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Other documents randomly have
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of dragging boats and sledges over the pack, then the horrors of
navigating amidst the streaming ice of the New Siberian Archipelago,
finally that four-day nightmare of tumbling waves and freezing spray
in the open whaleboat battling an Arctic gale—was all this not
enough? Yet through all our trials since the loss of the Jeannette we
had been sustained by the thought that if only we held out till we
reached the Lena Delta, there at last our sufferings would end, amid
friendly natives we would find food, shelter, and transportation home.
How different now was the reality! The Lena Delta we found a
bleak and barren tundra, empty of game, as inhospitable and as
desolate as that ice pack in which for two years we had drifted in the
long-lost Jeannette. Our dream of a safe haven had exploded in our
faces. With food gone, men worn out, and worst of all, the hope
which had driven us all to superhuman labor proved a lie, our
situation was desperate beyond conception. Bitterly we cursed
Petermann and all his works, which had led us astray.
But there was nothing to do save to move on, working always
toward the headwaters of the delta as long as we could swing the
oars, so for the fourth day in succession, we shoved off from a
mudflat camp, broke our way through new ice, and I pushed my men
(whose arms fortunately were a little better off than their legs)
upstream toward the delta head.
And then, thank God, in the middle of this day, while deadened
arms and stupefied bodies swung wearily over the oars, we suddenly
sighted three natives in kyacks shoot out from behind a bend in the
swamp!
Like drowning men grasping at straws, we waved to them, shouted
to them, and tried to row to them, but before the apparition of a
strange boat in their waters, they were shy and afraid, and not till I
held up our last tiny strip of pemmican did I entice one, more curious
than his comrades, close aboard us to taste the strange meat. Then
like the jaws of a trap closing on its victim, we grabbed his kyack
before he could dart away!
Badly frightened, the fur-clad native attempted to escape, but we
would sooner have released our only hope of salvation than our grip
on that poor Yakut who represented now our last slim chance to
avoid perishing in the maze of that frozen delta, and we held to him
like grim death. Gradually I calmed his fears, gave him the
pemmican, endeavored in pantomime to show him we were friendly,
and at last holding to him while we beached our whaleboat,
convinced him of our good intentions by giving him a little of the
trifling quantity of alcohol we had left for our stove.
The alcohol settled the question. He promptly hailed his two
comrades standing warily off in their kyacks, and soon all three of
the natives, warming up on pure grain alcohol, were our bosom
friends. In exchange for the alcohol, they gave us some fish and a
goose out of which mixture we promptly made a stew which we
wolfed down ravenously. And then with pencil sketches and
gestures, I endeavored to make plain that I wanted them to guide us
to a village, and specifically to Bulun, the largest town shown on my
chart, some sixty miles up the Lena River from the head of the delta.
It was remarkable how, understanding not one word of each
other’s language, we got along. The three Yakuts indicated we could
not get to Bulun on account of ice in the river, that we should all die
on the way. However, they made plain that another Yakut village,
Jamaveloch, they could take us to, and next day for Jamaveloch we
started. But so tortuous was the course and so hard the labor in
working our boat through the delta swamps and rivers, that not till a
week later did we finally, on September 26th, two weeks after the
gale, arrive at Jamaveloch. Had it not been for the food provided by
our guides as well as for their pilotage, it is inconceivable that we
should ever have arrived alive at this village at the southeastern
corner of the delta, seventy miles from Cape Barkin, and the only
inhabited village for over a hundred and fifty miles in either direction
along the Siberian Coast! Had we gone to Barkin, we should
assuredly have perished, for there, the natives told us, Petermann
was absolutely wrong—there were no villages, no lighthouses, no
inhabitants of any kind there, nothing but a barren coast.
