Nindemann and Noros did not get to bed until midnight. But they fell asleep contentedly, seemingly unaffected by their amphibious labors across the freezing tidal flats.
ON SEPTEMBER 19, having reorganized themselves and buried all their inessential belongings—including papers, chronometers, and natural history artifacts—in a cache marked by a tent pole stuck in the sand, De Long and his men prepared to march south over the wastelands of the delta. With only a few days’ worth of food left, De Long knew they had to find a way out of this quagmire of mud and sand and water and locate the main channel of the Lena. He read to the men a passage from the Gospel according to Matthew:
“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? Or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed … But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Dr. Ambler, who’d been overwhelmed with treating so many purpled and frostnipped feet, was pessimistic about their chances of reaching a settlement. “Our outlook at this rate is a poor one,” the doctor wrote. “We must move on & get to the river.”
De Long, though he could hardly walk, put a more hopeful gloss on their prospects. The captain remained as resolute as ever. In the cache near their campsite, he had left this record in a discarded instrument box:
Monday, 19th of September, 1881.
Lena Delta.
The following named fourteen persons belonging to the Jeannette landed here on the evening of the 17th inst., and will proceed on foot this afternoon to try to reach a settlement on the Lena River: De Long, Ambler, Collins, Nindemann, Görtz, Ah Sam, Alexey, Erichsen, Kaack, Boyd, Lee, Iverson, Noros, Dressler. A record was left [on] Semenovski Island buried under a stake. The thirty-three persons composing the officers and crew of the Jeannette left that island in three boats on the morning of the 12th inst. (one week ago). That same night we were separated in a gale of wind, and I have seen nothing of them since. My boat made the land in the morning of the 16th inst., and I suppose we are at the Lena Delta. After trying for two days to get inshore without grounding, or to reach one of the river mouths, I abandoned my boat, and we waded ashore, carrying our provisions and outfit with us. We must now try with God’s help to walk to a settlement. We are all well, have four days’ provisions, arms and ammunition, and are carrying with us only the ship’s books and papers, with blankets, tents, and some medicines; our chances of getting through seem good.
George W. De Long, Commanding
My darling husband—
I have to keep a brave and hopeful appearance to those around me. I cannot worry them with my troubles. To Sylvie I want to be cheerful. She cannot understand the situation and I do not want her to. I do not think I really knew before how dearly and deeply I love you, and I cannot understand how it is I am willing to make such unladylike declarations now, for you know my characteristic reserve. But I know you are longing for love and affection as much as I am.
It is evening now; I am writing in the library. Little Sylvie is in bed fast asleep, having said her prayers for her father’s health and safety. There is a blazing fire in the grate, the two dogs are stretched out on the fur rug in front of it. How would you like to spend the evening with me? Or is it pleasanter where you are? I suppose I mustn’t tease you—not until we meet, and I can judge how much teasing you can stand.
Emma
35 · REMEMBER ME IN NEW YORK
The castaways marched for two days across the soggy labyrinths of the delta, nagged by worries that they might be on the wrong course. They could not move in a straight line. They were forever reaching for some other, drier bank, some more reliable tongue of land, some clearer clue that might lead them out of this malign wilderness. They could never be sure whether the river they were following was the river—not some subsidiary stream that might fray or peter out into an impassable bog. On Petermann’s chart, this country was labeled SWAMP OVER ETERNALLY FROZEN LAND.
A few hog-backed mountainous forms bulged in the far distance, hovering over intervening patchworks of water of every description: meandering canals, brackish ponds, expansive bays, channels stagnant and channels swift-moving. All of it was turning to ice. The natives and animals knew that it was time to quit this place—in fact, they were already gone. Every instinct had told them that much more ice was coming, and the ice would cause the floods, and the floods would bring smashing restructurings of the existing ice. Such upheaval arrived like clockwork each year. The few dilatory ducks and geese that could be seen from a distance were gathered in flocks as if preparing to migrate. At this point, any animal that was left out here, whether avian or mammalian, was a vagrant, a laggard, as lost and out of place as De Long and his men.
