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Test Bank for Motor Learning and Control:
Concepts and Applications, 12th Edition Richard
Magill David Anderson
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Student name:__________
TRUE/FALSE - Write 'T' if the statement is true and 'F' if the statement is false.
1) A researcher studying how a tennis player coordinates the muscles in their shoulder for a
serve would be studying the player's motor control.

⊚ true
⊚ false

2) A person goes to the doctor and has their patellar tendon tapped with the medical
hammer. The sudden and involuntarily extension of their knee is an example of a motor skill.

⊚ true
⊚ false

3) Shooting a free throw in basketball is an example of an open motor skill.

⊚ true
⊚ false

4) Absolutely no large muscles are involved when a person is engaged in a fine motor skill.

Version 1 1
 ⊚ true
⊚ false

5) Running is an example of a gross motor skill.

⊚ true
⊚ false

6) If motor skills are classified according to the stability of the environment, billiards would
be placed in the category of closed motor skills.

⊚ true
⊚ false

7) When we skate on a crowded ice rink, we perform a closed motor skill.

⊚ true
⊚ false

8) If motor skills are classified according to the stability of the environment, removing
groceries from a shopping bag would be placed in the category of closed motor skills.

⊚ true
⊚ false

Version 1 2
9) Typing a word on a keyboard is an example of a serial motor skill.

⊚ true
⊚ false

10) The size of a pen that a person uses to write is an example of a regulatory condition that
will determine the movements required for the handwriting action.

⊚ true
⊚ false

11) Whether or not an object must be manipulated is a skill characteristic in Gentile's

taxonomy of motor skills that is included in the "environmental context" dimension of the
taxonomy.

⊚ true
⊚ false

12) Classifying skills into general categories helps us to understand the demands those skills
place on the performer/learner.

⊚ true
⊚ false

Version 1 3
13) Skilled individuals are much less efficient than less skilled individuals.

⊚ true
⊚ false

14) People learn movements rather than actions when they begin to learn or relearn a skill.

⊚ true
⊚ false

15) The color of a ball is an example of a non-regulatory condition.

⊚ true
⊚ false

16) The motor system always recruits the same muscle fibers when executing a simple
movement like lifting the arm.

⊚ true
⊚ false

17) The terms actions and movements are interchangeable.

Version 1 4
 ⊚ true
⊚ false

18) A movement that can be used to accomplish many different action goals highlights the
one-to-many relationship between movements and actions.

⊚ true
⊚ false

19) An effective instructor would acknowledge that the best way to accomplish a task may
vary from one individual to another.

⊚ true
⊚ false

20) To distract a basketball free throw shooter, the fans from the opposing team wave their
arms in the air. The waving arms are an example of a regulatory condition.

⊚ true
⊚ false

21) A physical therapist could use Gentile's taxonomy to evaluate a patient's capabilities and
limitations.

Version 1 5
 ⊚ true
⊚ false

MULTIPLE CHOICE - Choose the one alternative that best completes the statement or
answers the question.
22) A researcher from the area of __________ would be interested in how massed versus
distributed practice influences the acquisition of a skill.

A) Motor Control
B) Motor Learning
C) Motor Development
D) None of the above

23) The performance of any motor skill is influenced by characteristics of:

A) The performer
B) The environment
C) The skill itself
D) All of the above

24) The term skill is used to denote:

A) A task that has a specific purpose or goal to achieve

B) The degree of competence or capacity to perform a task
C) The activity in the nervous system that underlies movement
D) A and B

Version 1 6
25) Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of skills and actions?

A) They are innate

B) There is a goal to achieve
C) They are performed voluntarily
D) They require movement of joints and body segments

26) Locomotion is an example of which of the following terms?

A) Movement
B) Ability
C) Performance measure
D) Action

27) The specific pattern of limb motions used in throwing a ball is an example of:

A) An action
B) A movement
C) A neuromotor process
D) A reflex

28) The relationship between movements and actions is:

A) Many-to-one
B) One-to-many
C) Many-to-one and one-to-many
D) Movements and actions are not related

Version 1 7
29) The relationship between neuromotor processes and movements is:

A) Many-to-one
B) One-to-many
C) Many-to-one and one-to-many
D) Movements and actions are not related

30) Which of the following does NOT describe a neuromotor process?

A) A mechanism that uses the nervous and muscular systems

B) A process that underlies the control of movements and actions
C) A process that is visible to the naked eye
D) A mechanism that can be measured

31) Motor control and learning are prioritized in the following order relative to the three
levels of study:

A) Neuromotor processes, movements, actions

B) Neuromotor processes, actions, movements
C) Actions, movements, neuromotor processes
D) Actions, neuromotor processes, movements

32) If a motor skill requires the use of large musculature and does not require precision of
movement for successful performance, then the skill would best be classified as (an):

Version 1 8
 A) Fine motor skill
B) Gross motor skill
C) Discrete motor skill
D) Open motor skill

33) The triple jump is a track and field event that requires a performer to run down a runway
and then to perform a hop, skip, and jump sequence. The hop, skip, and jump portion of the skill
is an example of (an):

A) Discrete motor skill

B) Continuous motor skill
C) Serial motor skill
D) Open motor skill

34) Which of the following skills is a discrete motor skill?

A) Riding a bicycle
B) Swimming the crawl stroke
C) Steering a car on a highway
D) Striking a typewriter key

35) Shifting from second to third gear in a car with a manual transmission (stick shift) is an
example of which type of motor skill?

