THE ARCTIC DISASTERS 261 



fleet — gaunt, tattered, unshaven, incredibly eager. The look- 

 outs sighted them as black dots on the ice-field. The men 

 swarmed into the rigging to watch them approach. Still they 

 came on, over the rough ice; and by-and-by a hoarse voice 

 called, ''By God, they're white!" 



All their supplies had gone down with their ship; they them- 

 selves had been forced to eat the food of the natives — blubber 

 and unskinned walrus meat; eight of them, suffering terribly 

 from hunger and cold, had died. Captain Barber of the 

 Japan, for his last square meal before he yielded to necessity 

 and took to the savage fare that kept him alive for nearly a 

 year, had eaten a few tallow candles, which he found on the 

 beach. 



Such an incident does not appear impressive on the printed 

 page; stop, though, and think what it meant. We are ac- 

 customed to pass lightly over narratives of such experiences 

 as not one person in a hundred thousand has actually suffered. 

 The story went through the fleet as the vessels worked north. 



In one respect the season itself was unlike most seasons; in 

 August the outswinging centre of the great pack moved farther 

 south than usual, and continued to move south. Between 

 Point Belcher and Icy Cape, where the incurving shore forms 

 an arc as of a strung bow, a number of vessels were lying in 

 clear water, and the ice swept in until it touched each headland. 

 To the north, off Point Belcher, four vessels were caught in the 

 pack; and ten miles south, off Wainwright Inlet, eighteen vessels 

 were crowded into a little patch of clear water between the 

 pack and the shore. Farther south, another group of seven 

 vessels lay, some in the pack and some free and clear, and 

 farther still, three more. 



Among the vessels that had been working northeast toward 

 Point Barrow, as the ice moved off shore late in August, was the 

 bark Monticello, of New London, which had already turned back 

 when, on August 29th, a strong wind accompanied by snow 

 blew from the southwest and the ice began to close in. 



The master of the Monticello hoped, by short tacks in shallow 

 water, to beat his way past the shoals at Point Belcher before 