But Jamaveloch itself was not very promising as a haven except
for a brief stay. It had but six huts and a few small storehouses, not
over fifteen adult inhabitants, and no great surplus of food. Doubtful
that its scant supply of fish and geese would long take care of eleven
voracious seamen thrown unexpectedly on the resources of so small
a community, I decided after one night at Jamaveloch to push on in
our whaleboat up the south branch of the Lena to Bulun, a hundred
and ten miles away by land but a hundred and fifty miles distant up
the winding river. Strenuously in their native Yakut tongue (some of
which I had now picked up) the villagers and especially their
headman, Nicolai Chagra, objected that ice in the river would block
us and leave us to perish along the uninhabited river banks, but I
persisted. So accompanied once more by my original native pilots, I
loaded my sick crew into the whaleboat, took aboard sixty dried fish
(all I could get) for supplies from Nicolai, and we started. In an hour
we were back. Nicolai Chagra was right. The Jeannette herself could
not have plowed through the ice, alternately freezing and breaking
loose in the river, which swept downstream in the current, effectively
blocking any progress toward Bulun.
Willing or not, there was no choice but to stay at Jamaveloch.
Unable to walk, I crawled from the whaleboat and was hauled on a
sledge from the shore to a hut turned over to us by Nicolai; Leach,
with the flesh falling from his frozen toes, was hauled up on another
sledge; and most of the rest of my crew in the remnants of their
tattered clothes, crawled or hobbled after us.
For two and a half weeks we lay in that hut, slowly recuperating
from our frostbites, subsisting mainly on a slim ration of fish given us
daily by the Yakut villagers, and thinking up weird schemes of getting
away to Bulun. But till the rivers froze solidly enough to sledge over
the ice, there was no chance. Even then, the limited facilities of the
village could never provide the necessary sledges for eleven men
nor the clothes to keep us from freezing in the sub-zero weather
which October had brought. But get away soon we must, for all the
flesh had sloughed from several of Leach’s toes and he needed
medical attention badly if he were not soon to die; while Cole, lucid
at intervals, required expert care also if his mind were to be saved;
and Danenhower’s eye, a month now without surgical care, was
beginning to relapse. As for the rest of us, our legs were getting
better and we could soon drag ourselves about, but the food problem
was rapidly getting acute, and I was very much afraid that we should
awake some morning to discover that the natives, finding us too
much of a drain on their stores, had silently moved on in the night to
some other collection of vacant huts of which we knew nothing,
leaving us to starve alone lest everyone starve together.
The only solution to this dilemma, since we could not go to Bulun,
was to have Bulun send us the necessary dog teams, sledges,
clothes, and food to make the journey. How to get word to Bulun,
however, was the difficulty, for none of the natives would go and no
man in my party knew the road over the distant mountains to Bulun. I
dared send no one without a guide.
The reason given by the natives for refusing to undertake the trip
was that it was an impossible season for traveling, an in-between
time in which they could safely move neither by boat nor sledge. A
few weeks before, in early September, it would have been possible
to go by boat but now new ice forming everywhere prevented. A few
weeks later, it would be possible to travel by sledge cross-country
over snow and ice, but just now that also could not be attempted for
the ice on the many rivers to be crossed was continuously breaking
in the current and was nowhere yet thick enough to bear the weight
of a sledge without grave danger of crashing through into the river
and losing sledge and dogs at least, if not drivers also. To all our
entreaties, Nicolai Chagra merely shrugged his shoulders—early
September, yes; late October, yes; but now, a most decided no!
Providentially the matter was settled for us about the middle of
October by the chance visit to the village of a Russian exile, Kusmah
by name, who lived nearby and who on the promise of the whaleboat
immediately and five hundred roubles later (when I could get funds
from America) undertook to make the dangerous journey and started
off with his dog sledge over the frozen tundra to Bulun, expecting to
return in five days.
Vaguely, while he was gone, we speculated on how long it would
take us to sledge the fifteen hundred miles from Bulun via Yakutsk to
Irkutsk on Lake Baikal, and then via post road get to Moscow and so
home. And while we speculated over that, we also speculated
earnestly over the fate of De Long and the first cutter. There was no
doubt that his boat had followed Chipp’s, but over the question of
how long the first cutter had lasted in the gale and whether she had
come to her doom finally by capsizing or by swamping, there was
many a hot discussion, as my seamen argued vehemently over the
relative probabilities of a square-sterned boat like the heavily-built
first cutter broaching before she flooded, or vice versa. The
consensus of opinion was that she had swamped, for De Long had
in his boat not only three more men than we, but also Snoozer, the
last dog, all the navigating equipment, four rifles, the complete
records of the expedition in ten cases, and one small sledge which
De Long had kept to drag the records on. With so much ballast in his
boat, that his men could have bailed fast enough to avoid foundering
seemed incredible to most of us after our own experiences with the
much lighter double-ended whaleboat, but the broaching theorists
would never agree to it. Chipp, whom all hands freely admitted was
the best sailor, had broached and capsized. How then could De Long
have avoided it? And since, crowded in our little hut with nothing else
to do, there was no outlet for men too feeble to get about save in
talk, the argument went on endlessly, and of course with no chance
of an agreement ever being reached.
