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Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems 238

Priyadarsi Nanda ·
Vivek Kumar Verma ·
Sumit Srivastava · Rohit Kumar Gupta ·
Arka Prokash Mazumdar Editors

Data Engineering
for Smart Systems
Proceedings of SSIC 2021
Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

Volume 238

Series Editor
Janusz Kacprzyk, Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw, Poland

Advisory Editors
Fernando Gomide, Department of Computer Engineering and Automation—DCA,
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering—FEEC, University of Campinas—
UNICAMP, São Paulo, Brazil
Okyay Kaynak, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
Derong Liu, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University
of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Witold Pedrycz, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada
Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Marios M. Polycarpou, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
KIOS Research Center for Intelligent Systems and Networks, University of Cyprus,
Nicosia, Cyprus
Imre J. Rudas, Óbuda University, Budapest, Hungary
Jun Wang, Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong,
Kowloon, Hong Kong
The series “Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems” publishes the latest
developments in Networks and Systems—quickly, informally and with high quality.
Original research reported in proceedings and post-proceedings represents the core
of LNNS.
Volumes published in LNNS embrace all aspects and subfields of, as well as new
challenges in, Networks and Systems.
The series contains proceedings and edited volumes in systems and networks,
spanning the areas of Cyber-Physical Systems, Autonomous Systems, Sensor
Networks, Control Systems, Energy Systems, Automotive Systems, Biological
Systems, Vehicular Networking and Connected Vehicles, Aerospace Systems,
Automation, Manufacturing, Smart Grids, Nonlinear Systems, Power Systems,
Robotics, Social Systems, Economic Systems and other. Of particular value to both
the contributors and the readership are the short publication timeframe and
the world-wide distribution and exposure which enable both a wide and rapid
dissemination of research output.
The series covers the theory, applications, and perspectives on the state of the art
and future developments relevant to systems and networks, decision making, control,
complex processes and related areas, as embedded in the fields of interdisciplinary
and applied sciences, engineering, computer science, physics, economics, social, and
life sciences, as well as the paradigms and methodologies behind them.
Indexed by SCOPUS, INSPEC, WTI Frankfurt eG, zbMATH, SCImago.
All books published in the series are submitted for consideration in Web of Science.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15179

Priyadarsi Nanda · Vivek Kumar Verma ·
Sumit Srivastava · Rohit Kumar Gupta ·
Arka Prokash Mazumdar
Editors

Data Engineering for Smart

Systems
Proceedings of SSIC 2021
Editors
Priyadarsi Nanda Vivek Kumar Verma
School of Electrical and Data Engineering Manipal University Jaipur
University of Technology Sydney Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Rohit Kumar Gupta
Sumit Srivastava Manipal University Jaipur
Manipal University Jaipur Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Arka Prokash Mazumdar

Department of Computer Science
and Engineering
Malviya National Institute of Technology
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

ISSN 2367-3370 ISSN 2367-3389 (electronic)

Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems
ISBN 978-981-16-2640-1 ISBN 978-981-16-2641-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2641-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
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claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
Preface

This book is one-pot solution for authors to showcase their work among the research
communities, application warehouses and the public–private sectors. This series is
an opportunity to gather research scientific works related to data engineering concept
in the context of computational intelligence consisted of interaction between smart
devices, smart environments and smart interactions, as well as information tech-
nology support for such areas. Data from mentioned areas also need to be stored
(after their gathering) in intelligent database systems and to be processed (using
smart and intelligent approach). The aim of this series is to make available a plat-
form for the publication of books on all aspects of single- and multi-disciplinary
research on these themes to make the latest results available in a readily accessible
form. The innovations provide the latest software tools to be showcased in the book
series through publications. The high-quality content with broad range of the topics
pertaining to the book series will be peer-reviewed and get published on suitable
recommendations.
This book will provide state of the art to research scholars, scientists, industry
learners and postgraduates from the various domains of engineering and related
fields, as this incorporates data science and the latest innovations in the field of engi-
neering with their paradigms and methods that employ knowledge and intelligence
in the research community. This book comprises its scope ranging from data science
for smart systems which are having inbuilt capabilities of handling the research chal-
lenges and problems related to energy-aware sensors, smart city projects, wearable
devices, smart healthcare solutions, smart e-learning initiatives and social implica-
tions of IoT. Further, it extends its coverage to the different computational aspects
involved in various domains of engineering such as complex security solutions for
data engineering, communication networks, data analytics, machine learning, inte-
grating IoT data with external data sources and data science approaches for smart
systems.
Secondarily, this book provides the technological solutions to non-engineering
and sciences domain as it contains the fundamental innovation in the field of engi-
neering which turns to be a real solution for their problems. Also, it includes the

v
vi Preface

paradigms which support industries for the development of solutions in favor of

society and make everyone’s life easier.

Sydney, Australia Priyadarsi Nanda

Jaipur, India Vivek Kumar Verma
Jaipur, India Sumit Srivastava
Jaipur, India Rohit Kumar Gupta
Jaipur, India Arka Prokash Mazumdar
Contents

Using Machine Learning, Image Processing and Neural Networks

to Sense Bullying in K-12 Schools: Enhanced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Lalit Kumar, Palash Goyal, Karan Malik, Rishav Kumar,
and Dhruv Shrivastav
Feature-Based Comparative Study of Machine Learning
Algorithms for Credibility Analysis of Online Social Media Content . . . . 13
Utkarsh Sharma and Shishir Kumar
Smart Support System for Navigation of Visually Challenged
Person Using IOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Tuhin Utsab Paul and Aninda Ghosh
Identity-Based Video Summarization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Soummya Kulkarni, Darshana Bhagit, and Masooda Modak
Security Testing for Blockchain Enabled IoT System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
A. B. Yugakiruthika and A. Malini
Two-Dimensional Software Reliability Model with Considering
the Uncertainty in Operating Environment and Predictive Analysis . . . . 57
Ramgopal Dhaka, Bhoopendra Pachauri, and Anamika Jain
Object Recognition in a Cluttered Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Rashmee Shrestha, Mandeep Kaur, Nitin Rakesh, and Parma Nand
Breast Cancer Prediction on BreakHis Dataset Using Deep CNN
and Transfer Learning Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Pinky Agarwal, Anju Yadav, and Pratistha Mathur
A Comprehensive Tool Survey for Blockchain to IoT Applications . . . . . 89
A. B. Yugakiruthika and A. Malini
Hybrid Ensemble for Fake News Detection: An Attempt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Lovedeep Singh

