Hell on Ice: The Saga of the Jeannette by Ellsberg Edward

Author:Ellsberg, Edward [Ellsberg, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781480493797
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXIII

SEPTEMBER 1st came, and winter fell on us like a blanket. Snow, low temperatures, and the prompt freezing over of all stray pools with a coat of ice that failed to melt again gave the pack an immediate wintry appearance that only deepened as the month drew on. September 6th, the anniversary of our being first frozen in, opened our second year in the pack, with the only change noticeable the fact that winter had set in earlier and harder. But of course our present position, a hundred and fifty miles north of that of the year before, might easily have accounted for that.

September drifted by. October came. The temperatures dropped into the sub-zero twenties. We noted only that we were less sensitive to cold than the year before—luckily for us, for apparently we were in for a worse freezing. All hands, officers and men, became more moody, less talkative. By now it was evident to even the dullest-witted that we might go on thus forever in the ice pack; that is, at least till death in one form or another—by starvation, when our food gave out; by freezing, when we exhausted our coal; or by the ice crushing our weak bodies at any time—put a period to our tale. To talk further about what the expedition would do when the ice released us seemed just a waste of breath. The ice was not going to release us.

Meanwhile, in spite of our dreary outlook, we had to stick to the ship, for what else could we do? But would the ship stick to us? What would the ice do to the Jeannette during this winter? Our memories of the horrors of the winter past were not reassuring.

The month drew along. We ate our tasteless food, we drank our distilled water, we kept ourselves alive. Two things only broke up our unvarying daily routine—Divine Service on Sunday, and the weekly issue (begun now for the first time on the cruise) on Wednesday of two ounces of rum per man. Jack Cole did not have to pipe long of a Wednesday afternoon to get the complete roster round the whiskey barrel. But his long piping of a Sunday morning drew no such crowds. To Divine Service, conducted weekly in the cabin by the captain, came not a single seaman, and of the officers, just Chipp, Ambler, Dunbar and myself—a congregation of four only to hear George Washington De Long, acting chaplain, feelingly invoke the blessing of the Almighty upon our enterprise and ask His mercy upon us—distressed, worn mortals trapped in the Arctic wastes.

As October drew toward its close, distant rumblings in the pack, cracks in the floes roundabout caused by contracting ice, ridges of broken floe thrown up hither and yon, and the pistol-like snappings of shrinking bolts in our timbers, warned us of trouble. November came; we viewed its advent with trepidation, for the previous November had inaugurated our reign of terror. On November 6th, the sun departed from us and the long Arctic night commenced, our second.

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