Five days went by and Kusmah, our messenger to Bulun, had not
returned. Ten days elapsed and we became alarmed for Kusmah.
Had he perished in the ice? To add to our worries, Nicolai Chagra cut
our food supply from four fish a day to three, with occasionally a
putrid and decaying goose supplied in lieu of the fish.
I was seriously debating sending Bartlett, the strongest member of
our party, on to Bulun in the forlorn hope of getting us assistance,
when on the night of October 29th, after thirteen days’ absence on
his hazardous journey, Kusmah at last returned, bringing on his
sledge some supplies, about forty pounds of bread mainly, and no
clothes for us, but instead a letter in Russian from the Cossack
commandant at Bulun stating that next day he would start for us from
there with a reindeer caravan and clothes enough to bring us all
safely over the mountains to Bulun.
 This news heartened us considerably, and in broken Russian I
profusely thanked Kusmah. Meanwhile my men, not waiting to thank
anybody, were revelling in the bread of which we had seen none for
nearly five months, breaking the loaves in huge chunks into which
they sank their teeth hungrily. All smiles at my expressions of
approbation, and happy at the way everyone seemed to appreciate
what food he had brought us, Kusmah bowed, then pulled from
inside his fur jacket a dirty scrap of paper which he tendered me. On
it was a pencilled message. Pausing casually between two mouthfuls
of bread, I glanced at it, noted in surprise that it was in English, and
then as I read the first words, I stiffened as suddenly as if I had been
shot.
“Arctic steamer Jeannette lost on the 11th June; landed
on Siberia 25th September or thereabouts; want
assistance to go for the captain and doctor and nine (9)
other men.
William F. C. Nindemann,
Louis P. Noros,
Seamen U. S. N.
Reply in haste; want food and clothing.”
For a moment my heart stopped beating as I read, then I called
out huskily,
“Men! De Long and the first cutter landed safely! They’re alive!”
All over the hut broken loaves of bread thudded to the floor as
open-mouthed in astonishment at this startling declaration, my
shipmates stared at me, then clustered round to read the note, while
I turned abruptly to Kusmah, asked in my best Russian,
“That note, Kusmah! Where did you get it?”
With some difficulty, Kusmah explained to me his trip. To get to
Bulun, he had to go fifty miles due west cross country over the
mountains to Ku Mark Surk on the Lena River (where he was
delayed a week waiting for the main stream to freeze over so he
could cross) and then sixty miles due south along the west bank of
the Lena to Bulun. On his way back to us from Bulun, coming again
to Ku Mark Surk, he had met there a small reindeer caravan of
Yakuts bound south for Bulun and with that caravan, clad only in
tattered underwear and sick almost to death, he had come across
two strangers feebly expostulating with the natives against going
south and almost hysterical at their inability to make themselves
understood.
He spoke to them in Russian, with no better luck at communication
than the Yakut reindeer drivers had had, but suddenly recalling what
we had told him of our two lost boats, he enquired of them,
“Jeannette? Americanski?” and immediately the men had
understood, nodding vigorously in assent; and writing this note, had
placed it in his hands, begging him piteously,
“Commandant! Bulun! Bulun!”
That he understood also, but as he was bound for Jamaveloch
and knew that I would be most interested in the matter, he had
forthwith resumed his journey, and now, two days later, there was the
message in my hands, while Nindemann and Noros no doubt were
by this time in Bulun itself.