vii
viii Contents

Detectıon of Abnormal Activity at College Entrance Through

Video Surveillance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Lalit Damahe, Saurabh Diwe, Shailesh Kamble, Sandeep Kakde,
and Praful Barekar
Audio Peripheral Volume Automation Based on the Surrounding
Environment and Individual Human Listening Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Adit Doshi, Helly Patel, Rikin Patel, Brijesh Satasiya,
Muskan Kapadia, and Nirali Nanavati
A Survey: Accretion in Linguistic Classification of Indian
Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Dipjayaben Patel
The Positive Electronic Word of Mouth: A Research Based
on the Relational Mediator Meta-Analytic Framework
in Electronic Marketplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Bui Thanh Khoa
A Review: Web Content Mining Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Priyanka Shah and Hardik B. Pandit
GPS-Free Localization in Vehicular Networks Using Directional
Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Parveen, Sushil Kumar, and Rishipal Singh
An Improved Scheme in AODV Routing Protocol for Enhancement
of QoS in MANET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Amit Kumar Bairwa and Sandeep Joshi
Knowledge Management Framework for Sustainability
and Resilience in Next-Gen e-Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Iqbal Hasan and Sam Rizvi
Enriching WordNet with Subject Specific Out of Vocabulary
Terms Using Existing Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Kanika, Shampa Chakraverty, Pinaki Chakraborty, Aditya Aggarwal,
Manan Madan, and Gaurav Gupta
Automatic Detection of Grape, Potato and Strawberry Leaf
Diseases Using CNN and Image Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Md. Tariqul Islam and Abdur Nur Tusher
Sentiment Analysis on Global Warming Tweets Using Naïve Bayes
and RNN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Deborah T. Joy, Vikas Thada, and Utpal Srivastava
Novel and Prevalent Techniques for Resolving Control Hazard . . . . . . . . 235
Amit Pandey, Abdella K. Mohammed, Rajesh Kumar,
and Deepak Sinwar
Contents ix

Sound Classification Using Residual Convolutional Network . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Mahesh Jangid and Kabir Nagpal
Dimensionality Reduction Using Variational Autoencoders . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Parv Dahiya and Sahil Garg
Computational Intelligence for Image Caption Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Sahil Garg and Parv Dahiya
An Empirical Statistical Analysis of COVID-19 Curve Through
Newspaper Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Shriya Verma, Sonam Garg, Tanishq Chamoli, and Ankit Gupta
Wearable Monopole Antenna with 8-Shaped EBG for Biomedical
Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Regidi Suneetha and P. V. Sridevi
Speech Signal Processing for Identification of Under-Resourced
Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Shweta Sinha
A Unique ECG Authentication System for Health Monitoring . . . . . . . . . 299
Kusum Lata Jain, Meenakshi Nawal, and Shivani Gupta
Assamese Dialect Identification From Vowel Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Priyankoo Sarmah and Leena Dihingia
A Review on Metaheuristic Techniques in Automated
Cryptanalysis of Classical Substitution Cipher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Ashish Jain, Prakash C. Sharma, Nirmal K. Gupta,
and Santosh K. Vishwakarma
An Empirical Study of Different Techniques for the Improvement
of Quality of Service in Cloud Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Chitra Sharma, Pradeep Kumar Tiwari, and Garima Agarwal
Contribution Analysis of Scope of SRGAN in the Medical Field . . . . . . . . 341
Moksh Kant, Sandeep Chaurasia, and Harish Sharma
Machination of Human Carpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Sumit Bhardwaj, Bhuvidha Singh Tomar, Adarsh Ankur,
and Punit Gupta
Building Machine Learning Application Using Oracle Analytics
Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Tarun Jain, Mahek Agarwal, Ashish Kumar, Vivek Kumar Verma,
and Anju Yadav
x Contents

An Empirical Analysis of Heart Disease Prediction Using Data

Mining Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Ashish Kumar, Sivapuram Sai Sanjith, Rajkishan Cherukuru,
Vivek Kumar Verma, Tarun Jain, and Anju Yadav
2D Image to Standard Triangle Language (STL) 3D Image
Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Manoj K. Sharma and Ashish Malik
Improving Recommendation for Video Content Using
Hyperparameter Tuning in Sparse Data Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Rohit Kumar Gupta, Vivek Kumar Verma, Ankit Mundra,
Rohan Kapoor, and Shekhar Mishra
Importance and Uses of Telemedicine in Physiotherapeutic
Healthcare System: A Scoping Systemic Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
Saurabh Kumar, Ankush Sharma, and Priyanka Rishi
Feature Exratction of PTTS System and Its Evaluation
by Standard Statistical Method Mean Opinion Score . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
Sunil Nimbhore, Suhas Mache, and Sidhharth Mache
Computational Analysis of a Human–Robot Working Alliance
Trust in Robot-Based Therapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Azizi Ab Aziz and Wadhah A. Abdulhussain
Novel Intrusion Prevention and Detection Model in Wireless
Sensor Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Neha Singh and Deepali Virmani
Shadow Detection from Real Images and Removal Using Image
Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
Sumaya Akter Usrika and Abdus Sattar
A Study on Pulmonary Image Screening for the Detection
of COVID-19 Using Convolutional Neural Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Shreyas Thakur, Yash Kasliwal, Taikhum Kothambawala,
and Rahul Katarya
Analyzing Effects of Temperature, Humidity, and Urban
Population in the Initial Outbreak of COVID19 Pandemic in India . . . . . 469
Amit Pandey, Tucha Kedir, Rajesh Kumar, and Deepak Sinwar
FOFS: Firefly Optimization for Feature Selection to Predict
Fault-Prone Software Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
Somya Goyal
Contents xi

