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Updated: May 11, 2025
There was a northerly breeze with occasional snow-flurries. We secured three crab-eater seals two cows and a bull. The bull was a fine specimen, nearly white all over and 9 ft. 3 in. long; he weighed 600 lbs. Shortly before noon further progress was barred by heavy pack, and we put an ice-anchor on the floe and banked the fires.
We cast off our ice-anchor and pulled the oars aboard. They had grown during the night to the thickness of telegraph-poles while rising and falling in the freezing seas, and had to be chipped clear before they could be brought inboard. We were dreadfully thirsty now.
'Carry your line out to the fast ice, was the order we received from the master; and every one of us, realizing the great danger, pulled as hard as he could. The 'fast ice' was dimly in sight when we started, for we had drifted while at breakfast towards it, as well as towards the berg. Only a few minutes were needed to reach it. We jumped out and dug a hole, and planted the ice-anchor.
They are also wonderfully enabled to endure the cold even on those parts of the body which are not thus protected, for we have seen a young puppy sleeping, with its bare paw laid on an ice-anchor, with the thermometer at -30°, which with one of our dogs would have produced immediate and intense pain, if not subsequent mortification.
September 11th. Lat. 81 degrees 40' N.; long. 2 degrees E. Still lying-to amid enormous ice fields. The one which stretches away to the north of us, and to which our ice-anchor is attached, cannot be smaller than an English county. To the right and left unbroken sheets extend to the horizon. This morning the mate reported that there were signs of pack ice to the southward.
Just then a low berg came driving up from the southward, dashing the spray over its sides, and with its forehead ploughing up the smaller ice as if in scorn. A happy thought flashed across the captain's mind. "Down the quarter boat," he cried. In an instant it struck the water, and four men were on the thwarts. "Cast an ice-anchor on that berg."
The ship was making about three and a half feet of water in the twenty-four hours, a quantity easily kept in check by the pumps. During the 14th the 'Aurora' worked very slowly northward through heavy pack. Occasionally the yards were backed or an ice-anchor put into a floe to help her out of difficult places, but much of the time she steered herself.
The ship was blocked at one point by a wedge-shaped piece of floe, but we put the ice-anchor through it, towed it astern, and proceeded through the gap. Steering under these conditions required muscle as well as nerve. There was a clatter aft during the afternoon, and Hussey, who was at the wheel, explained that "The wheel spun round and threw me over the top of it!"
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