I retrieved the note from Bartlett and read it again carefully. De
Long had landed, but simply “on Siberia.” Where was he now? The
note was blank on that. I could not tell. But evidently he was in a bad
way, for Nindemann and Noros, somehow separated from their
shipmates, were from Kusmah’s account obviously far gone, and as
for the others, that closing scrawl,
“Reply in haste; want food and clothing” had an ominous ring. And
then my eyes fell again on “the captain and doctor and nine (9)
other men.”
Nine? Hastily I counted up. The captain, the doctor, Nindemann,
Noros and nine others—that made only thirteen! But De Long had
had fourteen all told in his boat! Was nine an error? No; as if to
emphasize it, the nine was repeated as a figure in parenthesis. So
already one of De Long’s party had died. Sadly I wondered who.
Collins, perhaps? No, I decided; Collins had done no work on the ice
to wear him down. Lee, my machinist, was most likely, I concluded.
His injured hips would have made it most difficult for him to keep up
and he might have had to be left behind.
But this was no time for wondering. Only Nindemann and Noros
could tell me where the captain was and how to get there. And if
those two men were as badly off as Kusmah said, they might both
soon die, taking their secret with them. The Lena Delta was large,
over 5000 square miles in area, and from bitter experience I knew
now how difficult it was to find one’s way amidst its myriad islands,
swamps, and freezing streams. And as for charts, there were none
worthy of the name—Petermann’s, which had nearly led my party to
starvation, was worse than useless. I shivered as I thought of that.
De Long, relying on that same Petermann chart, had intended to
land near Barkin! Barkin and the north coast of the delta
thereabouts, were not only uninhabited and a hopeless stretch of
barren tundra, but a hundred miles further north and by so much
further removed even from such slight shelter as we had
providentially encountered at Jamaveloch! De Long and his party
must be in fearful straits!
“Kusmah!” I said sharply. “Return with me to Bulun at once! Get
your dogs! We start right away!”
But Kusmah demurred, objecting that his dog team was
completely worn out and could not travel the ice again without
several days’ rest. On investigating his dogs, this proved to be true,
so getting hold promptly of Nicolai Chagra, I insisted vigorously that
he provide immediately from somewhere another team if it stripped
the village of its last dog.
Chagra was willing enough, but it took him all night to scrape up
the necessary dogs, and not till next morning, October 30th (a day
which later became indelibly burned into my memory), behind a team
of eleven dogs driven by my original Yakut pilot, did I set off in a
temperature twenty degrees below zero for Bulun where from
Nindemann and Noros I hoped to learn of De Long’s whereabouts.
Two days later, after hard labor by the dogs through deep snow and
over broken ice, I was at Ku Mark Surk, where I changed my worn-
out dog team for a reindeer sledge, and with that made the last sixty
miles southward up the frozen Lena to Bulun, arriving on the evening
of November 2.
I promptly enquired my way to the hut where were lodged
Nindemann and Noros, and in mingled fear and hope hurried there.
What was I going to hear of my captain, of Dr. Ambler, about my
other shipmates? Which one of them was already dead, what
chance had I of rescuing the survivors? With my heart pounding
violently, I pushed open the door of the hut.
 CHAPTER XXXIII

In the smoky light of the rude interior of that Yakut hut, I saw at first
only Louis Noros, clothed in ragged woolen underwear, bending over
a rough table, sawing away with his sheath knife on a loaf of hard
black bread, while in a corner by themselves a number of Yakuts
were busy over the fire on their own supper. Noros glanced up on my
entrance, looked at me vacantly, and then resumed his hacking at
the hard bread. I waited a moment to see if he might recognize me,
but as he did not, I advanced, stretched out my hand, and said,
“Hello, Noros! Don’t you know me?”
Startled at being addressed in English, Noros dropped his knife,
peered intently in my face, and then fell on my neck, sobbing,
“My God, Mr. Melville, are you alive?”
At this outburst, through the smoky room I saw Nindemann
suddenly lift himself on one elbow from a rough couch at the side
and cry out brokenly,
“Mr. Melville! We thought you were dead! That all hands on the
Jeannette were dead except me and Noros! Louis and me thought
we were the only survivors—we were sure the whaleboat’s were all
drowned as well as the second cutter’s!”
Bending over Nindemann, too far gone to lift himself, while Noros
clung round my shoulders, I wept with them.