Deceptive Reviews Detection in E-Commerce Websites Using

Machine Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
Sparsh Kotriwal, Jaya Krishna Raguru, Siddhartha Saxena,
and Devi Prasad Sharma
A Study on Buying Attitude on Facebook in the Digital
Transformation Era: A Machine Learning Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
Bui Thanh Khoa, Ho Nhat Anh, Nguyen Minh Ly,
and Nguyen Xuan Truong
Performance Evaluation of Speaker Identification in Language
and Emotion Mismatch Conditions on Eastern and North Eastern
Low Resource Languages of India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
Joyanta Basu, Tapan Kumar Basu, and Swanirbhar Majumder
Autonomous Wheelchair for Physically Challenged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
B. Kavyashree, B. S. Aishwarya, Mahima Manohar Varkhedi,
S. Niharika, R. Amulya, and A. P. Kavya
Watermarking of Digital Image Based on Complex Number Theory . . . . 531
Nadia Afrin Ritu, Ahsin Abid, Al Amin Biswas, and M. Imdadul Islam
A Computer Vision Approach for Automated Cucumber Disease
Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
Md. Abu Ishak Mahy, Salowa Binte Sohel, Joyanta Basak,
Md. Jueal Mia, and Sourov Mazumder
An Automated Visa Prediction Technique for Higher Studies Using
Machine Learning in the Context of Bangladesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
Asif Ahmmed, Tipu Sultan, Sk. Hasibul Islam Shad, Md. Jueal Mia,
and Sourov Mazumder
COVID-19 Safe Guard: A Smart Mobile Application to Address
Corona Pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
Soma Prathibha, K. L. Nirmal Raja, M. Shyamkumar, and M. Kirthiga
A Novel Mathematical Model to Represent the Hypothalamic
Control on Water Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581
Divya Jangid and Saurabh Mukherjee
Importance of Deep Learning Models to Perform Segmentation
on Medical Imaging Modalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
Preeti Sharma and Devershi Pallavi Bhatt
A Multi-component-Based Zero Trust Model to Mitigate
the Threats in Internet of Medical Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
Y. Bevish Jinila, S. Prayla Shyry, and A. Christy
xii Contents

A Modified Cuckoo Search for the n-Queens Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615

Ashish Jain, Manoj K. Bohra, Manoj K. Sharma,
and Venkatesh G. Shankar
A Survey on Diabetic Retinopathy Detection Using Deep Learning . . . . . 621
Deepak Mane, Namrata Londhe, Namita Patil, Omkar Patil,
and Prashant Vidhate
A Survey on Alzheimer’s Disease Detection and Classification . . . . . . . . . 639
D. T. Mane, Mehul Patel, Madhavi Sawant, Karina Maiyani,
and Divya Patil
An Approach for Graph Coloring Problem Using Grouping
of Vertices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 651
Prakash C. Sharma, Santosh Kumar Vishwakarma, Nirmal K. Gupta,
and Ashish Jain
Role of PID Control Techniques in Process Control System:
A Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
Vandana Dubey, Harsh Goud, and Prakash C. Sharma
Investigating Cancer Survivability of Juvenile Lymphoma Cancer
Patients Using Hard Voting Ensemble Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671
Amit Pandey, Rabira Galeta, and Tucha Kedir

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Dr. Priyadarsi Nanda is Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney

(UTS) with more than 27 years of experience specializing in research and devel-
opment of cybersecurity, IoT security, Internet traffic engineering, wireless sensor
network security, and many more related areas. His most significant work has been
in the area of intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS) using image
processing techniques, Sybil attack detection in IoT-based applications, and intelli-
gent firewall design. In cybersecurity research, he has published over 80 high-quality
refereed research papers including transactions in computers, transactions in parallel
processing and distributed systems (TPDS), future generations of computer systems
(FGCS) as well as many ERA Tier A/A* conference articles. In 2017, his work in
cybersecurity research has earned him and his team the prestigious Oman Research
Council’s National Award for best research. Dr. Nanda has successfully supervised
8 HDR at UTS (5 PhD + 3 Masters), and currently, supervising 8 Ph.D. students.

Vivek Kumar Verma is Assistant Professor (Senior Grade) in the Department of

Information Technology, School of Computing & Information Technology, Manipal
University Jaipur. His areas of expertise include data engineering, image processing,
and natural language processing. He has published more than 35 research articles in
peer-reviewed international journals, book series, and conference proceedings.

Sumit Srivastava is Professor of Information Technology with expertise in the

domain of data analytics and image processing. He is also Senior Member of IEEE.
He has published more than 100 research papers in peer-reviewed international jour-
nals, book series, and conference proceedings. He is having two edited volumes
of Springer Nature Book series in his account. He has supervised more than 10
Ph.D. scholars in the areas of data science, machine learning, and natural language
processing.

xiii
xiv Editors and Contributors

Rohit Kumar Gupta is Assistant Professor (Senior Grade) in the Department of

Information Technology, School of Computer Science and IT, Manipal Univer-
sity Jaipur. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the area of content distributed
network from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur. His research inter-
ests include cloud computing, network technologies, and IoT. He has published
over 25 research articles in peer-reviewed international journals, book series, and
conference proceedings.

Arka Prokash Mazumdar is Assistant Professor (Senior Grade) in the Depart-

ment of Computer Science and Engineering, Malviya National Institute of Tech-
nology Jaipur, India. He has completed his Ph.D. from IIT Patna and M.Tech. from
NIT Durgapur. His research interests include information-centric networks, cloud
computing, and IoT. He has published over 50 research articles in peer-reviewed
international journals, book series, and conference proceedings.