It was a severe country, a land that seemed better suited for mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and woolly rhinos, a Pleistocene tundra on a fantastic scale. All along the active channels lay a cluttered fringe of bleached gray wood that had floated a thousand miles downriver from where there were trees in the green forests of the Russian taiga. De Long had no choice but to follow the river channels where the timber was collected—he could not stray far from this abundant source of heat, any more than a desert traveler could stray from a life-giving stream.
In some ways, it was the worst time of year to be tromping over this watery maze. In summer, one could walk over much of it and raft over the rest. In winter, all the streams and channels would be frozen solid, creating highways that, despite the killing cold, could be traversed with relative ease. But this was something in the middle, an in-between time that stymied movement. The accumulating snow had begun to obscure the land’s clues and patterns, and the ice now skimming over the river channels was not yet strong enough to sustain a man’s weight. It was freezing cold, but with none of the cold’s advantages.
At least there were no mosquitoes. During the peak of summer, the pests tormented every warm-blooded creature that had the temerity to trespass across the Lena delta. Mosquitoes, swarming clouds of them, were known to bring down reindeer and drive men to madness. De Long had missed the insects by no more than two weeks.
As they marched, De Long worried most about the frostbite victims. Boyd and Ah Sam were in bad shape, but they seemed to be improving. Erichsen’s condition, however, was deteriorating. The last two days of traveling had left him in utter agony. Even though Nindemann had carved a crutch for him out of driftwood, Erichsen could only hobble along, one awkward shuffle at a time, his eyes pooling with tears. The men thought it ironic that frostbite would afflict him the most seriously, he being the only Scandinavian in the group. Besides, they had come to think of Erichsen as invincible. “He’s as tough as well-tanned leather,” Collins had written in one of his rhymes, “and worth any common three men rolled together.” The Dane was a big, affable man, with a stout constitution and a sunny disposition, a man so helpful to other people that his comrades were now slow to recognize how serious his situation was.
During a low moment the previous day, Erichsen had sat down on the snow-dusted tundra and refused to budge. “I can’t go on!” he cried. “I can’t go on!” When Nindemann came to his aid, Erichsen implored him to go away. He would stay there and die; he didn’t want to hold the others up anymore. Nindemann told his friend not to give up. They would make it, he assured the Dane, and soon enough they would all be celebrating in St. Petersburg. But Erichsen roared back, “Go all the way to Petersburg if you want—I can’t go any further!”
De Long and Dr. Ambler gathered around Erichsen and eventually coaxed him to stand up and start walking again. But De Long was alarmed, writing, “His condition is serious indeed.”
Just how serious became apparent that night after dinner, when Ambler removed the bandage from Erichsen’s right foot. The doctor was aghast at what he saw: A large hunk of putrefied flesh from the ball of his foot sl
oughed off and fell on the ground. Ambler said nothing to Erichsen about this. He discreetly swept it up and then busied himself with dressing the wound. But the doctor had seen a bit of exposed bone. Shaken, he finished wrapping Erichsen’s foot, then went off to confer with De Long.
Erichsen had not gotten a good look at his foot, but he knew something was very wrong. He turned to Nindemann in confidence. “Nindemann,” he asked, “do you know anything about frostbites?”
Nindemann, who had experienced frostbite in Greenland, tried to answer matter-of-factly. “Yes,” he said. “When it first comes on, the flesh turns blue and then black.”
Erichsen thought about that for a while, then said, “When the doctor took off the bandage, I saw something dropping from under my foot.”
Nindemann could not bear to tell him the truth. “Erichsen, I guess you’ve been dreaming.”
“No,” the Dane insisted, worry spreading over his face. “I’m certain of it. I saw something drop from my foot.”
ON THE AFTERNOON of September 21, two days after leaving the coast, De Long and his column of men spotted something in the distance that stirred their hearts. Ahead, along a bend of the river, stood two wooden dwellings side by side. One was old and dilapidated, but the other seemed of recent construction. To De Long they appeared more than just crude summer huts, likely “intended for a prolonged residence.” Everyone was seized by the same fervent thought: Could they be occupied?