Version 1 9
 A) Open motor skill
B) Fine motor skill
C) Serial motor skill
D) Continuous motor skill

36) What are components of the environmental context?

A) The supporting surface

B) The objects involved in performing the skill
C) Other living things involved in the performance
D) All of the above

37) Motor skills that require the performer to initiate a specific action on an object according
to the object's motion are best categorized as:

A) Open motor skills

B) Closed motor skills
C) Discrete motor skills
D) Continuous motor skills

38) Which term is sometimes used synonymously with the term closed motor skills?

A) Other-paced motor skills

B) Externally-paced motor skills
C) Forced-paced motor skills
D) Self-paced motor skills

Version 1 10
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39) One reason open motor skills are considered more difficult to perform is.

A) The visual system does not detect movement very well

B) The performer must adjust the spatial and temporal characteristics of their
movement to the environment
C) By default, open motor skills are more tiring
D) None of the above

40) Gentile's taxonomy of motor skills includes which of the following factors as part of the
"environmental context" dimension?

A) Intertrial variability
B) Object location
C) Object orientation
D) Body transport

41) Which of the following skill category distinctions is popular in textbooks related to
methods of teaching motor skills?

A) Gross vs. fine motor skills

B) Discrete vs. continuous motor skills
C) Open vs. closed motor skills
D) Stability vs. transport motor skills

42) Returning a serve in tennis is an example of which of the following types of motor skills?

Version 1 11
 A) Self-paced motor skill
B) Open motor skill
C) Closed motor skill
D) Stationary motor skill

43) Regulatory conditions regulate:

A) The spatial characteristics of a movement

B) The temporal characteristics of a movement
C) The spatial and temporal characteristics of a movement
D) The spatial and temporal characteristics of a movement and the forces that underlie
these characteristics

44) According to Gentile's taxonomy of motor skills, which of the following describes the
least complex skill?

A) Regulatory conditions stationary; object manipulated

B) Regulatory conditions in motion; object manipulated
C) Regulatory conditions stationary; no object manipulated
D) Regulatory conditions in motion; no object manipulated

45) Riding a surfboard on multiple waves would be classified in Gentile's taxonomy as:

A) Stationary environment, intertrial variability, body transport

B) Stationary environment, intertrial variability, body stability
C) In motion environment, intertrial variability, body transport
D) In motion environment, intertrial variability, body stability

Version 1 12
46) A softball player throws pitches to a stationary, cardboard cut-out of a batter. The
Environmental Context for the pitcher is:

A) Stationary with intertrial variability

B) Stationary with no intertrial variability
C) In-motion with intertrial variability
D) In-motion with no intertrial variability

47) Based on Gentile's Taxonomy, to simulate the regulatory conditions involved in the game
of softball, a coach would have players:

A) Hit a ball from a stationary tee

B) Hit balls pitched by a pitching machine
C) Hit balls pitched by a live pitcher
D) Practice swinging without a bat and a ball

FILL IN THE BLANK. Write the word or phrase that best completes each statement or
answers the question.
48) An example of an open motor skill is ________.

49) An example of a gross motor skill is ________.

50) If motor skills are classified according to the stability of the environment, bowling would
be placed in the category of ________ motor skills.

Version 1 13
51) Walking in a crowded mall makes walking an ________ motor skill.

52) Serial skills are a form of discrete skills. What is an example of a serial motor skill?

53) Archery and piano playing are two quite different skills, yet they can both be classified as
________ motor skills when the classification system is based on the stability of the
environment.

54) Whether or not an object must be manipulated is a skill characteristic in Gentile's

taxonomy of motor skills that is included in the ________ dimension of the taxonomy.