Contributors

Wadhah A. Abdulhussain Relational Machines Group, Human-Centred

Computing Lab, School of Computing, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Kedah,
Malaysia
Ahsin Abid Department of CSE, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Md. Abu Ishak Mahy Department of CSE, Daffodil International University,
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Garima Agarwal Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur, India
Mahek Agarwal SCIT, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur, India
Pinky Agarwal Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur, India
Aditya Aggarwal Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Asif Ahmmed Department of CSE, Daffodil International University, Dhaka,
Bangladesh
B. S. Aishwarya Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering, Mysuru, Karnataka, India
R. Amulya Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering, Mysuru, Karnataka, India
Ho Nhat Anh Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Adarsh Ankur Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Amity School of Engineering and Technology, Amity University, Noida, Uttar
Pradesh, India
 Another Random Document on
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Lee, whose weakened hips frequently gave way under him,
constantly falling in the snow, and Erichsen, Boyd, and Ah Sam
hobbling painfully along at the rear.
It was terrible going, not helped much by a fifteen minute pause
every hour for rest. The snow-covered ground was swampy, with
many ponds covered with thin ice and hidden under the snow, and
into these pitfalls the men stumbled frequently, burying themselves
to their knees in the mossy tundra beneath, and coming up with
their leaking boots or moccasins filled, to plunge along again
through the snow and the freezing wind, oozing a slimy mixture of
mud and water from between their toes at every step.
Big Erichsen could barely even hobble, hardly able to lift one
numbed foot after another. At the second stop for rest, Ambler drew
Nindemann aside,
“Quartermaster, can’t you make a pair of crutches for Erichsen?
His arms are still strong; with crutches, he’ll make out better.”
“Yah, doc, but with what should I make ’em?” asked Nindemann.
“I ain’t got tools no more.”
“Don’t worry over that, Nindemann,” replied the doctor. “You’ve
got a knife.” He opened his medicine chest on the sledge. “Here,
take my surgical saw; I guess if it’ll saw bones, it’ll saw wood all
right,” he finished grimly.
Nindemann got to work on some driftwood branches, and soon
between sheath knife and bone saw, he had fashioned a fair enough
pair of crutches, on which when the party resumed its journey,
Erichsen swung along haltingly behind the crippled Ah Sam.
But for the worn and burdened seamen, progress was still snail-
like. After another faltering advance, De Long halted the party and
deciding to lighten up still further, sent back Nindemann and two
other seamen with one tent, all the log books, the spyglass, and two
tins of alcohol to stow them with the abandoned gear in the cache at
the beach. This left to be carried or dragged by the men only De
Long’s private journals as a record of the expedition, one tent, some
alcohol and medicines, the rifles, a cooking pot, and what little food
they still had, together with the silk flag which De Long himself bore
along.
The second day thus, the party staggered on four miles more to
the south. The going got worse, the straggling procession
lengthened out in the snow. A brief pause to rest, and all hands
once more got underway except Nindemann, whose load chafing his
shoulders, stayed behind to readjust it while the others started off
through the snow. Having eased the fastenings of his pack as well as
possible, the wearied quartermaster struggled to his feet and was
hurrying forward to catch up with his mates when unexpectedly he
stumbled over what as he fell he thought at first was a log half-
hidden in the snowy path, but which he quickly saw to be Erichsen,
prone on his face, while nearby, tossed into a drift, were his crude
crutches!
With a thumping heart, Nindemann feverishly rolled his shipmate
over on his back expecting to have to revive him, only to find instead
Erichsen’s snow-flecked blue eyes staring bitterly at him, and
Erichsen’s broken voice rising in a curse,
“Go avay, damn you! Ay vant yust to die here in peace!”
“Get up, Hans!” pleaded Nindemann. “You’re not going to die;
nobody is. Here’s your crutches. Come along! I’ll help you!”
Erichsen only shook his head, his eyes rolling in anguish.
“No use, Nindemann, my feet ban all gone! Even if you can go so
far as Moscow, Ay tal you, Ay cannot go one step more! Go on! Let
me die!” and with a convulsive effort of his huge body, he twisted
himself face down again and clawing feebly with his fingers, tried to
bury himself completely in the snow.
Frightened, Nindemann jerked erect and shouted down the trail,
“Captain! Hey, captain! Come back!” but so far off were all hands
now that no one turned. Leaving his silent shipmate in the drift, the
quartermaster, going as fast as the broken path allowed, hurried
after them, shouting occasionally, till half a mile along he finally
attracted De Long’s attention and stopped him till he could catch up,
when he told the captain of Erichsen’s plight.
De Long gritted his teeth.
“Keep ahead, Nindemann, till you come to driftwood, then build a
fire quick and camp,” ordered De Long briefly. “Come on, doctor;
we’ll go back for Erichsen!”
Back rushed De Long and Ambler till buried in the snow as
Nindemann had left him, they found the prostrate Erichsen. With
some difficulty, Ambler turned him over, while De Long pulled his
crutches out from the deep snow alongside. The doctor took the
broken seaman by both shoulders and started to lift him.
“Let go me, doc,” begged Erichsen, “it ban no use any more to
help. My legs ban killing me. Ay vant now only to die qvick! Go
avay!”
“Get up, Erichsen!” ordered De Long in a voice cold as steel.
“Here’s your crutches; take ’em and get going down that road! Do
you think I’m going to leave you now? Get underway! And when you
can’t hobble, I’ll drag you! Up now, before I jerk you up!”
For a moment, Erichsen, lying in the snow, stared dumbly into the
captain’s inflexible eyes, then his habit of obedience conquered his
suffering. Slowly he pushed himself into a sitting position and
without another word reached for the crutches. With Ambler’s
assistance, he rose to his feet and then with both De Long and the
doctor behind him to see that he did not again lie down, he hobbled
off down the path, each step undoubtedly an agony to him as his
bleeding and tortured feet came down in the snow. And so, slowly
and painfully they covered the last mile into the camp, where a
roaring driftwood fire and a scanty supper of cold pemmican and tea