“No, boys,” I said gently, “the whole whaleboat’s crew is safe. And
they’re all overjoyed to know that you are too. But who died in your
boat, and where, for God’s sake, are the skipper and the rest of your
boat’s crew? I’ll go for them right away.”
“No use! They must be all gone by now!” sobbed out Nindemann
feebly. “Over three weeks ago, October 9th, the captain sent me and
Louis south to look for help, and they were nearly dead then; no food
for seven days and everybody frozen bad. We struggled to the south
along the river and were no more able even to crawl and nearly dead
ourselves when the natives found us twelve days after and carried
us here.” Nindemann’s choking voice broke hysterically. “Mr. Melville,
we didn’t want to come here, we wanted them to take us back! But
we couldn’t make anybody understand about the captain. And he
was dying then. Now it’s too late!” and falling back on his wooden
couch, Nindemann wept like a baby in my lap.
“Where are they now?” I asked sadly. “I’ll find them! Tell me; what
happened, boys?” and as I listened, the tears streamed down my
roughened cheeks as between them, Noros and Nindemann poured
out the story of the first cutter and its crew.
 CHAPTER XXXIV

Before the steadily rising Arctic gale, the Jeannette’s three boats in
broken formation were scattering in the storm. Dismayed at this
sight, De Long who had the only navigating outfit in the flotilla and in
addition was carrying all Chipp’s meager food supply, rose in the
sternsheets of his cutter and waved vigorously to the other boats to
get back in position astern of him. But seeing the whaleboat nearly
swamp attempting to drop back, he signalled her on.
Taking a second reef in his own sail to deaden still further his
speed, De Long continued waving to Chipp, hopeful at least of
getting him close enough aboard to toss over his can of pemmican
before in the storm and the night, he lost him to view. Badly flooded
himself by oncoming seas, he nevertheless held back, till Chipp and
his boat, suddenly engulfed in the waves, disappeared forever from
sight.
Sadly then, De Long shook out one reef and picking up headway,
stood away dead before the wind, heading southwest for Barkin.
Blonde and bearded Erichsen, tall and brawny, a sailor from his
childhood in far-off Denmark and in stature a royal Dane indeed, the
best seaman in the boat, steered. Crowded into the cockpit before
him were De Long, Ambler, and Collins, while forward of them on
each side of the boat, backs to the weather cloths holding them up
against the sea, were the rest of the crew—Nindemann, the
quartermaster, tending the sheet, Lee, Kaack, Noros, Görtz,
Dressler, Iversen, Alexey, Ah Sam, and Boyd. Jammed under the
thwarts, practically filling all the spaces there were the sledge, the tin
cases containing the Jeannette’s records, the navigating gear, the
silken ensign in its oilskin case, the rifles, tents, sleeping bags,
cooking pots, and a few cans of pemmican, with Snoozer, the last
Eskimo dog, crouching on the sleeping bags and whimpering
piteously as the spray soaked him.
 The heavily-laden first cutter, only twenty feet long but wider of
beam than any other of the Jeannette’s boats and with all that ballast
on her bottom, therefore more stable and more resistant to capsizing
than either of the other two, lumbered on before the wind, pitching
heavily as the curling seas swept up under her square stern, and
yawing badly in spite of all that Erichsen at the tiller could do to hold
her on her course. Darkness fell, the seas grew worse, the crew
bailed steadily.
Twice the boat yawed suddenly and the sail jibed violently,
straining the mast, but each time Erichsen managed to catch her and
the yard and sail were again squared and the boat stood on with the
wind screaming by and the merciless seas breaking heavily over the
stern, soaking Erichsen continuously and spraying everyone else
with freezing water.
For an hour the boat stood on before the storm with the water
coming in over both sides and the stern, while her crew bailed
vigorously to keep up with it. And then, riding on the crest of a
tremendous wave roaring up astern, came disaster. The boat took a
bad yaw as the sea struck, the stern swung off to port with the crest.
Immediately the sail, caught flat aback by the wind, jibed over and
the yard banged viciously round to leeward, heeling the boat sharply
down on her port side and riding the lee gunwale completely under!