Version 1 14
Answer Key

Test name: Magill 1

1) TRUE

2) FALSE

3) FALSE

4) FALSE

5) TRUE

6) TRUE

7) FALSE

8) TRUE

9) TRUE

10) TRUE

11) FALSE

12) TRUE

Version 1 15
13) FALSE

14) FALSE

15) TRUE

16) FALSE

17) FALSE

18) TRUE

19) TRUE

20) FALSE

21) TRUE

22) B

23) D

24) D

25) A

26) D

Version 1 16
27) B

28) C

29) C

30) C

31) C

32) B

33) C

34) D

35) C

36) D

37) A

38) D

39) B

40) A

Version 1 17
41) C

42) B

43) D

44) C

45) C

46) B

47) C

48) See text for several examples

49) See text for several examples

50) closed

51) open

52) See text for several examples

53) closed

54) action function

Version 1 18
Version 1 19
Other documents randomly have
different content
looked into Collins’ distorted face, I began to wonder. However, so
far as I was concerned, that was neither here nor there. We were
going to have a long time in the ice yet together, and if life was to
continue reasonably pleasant in the imprisoned Jeannette’s cabin,
Collins must not make a fool of himself.
“Come now, Collins,” I begged persuasively, “think it over, and
you’ll see what I tell you is so—the order’s reasonable enough. But
even if it weren’t, you’d only make a bad matter worse by your ‘silent
protest.’ I wouldn’t do that. It bears on me the same as it does on
you. Now I’m an officer of twenty-three years seniority, which is more
than De Long has, and were we both on board a frigate I’d be very
much Mr. De Long’s senior. But here on the Jeannette he’s captain
and my superior, so I don’t feel it bears on me at all that I have to ask
his permission to come or go—it’s only a custom of the Service. And
there’s the skipper now,” I added as De Long appeared on deck from
the poop and stood blinking a moment in the glare from the ice.
“Think it over!”
But unfortunately for my clumsy efforts to pour oil on the troubled
waters, Collins’ eyes, gazing out over the ice, happened to fall at that
moment on the two little wood and canvas outhouses a ship’s length
off the starboard beam, which served officers and men as toilets,
since frozen in as we were, the regular ship’s “heads” on the
Jeannette itself had been placed out of commission. To these
“heads” on the ice all hands of course went freely as nature called.
Collins’ eyes lighted up as he contemplated them. He faced me with
a queer grin.
“Well, chief, I’ll modify a bit what I just said about asking
permission to leave the ship. In such simple language that he can’t
possibly misunderstand, I’ll beg the captain’s royal permission every
time I have to visit the ‘head’ and I’m going to start right now!” He
turned aft toward the poop.
Amazed at Collins’ intended action, I grabbed his arm and stopped
him short.
“Look here, old man, none of that! Do you want to insult the
captain openly?”
 Collins twisted out of my grip.
“What do you think he’s trying to do to me, chief? I’ll merely be
carefully obeying his order. By God, I’m going to ask him to let me go
on the ice right now!” He strode aft, stopped before the skipper,
saluted him elaborately.
What he said to De Long, I can only imagine, since I was too far
away to hear, but I judge he phrased his request in about as plain
old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon as it could be put, for De Long, obviously
startled, flushed a fiery red, retorted angrily, and then turned on his
heel.
And from that time forth, Mr. Collins and Captain De Long
remained separate in all things as much as they could, simply
carrying on the duties of the ship. And from that time also, Collins,
fancying offense to himself in almost every remark made in the
wardroom mess, withdrew more and more from association with the
rest of us, sticking only the more closely to Newcomb, who as the
sole other non-seagoing civilian aboard, he may have considered as
a sort of fellow victim.
 CHAPTER XII