awaited them.
Before the fire, all hands steamed in front while they froze behind,
and then stretched out on driftwood logs for a bed, hauled their sole
remaining tent flat over the fourteen of them and turned in. But
between sharp winds, bitter cold, and falling snow, it was a fearful
night for the fourteen sufferers, shaking and shivering beneath the
thin canvas, and no one slept.
Through snow and fog again the party struggled southward along
the river bank next day, with Boyd and Ah Sam both improved, and
even Erichsen, the captain’s stern voice still ringing in his ears, doing
a little better on his crutches. But with only two days’ slim rations of
pemmican left, and with each day’s progress hardly a scant five
miles over the snowy tundra, the chances of making the remaining
eighty miles to Ku Mark Surk began to fade.
In the middle of the third afternoon, the party came to two
abandoned wood huts by the river side, the first evidence of
habitation they had met in the Lena Delta, and gladly all hands
entered. Inside the huts, reasonably sheltered for the first time in
weeks from cold, from wind, and from snow, and with plenty of
driftwood about so they could warm themselves at last, the men
stripped off their soaked and ragged furs and stood about naked
while their clothes dried before the hurriedly built fires.
Dressed again, and with a tiny portion of pemmican and some hot
tea for supper, the exhausted travelers threw themselves on the dirt
floor, at last to catch some sleep inside a human habitation, primitive
even though it was. No one any longer had a sleeping bag; only the
patched and ragged remnants of the fur and cloth garments and the
long since worn-out boots in which three months before they had
started the terrible journey over the ice from the sunken Jeannette
remained to them. But at least there was a tight roof and solid walls
about them and it was enough. In a few minutes, at four o’clock in
the afternoon, thankful beyond description for so much shelter, all
hands were sound asleep.
But there was one exception. Shelter or no shelter, Erichsen,
suffering the agonies of the damned from his mortifying feet, only
tossed and moaned, waking the doctor. Rousing Nindemann to help
him, the surgeon seated the suffering seaman on a log before the
fire, got his instruments and medicines, and then, while Nindemann
held the patient erect on the log, gently proceeded to unbandage his
left foot, the worst one.
As the last turn of the bandage came off, Nindemann anxiously
watching, saw to his horror, all the flesh, dead and putrid, drop away
from the ball of the foot, exposing tendons and bones. Startled, he
closed his eyes, repressed a groan. But Ambler said nothing; only
the slight compression of his lips indicated his despair. There was
nothing medical skill could do. Quietly smearing a fresh bandage
with vaseline, he carefully bound up the foot again and put back
Erichsen’s stocking and his boot.
“All done, Erichsen,” he said reassuringly; “you can turn in now,”
and gathering up his equipment, Ambler, his heart torn by poor
Erichsen’s condition, hurriedly stretched himself out in the hut as far
away as he could get lest his patient should start to question him.
But Erichsen was not wholly ignorant of what had happened.
Turning to Nindemann on the log beside him, he asked,
“Do you know much about frostbites?”
“Yah, Hans,” replied Nindemann, “at the first coming on, the flesh
turns blue and then it gets black.”
The big Dane nodded, continued sadly,
“Ven doc took off the bandage, Ay saw somet’ing drop from unter
my foot. You saw it too, Nindemann. Yah?”
Nindemann, with one arm about his suffering shipmate to keep
him erect, looked him squarely in the eye, and putting all the
conviction into his voice that he could muster, he lied heroically,
“No, Hans, there was nothing. You must be dreaming things.”
“Don’t try to fool me, qvartermaster; Ay tal you Ay saw it und so
did you.” Mournfully he gazed at his shabby boot, then sadly shook
his head. “Ay hope you get home yet, Nindemann, but vit me, it ban
all done. Stretch me out now; you must sleep.”
 But it being still early in the evening, after a brief nap, De Long
sent Alexey and Nindemann out with rifles to hunt, the while the
others rested and he took stock of the situation.
Long and earnestly, as the two hunters trudged outside through
the snow looking for game, the captain pondered. His recent chart,
based on Petermann’s reports and descriptions of the villages on the
delta itself, he now knew was worthless; only in the old Russian
chart showing Ku Mark Surk at the head of the delta and Bulun
beyond could he put any faith. But with the nearest of these over
eighty miles distant, it was hopeless to expect that his crawling
party, making at best five miles a day, could ever get through on the
two days’ pemmican still left. And without food to sustain them on
the way, the outside temperature, hovering around zero, would of
itself in a few more nights in the open like the preceding one, quickly
make an end of them. There seemed nothing for it except to stay in
the huts where at least they had shelter and warmth and stretch to
the utmost their few pounds of pemmican, eked out by poor Snoozer
as a last resort, the while he sent two men ahead on a forced march
to Ku Mark Surk in the thin hope that he might keep his starving
men alive till they returned with aid, in two weeks at the soonest if
they found the traveling good, longer if they did not.
What alternatives were there? He considered them. Erichsen, Lee,
Boyd, and Ah Sam were his drags on progress, especially the two
former. If he left these two, the others might easily double their
speed of travel and reach Ku Mark Surk and safety in possibly a
week. But it would take at least a second week to get help back to
his abandoned men. How could two helpless cripples without food,
hardly able to crawl outside to gather wood to warm themselves,
stay alive for two long weeks, perhaps more? They would soon,
hopeless in the feeling that they were deserted, both lie down and
die. As it was, only his constant driving, his apparently soulless
harshness, and the lash of his stinging commands, kept them
hobbling weakly along.
 Could he abandon them? Dispassionately he tried to consider it.
On one hand, a far better chance for life to twelve men, certain
death for two. On the other hand, the strong probability that all
would perish in that hut before relief arrived. Going on, leaving his
cripples behind, looked logical. But De Long shook his head. While
he lived, he could abandon nobody to the loneliness of that Arctic
waste, least of all the heroic Erichsen, who unrelieved through that
terrible night in the boat, had clung to the tiller, safely steering them
all through the gale, and now in the agony of his decaying feet, was
uncomplainingly paying the penalty of his steadfastness. With a sigh,