Instantly solid water came pouring in over the submerged rail. In
another split second, the half-capsized cutter would have been
bottom up with her crew spilled into the raging seas, had not at that
instant the mast, already weakened by the previous jibes, broken
clean off, and with the flapping sail shot overboard, momentarily
relieving the fatal strain!
For one horrible second, the listing boat hung with her gunwale
under, poised uncertainly between going completely over and rolling
back, while her agonized crew, clinging desperately to the thwarts to
avoid being tossed out, felt cold death in the form of the inrushing
water lapping round their bodies! Then slowly, very slowly, under the
influence of the heavy ballast jammed along the bottom boards, the
dismasted cutter rolled back on an even keel, awash to the thwarts
and so deep in the water that her gunwales barely showed above the
foaming surface!
“Bail!” roared De Long. “All hands! Bail!”
A waterlogged wreck, the first cutter lay broadside in the trough of
the sea with every man in her buried in salt water to his waist,
frenziedly bailing to regain a semblance of buoyancy before the next
wave swept over her side and finished her. Fortunately at that
instant, the broken mast and the ballooning sail, dragging alongside
by the halliards streaming over the bow, caught the water, began
acting as a sea anchor, and the startled men in the boat, too busy
bailing to lift a hand for any other purpose, saw in amazement their
submerged cutter swing slowly round in the trough into the wind and
sluggishly rise head on to the next crest, heaving herself to!
Had even another moderate sea swept up at this moment, the
boat would unquestionably have finished filling and foundered, but
by some freak of the storm, only a succession of lazy billows came
rolling by until with the boat half-emptied and higher in the water, De
Long could get out some oars to hold her steady the while he sent
Görtz and Kaack racing forward to clear away the wreckage.
Holding his cutter head on with oars and rudder while he finished
bailing and dragged in the impromptu sea anchor by the halliards,
the captain hastily made a drag of his sail only and an empty water
breaker to hold it up, and then rode the gale to that, taking in the
oars and raising the weathercloths again, while Erichsen, still
clinging to the tiller, steered into the wind and the rest of the crew
bailed to keep afloat.
For the men crowded in the boat, it was a night of utter misery and
terror, wet through, freezing in the gale, tossing madly in the cutter,
and with Collins slumped in the cockpit too weak or too heedless to
reach the rail, violently and continuously seasick to add the final
touch.
At midnight their sea anchor carried suddenly away and with it
went the sail. Instantly out went a pair of oars to hold her up, while
another drag, made of the broken mast and the rest of the oars, with
the expedition’s solitary pick-ax hung to it to hold it down, was sent
out over the bow. This proved a poor substitute for the sail, for
having insufficient surface, it failed to catch the water properly and
rode off the cutter’s beam, instead of ahead, with the result that the
boat, no longer bows-on to the waves, wallowed in the troughs and
rolled horribly, making water worse than ever.
After thirty-six hours of this torture, the gale finally abated, and
with only a fresh breeze and a heavy sea still running, De Long
prepared again to get underway, but he had no sail. Nindemann
searched the boat for substitutes; out of a hammock and the sledge
cover, sewed together by Görtz and Kaack, Nindemann provided a
jury sail. The drag was hauled in to recover the mast; with a chisel,
Nindemann refitted the broken end of the mast to its step, rerigged it,
and soon with the two insignificant bits of canvas spread at the yard,
the first cutter resumed her journey for the Lena Delta, making hardly
one knot through the water, and because the breeze had now hauled
to the south, unable to sail closer to the wind than a course due west
instead of the desired southwest.
But what the course should be to make Cape Barkin and where
the boat was, God alone knew. It was impossible to get a sight, and
even had it not been, De Long’s hands were so badly frozen he
could not work his sextant. So willy-nilly, the boat went west for two
days with De Long and his frozen crew, barely crawling along under
the tiny jury rig, till early on the morning of September 16th, having
been four days at sea since leaving Semenovski Island, the wind
failed altogether, and in a dead calm sea, De Long ordered out the
oars and headed due south, feeling that he had made more than
enough westing.
By this time, from long-continued watchfulness and exposure, both
De Long’s hands and his feet were so badly frozen and had swollen
to such size that he was wholly unable to move himself. Tenderly Dr.