September passed, and the hoped-for gales which might break up

the pack and allow us to escape, or at least to work into a winter
harbor in distant Wrangel Land, failed to materialize. October came
and went in the same manner, no real gales, no winds strong
enough to have any effect on the ice, nothing but daily gusts of fine
snow which cut our faces and spoiled our footing for exercise.
Frozen in, we went with the ice drift, in a general northwesterly
direction, till the rocky outline of Herald Island faded into the
hummocky horizon to the south, while our continued failure to sight
land to the westward made it less and less likely every day that
Wrangel Land stretched northward as we had been led to expect.
But we were not idle. After all, our expedition was a scientific one.
Aside from attempting to reach the Pole, aside from discovering new
lands in this unexplored ocean, our major aim was to add to the
world’s knowledge of the Arctic seas, of the Arctic skies, of magnetic
phenomena, of meteorological information and of animal life in the
unknown north. For these purposes we were the most elaborately
equipped expedition which had ever gone north. We carried two
scientists and God only knew what varieties of scientific instruments
gathered from the Smithsonian Institution and the Naval
Hydrographic Office.
Since exploration and discovery were for the present out of
question, De Long turned to all hands intensively on these scientific
phases. On the ice a hundred yards from the ship so as to be
unaffected by the iron in her, we set up a canvas observatory, with
compass, dip circle, anemometer, rain-gauge, barometer, pendulum,
and a variety of thermometers. Over the side, through a hole
chopped in the thick ice, we provided an opening for our dredge and
our drift lead. Hourly we took observations (and carefully recorded
them) of every type of phenomenon for which we were equipped to
measure—magnetic variation and dip, wind velocity and direction,
humidity, air pressure and temperature, gravity readings,
temperature of the sea at top, bottom, and points in between, salinity
of the sea water, speed and direction of drift—all this data laboriously
read night and day in the Arctic chill went into our logs. And for the
zoological and botanical side of our expedition, all hands were
directed to bring in for Newcomb’s inspection specimens of anything
found on the ice, under, or above it, which meant that whatever our
guns could knock down in the form of birds or beasts, or our hooks
could catch in the way of fish, passed under Newcomb’s scrutiny
before (in most cases) they went to Ah Sam and were popped into
the galley kettles.
And to top off all in completing our polar records, we brought along
an extensive and expensive photograph outfit, intending to get a
continuous record of our life in the Arctic and particularly some
authentic views of Aurora Borealis.
So there being nothing else to compete with it for our time, science
received a double dose of attention, too much in fact. Taking the
multitude of readings every hour (there were sixteen thermometers
alone to be read) kept the watch officer hopping, and as each of us,
except Collins and Newcomb, had ship and personnel matters to
look after, it became to a high degree a nuisance. Most of this
scientific work naturally should have fallen to Collins and Newcomb,
but unfortunately matters in their departments went none too
smoothly. The captain received a severe jolt when he learned that
the photographic outfit, entrusted to Collins’ care, was practically
useless because our meteorologist had neglected when buying his
photographic plates in San Francisco to get any developer for them
and that not a picture he took could be developed till we got back to
civilization. When on top of this, one of our barometers and some of
our precious thermometers entrusted also to Collins were carelessly
broken, the captain began to mistrust Collins as a scientist and
loaded a considerable part of the observation work on Chipp, on
Ambler, and on me—a development which did not help to make any
more amicable the attitude of Collins towards his shipmates.
Speaking frankly, after two months’ close association in the cabin
of the Jeannette, we were beginning to get tired of each other’s
company. Life on shipboard is difficult at best with the same faces at
every meal, the same idiosyncrasies constantly rubbing your nerves,
the same shortcomings of your messmates to irritate you; but
ordinarily there are compensations. Shore leave gets you away from
your shipmates, while foreign ports, foreign customs, foreign scenes,
and foreigners give flavor to a cruise that makes life not only livable
but to my mind rich in variety, and to a person like myself, completely
satisfying. But in the polar ice, we came quickly to the realization that
life on the Jeannette was life on shipboard at its worst—a small
cramped ship, a captain who socially had retired into himself, only a
few officers, and not a solitary compensation. No possibility of shore
leave, no foreign ports—nothing but the limitless ice pack holding us
helpless and no hope of any change (except for the worse) till
summer came and released us. And, impossible to conceal, a mental
despondency, as ponderable and as easily sensed as the cold
pervading the ship gripped our captain as we drifted impotently with
the pack between Herald Island and Wrangel Land, a thousand
miles from that Pole which in a blare of publicity from the Herald, he
had set out in such confidence to conquer.
Gone now were all the fine theories about the Kuro-Si-Wo Current
and the open path to the northward through the Arctic Ocean that its
warm waters would provide. We had only to look over the side at the
ice floes fifteen feet thick gripping our hull to know that the “black
tide” of Japan had no more contact with these frozen seas than had
the green waters of the Nile. And just as thoroughly exploded was
that other delusion on which we had based our choice of route—the
Herr Doktor Petermann’s thesis that Wrangel Land was a continent
stretching northward toward the Pole along the coasts of which with
our dog teams we could sledge our way over firm ground to the Pole.
Every glimpse we got of it as we drifted northwest with the pack for
our first eight weeks showed conclusively enough that Wrangel Land
was nothing more than a mountainous island to the southward and
not a very large island at that. As for Dr. Petermann and his idea that
Greenland stretched upward across the Pole to reappear on the
Siberian side as Wrangel Land, if that ponderous German scientist
who so dominated current European opinion on polar matters could
have been forced to spend a week in our crow’s-nest observing how
insignificant a speck his much publicized Wrangel Land formed of
the Arctic scene, I am sure the result would have been such a
deflation of his ego and his reputation as might be of great benefit at
least to future explorers even if too late to be of service to us in the
Jeannette, already led astray by the good doctor’s teachings.
How much the general knowledge amongst our officers that every
theory on which the expedition had been based was false had to do
with the lack of sociability and of harmony among us, and how much
of it may have been owing simply to our physical imprisonment in the
ice, I will not venture to say. But in my mind, the belief of all that as a
polar exploring expedition we were already a failure, doomed never
to get anywhere near the Pole, had a decided, if an unconscious,
bearing on the reactions of all of us, and most of all on the captain
and on Collins, both of whom had brought along massive blank
journals whose pages they had confidently expected to fill with the
records of their discoveries.
The captain’s journal I sometimes saw, as each evening around
midnight he toiled over his entries. Instead of records of new lands
discovered, of the attainment of ever-increasing latitudes exceeding
those around 83° North reached by the English through Baffin Bay
and Smith Sound, how it must have gnawed the captain’s heart that
his entries had to be confined to such items as my struggles with our
distilling apparatus, our difficulties with such newfangled gadgets as
telephones and electric generators, or the momentous facts that
Aneguin, Alexey, or Captain Dunbar (as the case might be) had
chased a polar bear (or perhaps a walrus) which had been shot (or
had escaped). All of these happenings to De Long’s chagrin must be
recorded as having occurred in the low seventies, latitudes far to the
south of those reached even by the insignificant and ill-equipped
caravels of Dutch seamen three hundred years ago in their
explorations of Spitzbergen.
What Collins put in his journal, I never knew. But I can well
imagine how much it must have irked him, a newspaper man
accustomed to live in an atmosphere of printing presses rumbling
away over their grist of momentous world events to be spread daily
before the eager eyes of Herald readers, to have nothing to record
except perhaps his personal sense of injustice. Yet put down
something every day he did, for I can still see him, his long drooping
mustaches almost sweeping the pages, religiously bending over the
leather-bound ledger every afternoon in his chilly cabin in the
Jeannette’s poop, pouring the bitterness of his soul onto those
pages, building up a record with which I doubt not he hoped when
we returned to civilization to blast De Long out of the Service in
disgrace.
 CHAPTER XIII