the captain decided to stay on in the hut, while he sent ahead for
help. Who should go? Running over in his mind the physical
condition of his men, he decided on Surgeon Ambler and
Nindemann, the two he felt who were most likely to get through.
At six o’clock, Nindemann returned, empty-handed except for a
dead gull he had found. Eagerly the hungry seamen, roused by
Nindemann’s entrance, crowded round while Ah Sam plucked the
gull, only to discover that the carcass had long since rotted. Sadly it
was thrown away, and the disappointed sailors once more turned in.
Alexey still was missing, but no fears were felt for him, and quickly,
without exception now, the exhausted company sank into deep
slumber.
About nine o’clock came a knock on the door of the hut and
Alexey’s voice rang out,
“All sleep here?”
Immediately, sleeping heads lifted here and there over the floor as
the door flew back and Alexey cried proudly,
“Captain! I shoot two reindeer!” and in staggered the snow-
covered hunter bearing on his back the hind quarter of a doe.
“Well done, Alexey!” shouted the captain, leaping to his feet and
kissing the startled Indian while all about men sprang up, almost
smothering the beaming Alexey in handclasps and in clumsy hugs.
Immediately sleep was forgotten, the fires poked up, and that
haunch of venison, cut in chunks, was roasting on a dozen sticks.
Each man got a pound and a half; most of them, long before their
meat was hardly more than seared before the fire, were gorging
themselves on the raw flesh! With startling rapidity, it disappeared
and hungrily his men looked toward the bloody remnant of that
haunch, but De Long, stowing it behind him in the hut, shook his
head and ended the feast, leaving the party no option but to return
to sleep, while only Snoozer, still gnawing wolfishly at the shank
bone, remained awake.
That changed De Long’s plans. Issuing only a very scanty ration of
pemmican for breakfast, he sent Alexey and six men out in the
morning to get the deer, while he concluded to spend that day and
the next in the hut, recuperating the sick, and then with his two
days’ supply of pemmican still intact and the remainder of the two
does for food on the journey, push on southward with all hands.
And so they did. Warmed by soup made of the reindeer bones,
fortified by deer meat, and rested by two days’ inaction in the hut,
the party set out hopefully on September 24th with twenty pounds
of pemmican and fifty-four pounds of venison still left for food for
fourteen men and their dog, leaving a note and the captain’s
Winchester rifle (for which there was no longer any ammunition) as
a record behind them.
They tramped along the east bank of the river for three miles,
resting hourly and making poor progress. Looking hopelessly at the
broad stream still flowing unfrozen past him, De Long sighed for his
abandoned cutter, in which here with oars and sail, they might make
fine progress even against the current. But the cutter was gone and
wishes would do no good. However, they might perhaps make a raft
and sail or pole that upstream, at least relieving their feet. So
stopping the party, De Long turned all hands to gathering logs out of
which, using the sledge lashing for a fastening, a crude raft was
finally fashioned at the cost of eight hours’ strenuous toil, on which
at five p.m. they attempted to embark. But the river had ebbed
meanwhile, and in spite of an hour’s battle, it was impossible to get
the grounded side of the raft afloat. In deep disgust, amid the
suppressed curses of all hands at the result (and especially of
Nindemann who had done most of the work), the raft was
abandoned, the loads picked up again, and the men, doubly weary
now, staggered away southward, again to camp for the night on the
open tundra, freezing on a few logs spread in the snow for a bed, to
rise next morning after no sleep at all, stiffer and sorer even than
the night before.
The next day’s traveling was difficult beyond words, over snow
and thin ice through which torn boots broke, to come up covered
with a slushy mixture which immediately froze solid, soon making
each man’s feet as large and as heavy as sandbags, a gruelling task
to lift them, an endless labor to keep them reasonably cleared.
By some miscalculation either in issue or in original weighing, but
eight pounds of deer meat was found remaining, all of which went
for dinner. An afternoon of heartbreaking travel over an ice-coated
bluff from which the piercing wind had cleared all snow, leaving it
slippery as glass, brought them at night to a dilapidated hut, filthy in
its interior, but nevertheless the freezing seamen, taking it for a
godsend, stretched themselves promptly in the dirt inside,
unutterably grateful for the shelter. A scant portion of pemmican
passed for supper. With only three similar rations apiece left as the
total food supply, the toil-worn men turned in, grumbling audibly for
the immediate issue of the remnant of the pemmican and De Long
began to fear open rebellion.
Day broke inauspiciously. Before them, blocking the way, was a
swift side stream, too deep to ford, with ice too thin to walk upon.
De Long, after examining all possibilities of crossing, ordered
Nindemann to build a raft to ferry over on, and Nindemann, tired,
hungry and bitter over the fiasco attending the raft of a few days
before, went grumblingly at it. While he and his shipmates struggled
with the logs and the single line they had for a lashing, De Long
silently ignoring the none too well hidden signs of growing
disaffection went back to the hut. Outside the door, Ambler met him,
pulled him aside,
“Erichsen’s condition is getting desperate, captain. Both feet are
worse; another couple of days and nothing in God’s world can keep
him on them.”
“All right, doctor. We’ll do the best we can,” said De Long
resolutely. “Keep him going to the last minute, then we’ll drag him.
Meanwhile, I’d better keep an eye on the work on that raft.”
By ten a.m. the raft was done, a crazy affair and not very large
due to the lack of sufficient lashings. With Collins, Alexey and Lee as
passengers, and Nindemann and Kaack as ferrymen, it started over,
amid voluble cursing promptly submerging all hands to their knees.
But nevertheless it got successfully over to shoal water on the other
side, where Nindemann started to look for a good landing spot.
“Don’t waste time!” shouted De Long. “Let those men wade
ashore and hurry back with that raft!”
After considerable growling, audible even to De Long on the other
shore, the passengers waded off, and the two ferrymen paddled
back. On his return, Nindemann promptly started grumbling again
about the raft.
“What’s the matter, Nindemann?” asked De Long.
“The lashings are loose and there ain’t enough logs to float it,”
said Nindemann sullenly.
“Well, you made the raft. Haul the lashing tighter then if it doesn’t
