lifted her high into the air. Eight hours she remained in this situation, while the lives of all on board seemed suspended on the slenderest thread.
Then came the yielding and breaking up of the floes. Once, at the commencing of the giving way, an ice prop of the bows suddenly yielded, let the forward end of the vessel down while the stern was high in the air. But finally the battered craft settled squarely into the water.
She was leaking badly, and the pumps were kept moving with vigor. The rudder was split, and two of its bolts broken; the stern-post started, and fragments of the cut-water and keel were floating away. But, strange to say, no essential injury was done. She was slowly navigated into Hartstene or Etah Bay, where we have been so often, anchored safely, and repairs immediately commenced.