Ambler got out his soaked sleeping bag, and helped by Görtz,
slipped the captain into it and then propped him up in the
sternsheets so he could see to maneuver the boat.
 After a few hours of rowing south, the water began to shoal rapidly
and the cutter ran into a skim of young ice, through which it broke its
way. Soon low-lying land was sighted to the south, undoubtedly
some part of the northern side of the Lena Delta. With redoubled
energy the men heaved with their cracked and bleeding hands at the
oars, driving through thickening ice toward the coast. A little to
starboard an open lead in the young ice was sighted, seemingly
running inshore toward a river mouth, and into this lead the boat was
rammed through the intervening ice, keeping on in this open water till
at about 9 a.m., still more than a mile offshore, the boat grounded
solidly in less than two feet of water with new ice freezing constantly
all about her in the bitter cold.
After a fruitless effort to get inshore through the invisible shoals,
De Long tried to work out again to the northward, hoping then to go
further west and perhaps find a better channel into the river, which
so far as could be judged from the width between the headlands,
seemed to be one of the main northern mouths of the Lena. But the
thickening ice had closed in behind, and stuck fast in the hidden
shoal, the boat could be moved neither ahead nor astern with the
oars.
De Long after a futile effort to push out, using the oars as poles,
became desperate.
“All hands over the side to lighten the boat!” he ordered. “We’ll
push her off!”
Silently, all except the helmsman, the men started to obey, but first
began to remove their wet boots, not wishing to fill them with mud.
Off came the worn and leaking footgear, exposing to view badly
swollen feet, many already black with frostbite and with blisters
breaking as the skin, stuck to the boots, tore away from the frozen
flesh. Dr. Ambler took one swift glance at them, then leaning over the
helpless captain, whispered in his ear. De Long bent forward, looked
himself, then said,
“Belay going over the side, men. Put on your boots. We’ll try
shoving her off again with the oars instead.”
 But the enfeebled seamen had little luck. An all day struggle with
the shallow water moved the boat hardly a hundred yards, and night
fell on an exhausted boat crew, caught amidst ice and shoals, unable
either to get the cutter ashore or get it to sea.
Once more they spent a cheerless night in the cramped boat,
tantalized by that unapproachable shore a mile and a half away,
unable to sleep, wet, freezing, and thirsty on the crowded thwarts.
At daybreak, they tried again. Managing to get free of the ice and
the mud, they made a few yards, only to ground on another shoal.
Getting clear of that, the ice soon blocked them. It made little
difference which way they headed, north or south, east or west,
shoals and young ice were everywhere. Bitterly De Long looked from
his heavy cutter and his fast-fading men across a mile and a half of
thin ice, strong enough to block the boat, too weak to sustain a man,
toward the low coast of Siberia. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.
He would never get the boat free—eight hours of labor today on top
of all of yesterday and no progress made either toward shore or
toward sea and nothing to look forward to now except another
terrible night in the boat in the fierce cold.
De Long made up his mind. Regardless of their condition, they
must abandon the cutter, wade ashore. He still had two hours of
daylight in which to work, and despite frost-bitten feet, there was no
alternative; into that icy water they must plunge. But three of the
men, Boyd, Erichsen, and himself, hardly able to stand without
toppling headlong, could never make that mile and a half wading
through ice and shoals to the land. They would have to get the boat
closer first.
“Except the sick and the doctor, all hands over the side! We’re
going to abandon the boat and wade ashore! Keep your boots on
this time, men!”
Slowly the rest of the crew crawled over the side into the water,
finding it knee deep. Leaving in the boat only the four men and
Snoozer, and taking as heavy a load on his back as each could
carry, the crew set out for shore, Nindemann first to break a path
through the half inch ice, then in succession Kaack, Görtz, Iversen,
Lee, Dressler, Collins, Alexey, Noros, and finally Ah Sam, whose feet
were in such bad shape that not to impede the others he was
ordered to go last. It was hard work, especially for Nindemann
smashing ahead through the ice, with the chilly water changing
irregularly in depth from knee deep to over his waist, sinking
unexpectedly into mudholes from which he could hardly drag his
feet, and all the while pounding away at the sheet ice with hips and
thighs, unable to use his arms because of the load on his shoulders.