suit you,” suggested the captain.
“But I hauled it already as tight as I could,” protested the irritated
quartermaster.
“That’ll do!” Curtly De Long cut him short. “Get more logs if you
want them; tighten the lashing if you wish, but quit standing there!
I’ve had enough of your grumbling! Shake it up, now! We’ve got to
get on!”
 Glowering at the reproof, Nindemann, his nerves finally at the
breaking point, glared a moment at the skipper, then turned and
moved down the bank. A few steps off, facing the next gang of men
waiting to cross on the raft, the stocky quartermaster clenched his
fists, swung them wildly in the captain’s direction and shouted,
“I would sooner be along with the devil than be along with you! I
wish I was in hell, or somewhere else than here, by Jesus Christ!”
Quietly De Long looked from the little knot of men on the raft to
Nindemann’s circling fists, then in an icy voice, he ordered,
“Nindemann! Come back here!”
Slowly the infuriated quartermaster approached his captain, to
find a pair of cold blue eyes drilling into him.
“So you’d sooner be shipmates with the devil than with me, eh?
You’ll find yourself in hell quick enough if you don’t do what I say!
What’s the matter now?”
Nindemann quailed, his mutinous passion suddenly chilling before
that frigid gaze.
“Nothing at all, sir,” he mumbled weakly.
“Another word from you and I’ll have you courtmartialed!” said De
Long coldly. “Now get up into that hut and consider yourself under
arrest until I send for you!”
“Very well, sir,” answered Nindemann, and meekly he scrambled
up the bluff to the hut, while the captain looked down at the men
milling round on the raft.
“Görtz! Lend Kaack a hand with those paddles! Shove off now!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Immediately the raft started its second trip.
It was slow work. Not till three in the afternoon was the raft ready
for the last load. Then sending Erichsen down first, De Long peered
into the hut at Nindemann crouching before the fire.
“Pick up your traps, quartermaster, and get to work again!”
 “Aye, aye, sir!” said Nindemann obediently, and hastily gathering
up his load, he ran down to the raft where for the last trip he
paddled over and then, dismantling the logs to recover the priceless
lashings, he looked expectantly up to the captain for orders.
“Build a fire,” said the skipper briefly. “We’ll have dinner here and
dry ourselves before moving on.”
They made four miles by dark, camped in the snow, froze as usual
instead of sleeping, ate a skimpy breakfast, and with but a single
meal left, the party was about to break camp, when far away
Nindemann spotted some reindeer approaching the river. Keeping
everybody down, the captain sent Alexey and Nindemann out with
rifles.
Circling three miles to get to leeward of the small herd of reindeer,
the two hunters crawled cautiously along on their stomachs another
quarter mile, pausing, with their very lives depending on their care,
each time a deer looked in their direction, then snaking along again
through the snow. At last, within a hundred yards, they stopped,
picked out the two largest bucks they could see, and at a word from
Alexey, fired simultaneously.
Down went the buck at which Alexey’s Remington was aiming, but
Nindemann’s Winchester misfired and before Alexey could get in
another shot, the startled herd was off. Firing nevertheless, Alexey
swung to the moving targets, but failed to hit again. Leaping up, the
two men ran in to secure their prize and saw joyfully that Alexey had
knocked over a fine buck, as large as both the does which he had
previously shot. It took five men to drag him in to camp, and there,
all thought of movement suspended, the ravenous men turned to on
frying deer meat, gulping down three pounds apiece before the
captain finally called a halt on eating, and ordering his crew to
shoulder the remainder of the buck, provisions for three days more,
they got underway again in the teeth of a driving snow-storm.
By the next afternoon, September 28th, having spent the previous
night again in the snow, De Long came to an empty hut on a
promontory and looking off ahead, found himself trapped! On his
right, running north was the Lena; before him, running east, was
another broad river branching away from it and neither one could he
ford, nor after a diligent search, find any materials about of which to
make a raft. Huddled in the dirty hut, his utterly tired men sprawled
out before the fire, while Alexey scouted the river to the eastward
for a ford, but found none.
For three days, the ill-fated refugees were forced to remain in that
hut, unable to move in any direction except back northward, while a
gale outside brought heavy snow; and bitterly cursing their enforced
inaction while consuming their precious provisions, they waited,
hopeless of movement till in the increasing cold, the river should
freeze hard enough for them to cross. And meanwhile, fearing
Erichsen would get lockjaw if he waited further, Dr. Ambler was
forced to amputate first all his toes and then saw away a good part
of the remainder of the unfortunate Dane’s feet, leaving him with
useless stumps on which it was hopeless to expect, even with
crutches, that Hans Erichsen would ever walk again.
The captain became desperate. He cut the issue of deer meat
down to the limit, sent Alexey out in the blinding snow to hunt in
one direction, Nindemann in another, and Görtz and Kaack with fish
lines to see whether the rivers which were choking off their
progress, might at least yield up a few fish to eke out their
provisions. But except for one gull which Alexey knocked off a pole
with a rifle ball, not a solitary bit of food did anyone get.
Meanwhile, the problem of how to move Erichsen became acute.
Finding a solitary driftwood plank, six inches thick and about four
feet long, Nindemann was turned to with a hatchet and the doctor’s
saw (which but a few hours before had been used on Erichsen’s
feet) to make a sledge on which to haul him, and by the night of
September 30th, it was done.
October 1st came and the Arctic winter descended on them in
earnest. After a bitterly cold night, they issued from the hut to find
the Lena apparently frozen from bank to bank. Cautiously, with the
thin ice cracking ominously beneath them at each step, Alexey and
Nindemann scouted a path across, then one by one, with the men
widely separated, to distribute the weight, the others crawled over,
last of all Erichsen on his sledge drawn by two men some distance
apart hauling on a long line.
With all hands finally on the west bank without mishap, the party
turned south and for three days struggled on through increasingly
bitter cold, never finding any shelter, sometimes traveling on through
the night because that was less of a torture than freezing while
stretched out in the snowdrifts. The delta became a maze of