On November 6, two months to a day of our being trapped in the

pack, came the first break in the monotony of our imprisonment.
About four in the afternoon Collins, trudging perhaps for the
thousandth time the rough path to the observatory across that
hundred yards of ice which we had come to regard as substantial as
a Broadway sidewalk, came pell-mell back to the ship and up the
gangway into the wardroom to startle us with the news that the pack
ice had cracked wide open between our ship and the observatory!
We rushed on deck and over the side. Sure enough it was so. A little
behind Dr. Ambler and the captain, I arrived at the edge of the rent,
over a yard wide already and continuously growing wider. While we
could still jump the gap, there was a wild dash to get our precious
instruments out of the observatory and back across the opening to
the ship, which (all the officers taking a hand) we shortly
accomplished without mishap. That done, with varying emotions we
watched as over the next few hours the chasm widened, with the
dark sea water showing in strong contrast to the whiteness of the
snow-covered ice. But not for long did we see really open water, for
with the temperature far below zero, the water which was welling up
to within two feet of the top of the parted edges of the floe promptly
froze, even though it was salt, into a sheet of young ice. The gap
nevertheless kept widening till by midnight it was perhaps ten
fathoms across.
What was causing the rupture? One man’s guess was as good as
another’s, and all were worthless, I suppose. There was little wind,
no land in sight for the edge of the pack to strand on, no evidence of
pressure from any direction, and plenty of water beneath us, for the
soundings showed over twenty fathoms to a soft mud bottom.
Chipp’s surmise, that a tidal action was responsible, was as good an
explanation as any. But what is not satisfactorily explainable is
always fearsome, and it was perhaps excusable that we looked with
some anxiety toward our ship and were secretly relieved to see her
as steady as Gibraltar there in the ice some fifty fathoms off, still
heeled as usual to starboard with her masts and spars showing not
even a quiver as they stood sharply outlined against the frosty polar
sky. And so the day ended.
But morning brought a different scene. During the night from
somewhere came a push on the pack which closed that chasm,
forcing the layer of young ice which had formed over it up into
broken masses on our floe. Then with all the young ice squeezed
out, the two parted edges of the original pack came together under
such great pressure that the advancing sheet was shoved up over
the edge of the floe holding the ship, leaving broken masses seven
to eight feet thick strewn helter-skelter in a long ridge along the line
of junction.
As an engineer, I regarded that broken ice with severe misgivings.
We fortunately were solidly frozen in, with our thick floe spreading in
all directions interposed as a buckler between us and the pressing
pack, but suppose our floe should split and leave us exposed? Could
any ship withstand a squeeze in that Titan’s nutcracker? In spite of
our thick sides and reenforcing trusses, the sight of those eight foot
thick blocks of ice tumbled upon our floe was not reassuring.
On the Jeannette, men and officers alike questioningly scanned
the scene while slowly the hours drifted by and we waited
apprehensively in the silence of that Arctic morning for what was
next, and while we waited even what light breeze there was died
away to a perfect calm. Then without apparent reason and without
warning, the gap in the ice suddenly yawned open to a width of
some five fathoms and immediately down the canal thus formed,
broken ice started to flow in a groaning, shrieking mass that so
shook the floe in which the Jeannette was imbedded that to us there,
only a few yards away clinging to the rail of our ship, it appeared
each instant the sheet of ice protecting us must shatter and the
Jeannette herself be sucked in to join that swirling maelstrom of
hurtling ice cakes. Our eyes glued to the quaking floe into which we
were frozen, we watched it shiver and throb under the battering of
the broken blocks hurrying by, inwardly speculating on how long it
would stand up. Occasionally I glanced furtively at the five sledges
standing on the poop, packed with over a month’s provisions for men
and dogs, ready at a moment’s notice to go over the side should we
have to abandon ship. But if our ship, torn loose and caught in that
mass of churning ice, was crushed and sank, how could we ever get
safely away from her with our lives, let alone get clear those sledges
carrying the food?
Five hours of that scene and of such thoughts we stood, and then,
thank God, the flow of ice stopped. The Jeannette was unharmed.
We were still safe. But how long a respite would we have? Who
knew? Evidently not our captain. As I went below, worn and frozen, I
heard him call out to our executive officer,
“Knock off all regular ship’s work, Chipp. Turn to immediately with
all hands and make a couple of husky sledges to carry our dinghies
over that ice if we have to abandon ship. And for God’s sake, shake
it up!”
We got a day’s rest if one may call it that, while Nindemann,