Those marching in the vanguard—Alexey, Nindemann, and Noros—raced ahead. They creaked open the doors but, to their dismay, found both structures empty. There were fresh ashes in the fireplaces, though, and from the condition of the premises, Nindemann concluded that the occupants, whoever they were, had quit the place no more than two weeks earlier. Ambler thought the huts were “in tolerable repair,” and inside, the men found a checkerboard, wooden forks, pencil stubs, and “evidences” said De Long, “of the use of tools by somewhat skilled workmen.” Nearby was a trap with a fox’s head still in it—though the body, said De Long, “had been eaten or cut off close to the neck.” Other structures, apparently for hanging and drying meat, could be seen along the river.
Where were the huts’ occupants? This was obviously a hunting-and-trapping camp of some kind, but it had the feel of being fairly well established. Could this be the settlement marked on De Long’s chart as Tscholbogoje? He shuddered at the thought. What if all the places identified on his map as “villages” were nothing more than abandoned hunting lodges? It was “an important question,” wrote De Long, “for if this pair of huts make a ‘settlement,’ our chances of keeping on successfully are very slim indeed.”
If this was Tscholbogoje, De Long calculated, then he was more than eighty miles away from the next likely settlement on his chart. He did not think his men could go that far. They only had two days’ pemmican rations left, he noted, and had “three lame men who cannot make more than five or six miles a day.” The disabled trio—Ah Sam, Boyd, and especially Erichsen—left the captain in a quandary. “Of course I cannot leave them,” he wrote, “[but] they certainly cannot keep up with the pace necessary.”
So De Long formed a plan: They would stay the night in the huts. In the morning, he would send two of his strongest men ahead in hopes of finding a settlement and securing help. All the others would stay here, using the dwellings as a base camp while awaiting rescue. In the relative warmth of the huts, Ah Sam, Boyd, and Erichsen at least stood a chance of healing enough to allow them to walk again should no help arrive within a week.
That afternoon, the men collected driftwood, and soon fires were burning in the huts. Close by, Nindemann found a dead gull that had been caught in a fox trap baited with fish. Ah Sam was promptly handed the bird to make a stew, but when he began to pluck it, he found that it was completely rotten.
De Long sent Alexey out with a Remington to hunt for game while there was still light. He prayed that Alexey would have good fortune—if not, the captain knew, they would soon starve. “Unless Providence sends something in our way,” De Long wrote, they would have no choice but to eat Snoozer. After that, they were out of options. De Long punctuated his journal with an unsettling question: “And when the dog is eaten—?”
THAT NIGHT AT about nine o’clock, Alexey returned to the huts. He knocked on the doors and stirred the men, most of whom had drifted off to sleep. He had good news—in fact, he was holding good news in his arms: the haunch of a freshly killed animal. “Captain,” Alexey said excitedly. “We got two reindeer. Three miles from here.” He had brought in this hindquarter and two deer tongues as proof. “By strategy unsurpassed,” De Long wrote, Alexey had “crept upon a herd, and at twenty-five yards’ distance dropped two. Well done, Alexey! The darkest hour is just before the dawn.”
The rest of the meat could be gathered in the morning, but this was cause for immediate celebration. De Long ordered up a meal to be cooked. Roused from their sleep, the joyous men carved up the deer and within an hour were feasting on venison steaks.
The next morning, De Long sent Nindemann, Alexey, and five other men to haul in the two deer carcasses, and they spent the next two days consuming the meat while Ambler did his best to nurse Erichsen, Ah Sam, and Boyd back into marching condition. Having so much fresh meat on hand changed De Long’s plans; he decided against sending two men ahead to find a settlement. For now, they would all stay together. “We can remain here a day or two to let our sick people catch up,” De Long wrote, “and while living upon deer meat can search for more to cook and carry with us.”
