The Roosevelt was kicked about by the floes as if she had been a football. The game began about four o’clock in the morning. I was in my cabin, trying to get a little sleep — with my clothes on, for I had not dared to remove them for a week. My rest was cut short by a shock so violent that, before I realized that anything had happened, I found myself on deck — a deck inclined to starboard by some 12 or 15 degrees. A big floe had picked up the grounded berg to which we were attached by the hawsers as if the thousand-ton berg had been a toy, and dashed it against the Roosevelt, smashing a big hole in the bulwarks at Marvin’s room . . . the cable which had been attached to the floe-berg at the stern had become entangled with the propeller. It was time for lightning thought and action: by attaching a heavier cable to the parted one and taking a hitch round the steam capstan, we finally disentangled it.
This excitement was no sooner over than a great berg some 25 or 30 feet in diameter was dropping toward the ship.The ship was now quite at the mercy of the drifting ice . . . if she were driven any higher upon the shore, we should have to discharge a large part of the coal in order to lighten her. So I decided to dynamite the ice.
I told Bartlett to smash the ice between the Roosevelt and the heavy floes outside, making a soft cushion for the ship to rest on. Several sticks of dynamite were wrapped in pieces of old bagging and fastened on the end of long spruce poles. Pole, wire, and dynamite were thrust down through cracks in the ice at several places in the adjacent floes. The other end of each wire was then connected with the battery, every one retreated to a respectful distance on the far side of the deck, and a quick, sharp push on the plunger of the battery sent the electric current along the wires.
Rip! Bang! Boom! The ship quivered like a smitten violin string, and a column of water and pieces of the ice went flying a hundred feet into the air, geyser fashion.
The pressure of the ice against the ship removed, she righted herself and lay quietly on her cushion of crushed ice — waiting for whatever might happen next.