Sweetman, and both watches toiled feverishly on the sledges. Then
came another day of strain, watching the moving ice grinding and
smashing at our floe, breaking it away to within a hundred feet of us.
Then a brief respite over night, only at 6 a.m. to have the motion start
again worse than ever.
This time, hell seemed to have broken loose. From the pack came
a noise the like of which I never heard before on land or sea, in war
or peace, sounding like the shrieking of a thousand steamer
whistles, the thunder of heavy artillery, the roaring of a hurricane,
and the crash of collapsing houses all blended together as down that
canal in the pack, a terrifying sight to behold, came stupendous
pieces of floe ice as high as two and three story buildings. Sliding by
crazily upended, they churned and battered against each other and
against the thick edges of our floe with such unearthly screeching
and horrible groanings that my eardrums seemed in a fair way to
split under the impact of that sound!
Occasionally a berg would jam in the canal blocking the current.
With that, under the force of the ice pressing behind, our floe would
groan and heave up into waves till several feet of its edge cracked
off, easing the pressure and relieving the jam—but each time leaving
us with less and less of the floe between us and disaster.
Half an hour of this in the dim light of the early dawn, and then the
movement ceased, leaving our tortured ears and jumping nerves to
return to normal as best they could while the day broke. But our relief
was considerably tempered when in the better light we discovered
that a new crack had formed a little distance ahead across our bows
and that into this opening an advancing floeberg was being driven
along like a wedge towards our port side, threatening to cut into the
undisturbed pack there and leave us imbedded in a tiny island of ice,
to be exposed then to the wear of churning bergs on both sides of
us!
With no further noticeable movement of the pack, we were left in
peace to contemplate the possibilities of this situation till late
afternoon, when the main stream again got underway and
bombarded our floe to starboard heavily for four hours so
strenuously that it seemed to all of us that this time we must surely
go adrift. But at about 8 p.m., the motion ceased again, leaving us all
in such a state of mind that the captain’s order for all hands to sleep
in their clothes with knapsacks close at hand ready for instant flight,
seemed to us the most natural thing in the world.
We didn’t get much sleep. Hardly had the midwatch ended, when
little Newcomb, who unable to rest at all, had in spite of the bitter
cold stayed on deck till 4 a.m., darted into De Long’s cabin, seized
his shoulder, woke him with a shout,
“Turn out, captain! It’s all over this time! That ice is coming right
down on us!”
De Long, already fully clothed, sprang from his bunk, seized his
knapsack, and rushed on deck. The rest of us in the poop, none too
sound asleep ourselves, were roused by the noise and hurriedly
followed him up to find that Newcomb had hardly exaggerated.
On the starboard side, like buildings being poured through a chute,
the broken floes were cascading along the channel at a livelier rate
than ever, but that at least was hardly novel to us now. What froze
our blood as we stood there in the cold light of the moon was the
sight ahead. The rift in the pack which yesterday was headed across
our bows, had changed direction squarely for our bowsprit, and now
along that opening was coming toward us irresistibly and steadily,
towering as high as our yardarms, a torrent of floebergs, thundering
down on the yet unbroken pack between with a violence that made
the sturdy Jeannette quiver under our feet like jelly!
Hardly audible in the roaring of the ice, Jack Cole shrilled away on
his bosun’s pipe, then his hoarse voice bellowed along the berth
deck,
“All hands! Stand by to abandon ship!”
Our entire crew poured up from below to shiver in a temperature of
twenty below zero and shake, I have no doubt for other good
reasons, as they stood helpless round the mainmast, all eyes riveted
on that fearful wall of advancing ice, with a crest of hummocks,
weighing twenty to fifty tons each, toppling forward like surf breaking
on our floe. Another crash, another startling advance of the
floebergs, and on top of the deckhouse I saw De Long suddenly
grasp the mainstay with both hands and hang on for dear life,
awaiting the final smash as that Niagara of ice struck us.
The blow never came. God alone knows why, but hardly twenty-
five feet from our bows, the onrushing wall of ice suddenly halted,
the pressure vanished, and we on the Jeannette were left to
contemplate, in the deathly Arctic silence which ensued and in the
growing light, the indescribable wreckage that had been wrought in
the level floe that had once surrounded us. And then like a feeble
anti-climax, the stillness was broken by the whistling of the bosun’s
pipe, followed by his call,
“All hands! Lay below for breakfast!”
Breakfast? Who really wanted breakfast? What each of us
earnestly wished was only to be far to the south, away from that
dreaded pack ready to crush us, but seemingly delaying the fatal
moment as a cat delays, knowing that the mouse with which it toys
cannot get away.
 CHAPTER XIV