Alexey had no more luck finding deer, however, and after two days, De Long decided to resume the march south. He was reluctant to leave the snug warmth of the dwellings—with the fires going, his thermometer had consistently shown a temperature of seventy degrees Fahrenheit inside his hut—but they had to keep moving. Erichsen seemed to be faring better, and Ah Sam and Boyd were nearly healed. De Long left a rickety Winchester rifle in one of the dwellings, as a “surprise for the next visitor.” Before departing, De Long wrote a record, translated into six languages, and placed it inside one of the huts, with a request that its finder please forward it to the secretary of the United States Navy.
Arctic Exploring Steamer Jeannette
At a Hut on the Lena Delta
Believed to be near Tcholhogoje
Saturday, 24th of September, 1881
The following-named persons, fourteen of the officers and crew of the Jeannette, reached this place on September 21, on foot, from the Arctic Ocean. We shot two reindeer, which gives us an abundance of food for the present, and we have seen so many more that anxiety for the future is relieved. Our three lame men being now able to walk, we are about to resume our journey, with two day’s rations deer meat and two days’ rations pemmican and three pounds of tea.
George W. De Long
FOUR DAYS LATER, De Long and his men stumbled upon another hut, this one large enough to hold everyone. To De Long, it seemed like “a palace,” though back at home, he guessed, they would deem it a “dirty hovel, unfit for a dog.” The hut was built high on a hill above a broad stretch of river, and, like the previous two huts, it seemed to have been recently occupied. Judging by the “fresh embers and meat scraps” found around the place, De Long thought it could have been used as recently as the previous night. Nearby, Alexey spotted moccasin tracks in the snow that he judged to be only a day or two old. A few miles away, he and Nindemann found a tiny hut that contained a fish that was still fresh.
De Long tried to get a fix on their location. By his best guess, they were nearing the end of the delta and drawing close to a place marked on his chart as Sagastyr. Whether Sagastyr was a settlement or just an abandoned hut—perhaps this one—he could not know. He was starting to realize how completely sketchy his map was. “It is hard,” he wrote, “to make the chart reconcile with the country.”
De Long had no idea where he was. But these moccasin tracks—and two more sets of footprints found the next day—fe
d a hope in all the men that a settlement might be nearby. Who were these people who had left their tracks in the snow? At times, De Long had a strange feeling that he was being followed and watched. This was a ghost country, one whose inhabitants would not reveal themselves. He speculated that survivors from Chipp’s boat or from Melville’s had already reached a settlement and had initiated a search. “If Chipp or Melville got through,” De Long wrote, “they would naturally send back to look for us.” This, he thought, might be the explanation behind the fresh footprints: Maybe people were out looking for them, even now.
With this possibility in mind, De Long ordered a signal fire built on the highest part of the promontory and erected a makeshift flagpole (made from driftwood), with a black blanket serving as a flag. For the next few days, they would stay in the hut and do everything they could to draw attention to themselves. Wrote Ambler: “God grant that our smoke or fire may be seen by some party who can give us assistance.”
Ambler thought the hut was “a godsend” as “all of us are more or less used up.” Everyone was in dire need of rest. The past four days had been a horrendous trudge. They had camped out each night in temperatures reaching close to zero, with large scraps of tent fabric thrown over them, said De Long, “like tarpaulins over merchandise.” They had plunged through ice too many times to recount, and had nearly capsized while crossing a wide, swift river channel in a precarious makeshift raft. But for now they were safe again, and at least they had plenty to eat. The day before, Alexey had killed a big buck, just as De Long was noting that their food supply had dwindled to their last rations of pemmican.
“I need hardly say how great the relief was to my overstretched mind,” the captain wrote of Alexey’s bounty. “Had [Alexey] failed, our provisions would consist of poor Snoozer.” De Long had come to see the hand of God behind these timely encounters with game and shelter: “If ever Divine Providence was manifested in behalf of needy and exposed people, we are an instance of it. All that I need to make my present anxiety nil is some tidings of the two boats and their occupants.”