Finally the panting quartermaster reached the shore, a low and
swampy slope. Behind him trudged the others, and thankfully coming
up out of the sea, squeezing mud and slush from their boots at every
step, they dumped their loads on the beach. Siberia at last! A feeble
cheer burst from husky throats and cracking lips.
But looking round at that dismal shore, covered with snow, bare of
all vegetation, utterly desolate and devoid of any trace of human
habitation then or ever, it is doubtful that there could have been
found on earth any group of human beings save only these few who
had gone through hell on ice to reach that shore, who would not
have cursed instead of cheered at setting foot on that bleak tundra.
 CHAPTER XXXV

“Come on, boys; we go back now for the rest of the load and the
captain,” ordered Nindemann, who with his rating of quartermaster
was senior in the group ashore. “Shake a leg; we got lots to do
before dark yet.”
“Yah,” said Iversen, plunging back in the sea, “frozen feet ban yust
too bad for any man. Ay tank ve better get it done qvick before yet it
gets colder!”
One by one, the men slipped back into the narrow lane broken
through the ice after Iversen and stolidly plodded off in the water
toward the distant boat, till only Ah Sam and Collins were left.
“Shake it up there, you fellers; we ain’t got much time,” growled
Nindemann.
“I’m ashore now and I’m going to stay ashore!” snarled Collins.
“Do you think you’re going to get me a mile out in the ocean again
wading through that mud and ice to drag in the captain and the dog?
Well, you’re not! I might for sick men, but not for them!”
“But the captain is sick! He can’t walk!” protested Nindemann.
“And besides, there’s all our food and the records to carry in yet!”
“Well, he can swim then for all I care!” replied Collins defiantly.
“And as for those records, carry ’em ashore yourself. I won’t; I didn’t
ship to be treated like a common sailor, and you can’t make me!”
“Suit yourself,” mumbled Nindemann uncertainly, for Collins was
after all an officer. He turned to the Chinese cook. “Get underway
there, Ah Sam.”
Poor Ah Sam, with his feet benumbed from constant immersion
while bailing, staggered toward the water, then collapsed in the mud,
unable to rise. The quartermaster dragged the inert Chinaman back
on the beach and deposited him at Collins’ feet.
 “Get me a fire started here then, Collins, and see maybe if you can
thaw him out before I get back,” ordered Nindemann. “I’m going for
the captain,” and he plunged into the icy seas.
“Where’s Ah Sam and Mr. Collins?” asked De Long anxiously
when Nindemann, much behind the others, returned to the boat.
“Anything wrong?”
“They’re all played out,” lied Nindemann glibly. “So I left ’em to
make a fire for us when we got back ashore.”
“Poor devils!” muttered the captain sympathetically. “You should
have left somebody with ’em, Nindemann.”
“Oh, they’ll be all right soon,” Nindemann assured him. “Besides, I
needed here everybody,” and in that he was right enough for it took
three trips with the seamen slithering through mud and water to get
all the baggage ashore through that mile and a half of broken ice,
and it was completely dark when Nindemann at last gathered what
crew he had left round the lightened boat and attempted to work it
ashore. But even lightened to the utmost, with nothing but the three
incapacitated men and the doctor left in it, half a mile from the beach
it stuck finally in the mud and they could get it no further inshore. The
wind freshened, bringing a blinding snow-storm, blotting out
everything. How to get the invalids ashore was now a problem; in the
slimy and uneven footing through the shoal water they couldn’t
safely be carried. There being no other way, one after the other,
Boyd, Erichsen, and De Long were lifted over the side of the cutter
by Dr. Ambler, and stood up in the knee-deep water on their frozen
legs. Then, each held from falling by a seaman alongside, the three
sufferers partly stumbled, were partly dragged in the falling snow
across that last half mile through the broken lane of ice to the shore,
while following them, Alexey, the Indian hunter, with Snoozer over
his shoulders, brought up the procession, finally emptying the first
cutter of its passengers.
It was eight at night and bitterly cold when De Long and his
companions, ashore at last on the desolate beach, joined his forlorn
seamen crowding round the fire which Collins had started and which
Noros and Görtz soon built up with driftwood into huge proportions—