Nothing else happened that day. Our dogs, which in the face of
disaster we had rounded up and penned inside the bulwarks, where
they relieved themselves by staging a continuous battle, we now let
loose and they joyously celebrated their freedom in chasing each
other over the broken ice. Watching their antics was some relief, little
though it might be, to frayed nerves and helped take our
imaginations off what that broken ice threatened to our ship.
As a further distraction, we had a clear day and far to the
southward sighted mountains, which we made out to be the familiar
north coast of Wrangel Land, some sixty miles away.
And that was all. The day which for us had dawned in imminent
peril, ended quietly with the Jeannette still frozen in that two months
old cradle of ice, still uncomfortably heeled well over to starboard.
We began to breathe more freely.
We took no more meteorological observations, but so far as I was
concerned, I had more to do than before. Though the fires were out
in my boilers and all the machinery laid up, at De Long’s direction I
spent a great part of my time below during this period continually
scanning the sides and the trusses for any signs of giving way, and
inspecting the bilges to see if the ship was making any water. Of
such troubles there were no indications, but I had constantly while
below to be wary of my head, for I found that the banging of the ice
shook down a good deal of loose matter in the holds, and particularly
in the bunkers.
November 13, one week from the day the pack first opened up on
us and inaugurated our reign of terror, brought new excitement.
Sleeping as before in my clothes, I was wakened at 2 a.m. by a loud
crack which seemed to come directly from our keel. I slid from my
bunk, in the passage outside bumped into the captain, and together
we ran on deck, there to meet Collins who, on the midwatch taking
the hourly temperature readings, had rushed over the side and now
was coming back aboard. He reported that there was nothing new
except a crack in the ice not over an inch wide running out from our
stem. This was disquieting, but nothing else happened during the
night and the daylight hours passed quietly enough without further
disturbance; so much so that by afternoon the skipper (full of
scientific zeal and expecting apparently some days of peace)
ordered our meteorological instruments reinstalled in a temporary
observatory. This we accordingly erected on one of the newly-formed
hills of ice as far from the ship as we dared but still, fairly close
aboard our starboard side.
From the grumbling of the seamen at this task as they dug into the
flintlike ice for anchorage for the guys holding down the canvas tent
over the instruments, I would say that the captain’s optimism was
hardly shared by his crew, but that was neither here nor there and by
5 p.m. when the twilight faded and night fell, the job was done.
Chipp took the first sets of readings. At eight o’clock, after supper,
I relieved him, to trek over the broken ice and by the dim light of an
oil lantern inside that flapping tent, read the dip circle, the barometer,
the anemometer, and a varied assortment of thermometers. All the
time as I struggled for footing on the rough ice pinnacle I wondered
what earthly good it all was, considering the negligible chances of
any of this data ever being returned home for scientific minds to
study.
At 10 p.m., I turned the job over to the captain (who, staying up
anyway the while he wrote in his journal, ordinarily took the readings
till midnight when Collins relieved him), and as was now my habit
after a week of alarms, I turned in with my fur boots on, earnestly
hoping to get some sleep to make up for the past week’s wear and
tear.
Till 11 p.m., De Long in his cabin scratched away industriously at
his journal. Then six bells struck, he dropped his pen, drew on his
parka, and went over the side to take the hourly observations.
Being the commanding officer, and not one of his subordinates (in
whom such an appreciation of the beauties of nature at the expense
of punctuality in observations might have seemed a fault), De Long
on his way to the observatory paused a few moments to stand on an
ice hummock and admire a splendid auroral exhibition, a magnificent
prismatic arch to the northward, filling the sky from east to west and
reaching almost to the zenith. The beauty of this phenomenon was
no longer a novelty to any of us, but still he stood awestruck in the
silent night drinking in that soundless electrical play of colored light,
when he heard behind him a crisp crackling as one of our dogs
walking on the snow. Turning, he saw to his surprise no dog but
instead two men, our so-called “anchor watch,” racing down the
starboard gangway and over the ice to our stern.
Both the aurora and the still unread instruments were forgotten as
the captain ran immediately for the bow. To his astonishment, there
he found the ice pack peaceably floating away from our port side,
leaving it completely exposed with open water lapping our hull for the
first time in months!
And as he watched in dazed amazement, the gap opened so that
in a few minutes we had alongside the Jeannette thirty fathoms of
rippling water in which was gorgeously reflected the northern lights
(a detail the beauty of which I think our captain now took little note).
The split in the pack was as clean and as straight along our fore and
aft centerline as if a giant hand had cut the ice with our keel, leaving
the ship still imbedded in the starboard floe toward which she
heeled. Meanwhile the port side pack, intact even to the bank of
snow which had built up above our gunwales, was sliding noiselessly
away to the northward, carrying with it, still asleep, three of our dogs
who had bedded themselves down in its white crust!
A glimpse at our heeled over clipper bow and at our bowsprit
thrusting forward over his head, quickened De Long into action.
Nothing visible now remained to hold that tilted ship from sliding any
second out of her bed and into open water! Back aboard he rushed,
and once more the quiet of the night was torn by the whistling of the
bosun’s pipe and Cole’s hoarse cry,
“All hands! Shake a leg! On deck wid yez!”
And again no sleep, as hastily in the darkness we hurried our
meteorological instruments back aboard, struck the observatory we
had so laboriously rigged only a few hours before, chased on board
all the dogs we could catch, rigged out our dinghies and our other
boats for immediate lowering, dug our steam-cutter out of the ice
alongside and hoisted it aboard, ran in our gangway, and lastly
rigged out a fall for lowering provisions over the side and into the
boats.
That all this, on the sloping deck of the Jeannette, was done in the
darkness at fifteen below zero and completed by midnight in less
than an hour, indicates what speed and strength fear gave to our
fingers and our feet. For the men tumbling up from below had to look
but once at the precarious perch to which the Jeannette clung to
send them flying to their tasks.
Midnight came.
Our work done, we stood by in the inhuman cold momentarily
expecting to feel the ship lurch under our feet, slide suddenly off into
the water, and without rudder, without steam, and without sails go
adrift in the darkness in that ever widening rift in the parted pack.
After an hour of this, with nothing happening to relieve the strain,
the tension became almost unbearable. De Long, looking over the
silent groups of fur-clad seamen clustered there on deck alongside
the boats, ordered Ah Sam to fire up the galley range and serve out
hot coffee to the men, hot tea to the officers. He then told Cole to
pipe down, but with all hands to stay in their clothes, ready for any
call. So we lay below, but I doubt if anyone had much better luck
than I getting to sleep again.
There was no need for reveille in the morning. The first streaks of
light found the whole crew from Irish bosun to Chinese cook lining
the bulwark, staring off to port. I climbed the bridge to get clear of the
