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Page 8
But stronger, more insistent than even these instincts of the animal was
the blind, unreasoned impulse that set their faces to the southward: "To
get forward, to get forward." Answering the resistless influence of
their leader, that indomitable man of iron whom no fortune could break
nor bend, and who imposed his will upon them as it were a yoke of
steel--this idea became for them a sort of obsession. Forward, if it
were only a yard; if it were only a foot. Forward over the
heart-breaking, rubble ice; forward against the biting, shrieking wind;
forward in the face of the blinding snow; forward through the brittle
crusts and icy water; forward, although every step was an agony, though
the haul-rope cut like a dull knife, though their clothes were sheets of
ice. Blinded, panting, bruised, bleeding, and exhausted, dogs and men,
animals all, the expedition struggled forward.
One day, a little before noon, while lunch was being cooked, the sun
broke through the clouds, and for upward of half an hour the ice-pack
was one blinding, diamond glitter. Bennett ran for his sextant and got
an observation, the first that had been possible for nearly a month. He
worked out their latitude that same evening.
The next morning Ferriss was awakened by a touch on his shoulder.
Bennett was standing over him.
"Come outside here a moment," said Bennett in a low voice. "Don't wake
the men."
"Did you get our latitude?" asked Ferriss as the two came out of the
tent.
"Yes, that's what I want to tell you."
"What is it?"
"Seventy-four-nineteen."
"Why, what do you mean?" asked Ferriss quickly.
"Just this: That the ice-pack we're on is drifting faster to the north
than we are marching to the south. We are farther north now than we were
a month ago for all our marching."
II.
By eleven o'clock at night the gale had increased to such an extent and
the sea had begun to build so high that it was a question whether or not
the whaleboat would ride the storm. Bennett finally decided that it
would be impossible to reach the land--stretching out in a long, dark
blur to the southwest--that night, and that the boat must run before
the wind if he was to keep her afloat. The number two cutter, with
Ferriss in command, was a bad sailer, and had fallen astern. She was
already out of hailing distance; but Bennett, who was at the whaleboat's
tiller, in the instant's glance that he dared to shoot behind him saw
with satisfaction that Ferriss had followed his example.
The whaleboat and the number two cutter were the only boats now left to
the expedition. The third boat had been abandoned long before they had
reached open water.
An hour later Adler, the sailing-master, who had been bailing, and who
sat facing Bennett, looked back through the storm; then, turning to
Bennett, said:
"Beg pardon, sir, I think they are signalling us."
Bennett did not answer, but, with his hand gripping the tiller, kept his
face to the front, his glance alternating between the heaving prow of
the boat and the huge gray billows hissing with froth careering rapidly
alongside. To pause for a moment, to vary by ever so little from the
course of the storm, might mean the drowning of them all. After a few
moments Adler spoke again, touching his cap.
"I'm sure I see a signal, sir."
"No, you don't," answered Bennett.
"Beg pardon, I'm quite sure I do."
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