snarling dogs. There before me, already ensconced in the port wing
was the skipper, rubbing his glasses to clear them of frost for a better
view.
“What do you make of it, chief?” asked De Long, nodding in the
direction of the distant pack.
 I squinted off to port. A thin skin of young ice, possibly four inches
thick, had formed over the exposed water. Across that, perhaps five
hundred to a thousand yards away, was the bank of snow which the
day before had been piled up against our bulwark.
“Well, captain, it’s a quarter of a mile off anyway,” I answered.
“Maybe more.” From the overhanging wing of the bridge I glanced
curiously down on our inclined side, exposed now for the first time in
months. Near the waterline, still looking fresh and bright, were those
gouges in our elm doubling we had received in early September
while butting and ramming a way through that twisting lead into the
pack. Looking at those battle scars, I wished fervently that we had
had less luck that day in battering our way in. But that was a subject
the rights and wrongs of which were now never discussed among
the officers. Instead, scanning our listed masts and our unsupported
port side, I asked,
“What in the name of all that’s holy is keeping us from sliding
clear?”
“God knows, I don’t,” replied De Long solemnly. “I just can’t figure
it out. When one side of our ice cradle slides away from us without
so much as taking with it any splinters from our hull, it makes my
theory that our planking’s solidly frozen to the ice on our starboard
side seem crazy. For why should the ice attach itself so firmly to the
planking on one side, and to the other side not at all? It’s beyond me,
Melville, why we don’t slide off.” He adjusted the furry edge of the
hood of his parka around his eyeglasses, peered down a second at
the scarred side below him, then while his glasses were still bright
and clear, stared off toward the wall of snow topping the edge of the
departed pack and finally nodded his head as if agreeing with my
estimate of its distance.
Looking worn and haggard, for if possible our captain had had
even less sleep than any of us during the past week, De Long
finished his examination, eyed for a long time his crew stretched out
below us along the rail, then turned to me,
“Melville, you’re older than I. In the late war you were at sea
fighting the rebels when I was still a midshipman, and you’ve been
through lots besides. So I feel I can talk to you, and lean on you as
on no one else on this ship, and God above us knows, I need
someone here to lean on! Every morning I pray to Him for our safety,
every night I give thanks to Him for our escapes during the day. But
here in the Arctic, God seems so distant, and this steady strain on
my mind is fearful! Look at my men below there, look at my ship!
Neither my men nor my ship are secure for a second, and yet I can’t
take a single step for their security. A crisis may come any moment
to bring us face to face with death—and all I can do is to be thankful
in the morning that it has not come during the night, and at night that
it has not come since the morning! And that’s the Arctic exploration
I’ve brought them on! Living over a powder keg with the fuse lighted,
waiting for the explosion, would be a similar mode of existence!
Melville, it’s hardly bearable!” And then looking down again at the
crew, he muttered wearily,
“But I’ve got to keep on bearing it. Call me if anything happens,
chief. So long as we’re still hanging on here, I’ll try to get some sleep
now.” With sagging shoulders eloquently proclaiming his utter
exhaustion, he slumped down the ladder and off the bridge, leaving
me alone, figuratively to add an “Amen” to his estimate of our
situation.
For over a week, the listing Jeannette, which looked as if the
pressure of a little finger would send her tumbling out of her inclined
bed, nevertheless clung to her half cradle in the pack, defying
apparently all the principles of physical force so far as I as an
engineer understood them.
On the third day after the pack separated, we had a bad southeast
gale blowing all night and all day, with terrific squalls at times
reaching a velocity of fifty miles an hour. Although that wind hit us
squarely on the starboard bow, its most favorable angle for casting
us adrift, the Jeannette held grimly to her berth and nothing
happened. Then on the fifth day, urged on by a northerly blow, the
floebergs again got underway, broke up the young ice to port of us,
and jammed themselves under our bows with heavy masses of ice
pressing directly on the stem. We confidently looked to see the ship
knocked clear this time, but evidently other floebergs jammed
against our exposed side exerted such a heavy beam pressure that
we stayed in place, though the poor Jeannette, squeezed both
ahead and abeam, groaned and creaked continuously under the
stresses on her strained timbers. The sixth day, the seventh day, and
the eighth day, we had more of the same, with streams of floebergs
bombarding our exposed port side, and on the starboard side our
floe steadily dwindling under the impact of the bergs hurtling through
the canal there.
Life on the Jeannette became almost impossible. Sleeping with
our clothes on, jumping nervously from our bunks at every sudden
crackling in the ship’s timbers, at each unexpected crash of the
bergs outside, we got slight rest for our bodies and none at all for our
nerves. And in the middle of all this, the sun disappeared below the
horizon for good, leaving us to face what might come in the
continuous gloom of the long Arctic night. According to
Danenhower’s calculations, we could expect the sun to rise again in
seventy-one days, unless meanwhile we drifted farther to the
northward, in which case of course our night would be still further
prolonged.
On the ninth day since the separation of the pack, the wind rose
once more, blowing directly on our starboard beam, and the never-
ceasing stream of bergs began again to pile up across our stem, for
us an ominous combination.
On the tenth day, fearing the worst, we rounded up all our dogs,
and waited. The pressure ahead increased, with floating ice piling up
along the port side higher than our rail, finally starting the planking in
our bulging bulwarks. Under the bowsprit, the rising ice blotted from
sight our figurehead. Then an upended floeberg crashed violently
into the pack under our starboard bow and wedged its way
relentlessly toward our side. The pressure became tremendous.
Beneath our feet the Jeannette’s tortured ribs groaned dismally. On
deck we looked silently at one another, waiting. Something was
going to collapse this time. Which would give way first, ship or ice?
Suddenly the Jeannette lifted by the stern, shifted a little in her
cradle. Instantly the floeberg under our starboard bow drove forward,
split our floe, and with a lurch and a heavy roll to port we slid into
open water, afloat and undamaged, on an even keel once more!
Intensely relieved at having got clear without being crushed, we
nevertheless looked back sadly, as we drifted off among the
floebergs, at the shattered remnants of the ice cradle which for two
and a half months had sheltered us, to see it now tumbling about in
elephantine masses, no longer a haven of refuge in our trials.
Well, we were afloat. It was at least some consolation to have a
level deck beneath our feet while we waited, sailors with no control
whatever over our ship, for what next the ice pack had in store for
us.
But the pack gave us a respite. Idly we drifted about in a wide bay
of broken ice, stopping for a brief time alongside one floe, then
drifting off till stopped by another. The wind moderated, the
temperature rose somewhat till it stood near zero, and finally it
began to snow. There being no signs of imminent danger, the
captain ordered the bosun to pipe down and we went below,
permitted at last to eat a meal without having the plates threaten to
slide each instant off the table.
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