intersecting streams among which De Long was wholly unable to
locate his position on his useless charts. And a new horror was
added to their others—Erichsen became delirious and each time the
shivering men halted, he raved incessantly in Danish and English,
making sleep impossible even had the frigid nights otherwise
permitted it. And then the food (except for tea) gave out completely,
first the remaining scraps of reindeer going; finally the last hoarded
bits of the pemmican (which for nearly four months they had
dragged with them from the Jeannette) went for dinner on October
3rd.
Without food the party staggered on from their dinner camp, De
Long praying earnestly that some game might by a miracle again
cross their path. But they saw none, and weak with hunger dragged
their ice-clogged feet along, skirting the thin ice on the river edge
where the going was easier than on the mossy snow-covered
tundra. Suddenly De Long broke through and went into the river up
to his shoulders; while he was being hauled out, Görtz plunged
through to his neck and Collins was soused to his waist. A moment
after they had been dragged back to the surface soaked to their
skins, each was a glistening sheet of ice, with no help for it but to
keep hobbling onward till evening, when still in the open, they
camped by the river bank and, in the midst of a whistling gale of
wind and snow they huddled round a driftwood fire where the ice-
coated sufferers endeavored vainly to thaw themselves out.
 There was nothing left for food for the wan and hungry crew—
except Snoozer. De Long, hoping to take at least this favorite dog
back home with him, had clung tenaciously to Snoozer through thick
and thin, kept him in the boat when the other dogs ran off at
Bennett Island, saved him when the other seamen would have left
him to starve or drown in the abandoned cutter off the Siberian
coast, fed him from his vanishing store of pemmican when he had
little enough to eat himself. But now with his men starving about
him, desperately needing food if they were to hold a little life in their
chilling bodies, sentiment and affection had to give way. Sadly he
called over Boyd and Iversen, told them to take Snoozer where no
one could see them, kill him, and dress the carcass.
So for supper each had a little dog meat, eaten with revulsion by
everyone, but eaten. And then followed a night horrible beyond
description. Erichsen’s ravings mingled with the whistling of the
wind; in the sub-zero blackness, the stupefied men, unsheltered
from the driving snow, crouched about a fire from which they could
get no warmth; in his wet and freezing garments, De Long huddled
alongside Alexey to keep from freezing to death; while all about,
shivering limbs and chattering teeth beat a gruesome
accompaniment to Erichsen’s groans as lashed to his sledge, as close
to the fire as they dared put him, he alternately shrieked and
moaned in delirium till finally he lapsed into a coma.
Morning came at last, to bring the unpleasant discovery that
Erichsen had somehow worked off his mittens during the night and
both his hands were completely frozen, through and through. The
doctor set Boyd and Iversen to work chafing his fingers and palms,
endeavoring to restore the circulation, but it proved hopeless.
Erichsen was now totally unconscious.
Meanwhile Alexey had spied a hut a few miles off, and after a
hastily swallowed cup of tea which constituted breakfast, the men
hurriedly shouldered their burdens and dragging their unfortunate
shipmate, moved off toward it, fumbling along through the driving
snow and the intense cold for two hours, when, fervently thanking
God for the shelter, they reached the hut and building a fire inside,
proceeded to get warm for the first time in four days.
Here after a brief prayer for the unconscious Dane, read in a
broken voice by the captain, the entire party (except Alexey) sank to
the floor to rest at last. Alexey refused to rest. He had shipped for
the cruise, not as a seaman but as a hunter, and now with his
captain and his mates urgently needing food, regardless of himself,
he went out to seek it. But there was not the slightest sign of game
about, and frozen worse than ever from having broken through the
river ice on his hunt, the faithful Indian was at last compelled to
return empty-handed.
Supper, half a pound of dog meat apiece, and the last of the tea,
was the only meal for the day, but grateful to be out of the blizzard
raging roundabout, no one complained.
October 5th came and went, commencing in a breakfast consisting
only of hot water colored by re-used tea leaves and ending with a
supper composed of the last of the dog meat and more hot water
barely tinted with third-time used tea leaves. Hour by hour the men
sat, crowded in the little hut gazing at Erichsen, occasionally
conscious now, while his strength slowly ebbed away and his tongue
babbled feebly about his far-off Denmark. Night fell, the storm
howled on, the dying seaman relapsed again into a coma, and his
overwrought shipmates sagged down on the dirt floor to rest.
October 6th came and in the early morning light, Erichsen died.
Sadly in the driving snow, the grief-stricken sailors gathered round a
hole cut through the river ice while broken-hearted, De Long sobbed
out the funeral service over the body of as brave and staunch a
seaman as ever sacrificed his life to save his shipmates. And there in
the Arctic wastes, where he so long had suffered, with three volleys
from all the rifles in the party ringing out over the ice as a final
salute, mournfully his gaunt and frozen comrades consigned Hans
Erichsen, their strongest and their best man, to the Lena’s waters.
 CHAPTER XXXVI

With some old tea leaves and two quarts of grain alcohol as their
entire food supply, the thirteen survivors gloomily resumed their
southward trek on October 7th. The snow was deep and still falling;
the weakened men ploughed through it to their waists. A little
alcohol mixed in water constituted dinner; a little more of the same
was served out for supper and night found them camping in the
snow.
October 8th, underway again over thin ice, De Long sought a trail
over the wandering streams and through the multitude of islands
where the spreading Lena flattened out over the low delta lands and
its surface waters, churning in swirling eddies, were not yet
completely frozen over. More and more frequently the faltering men
paused to rest; De Long particularly, whose freezing immersion of a
few days before had sadly damaged his feet, was in worse condition
than anyone save Lee, whose weakening hips continually gave way,
plunging him drunkenly into the drifts every other step. Badly strung
out, the line of starving seamen staggered along with their captain
in the rear, constantly refusing the offers of his men to relieve him of
the load he carried and thus ease the way for him. When finally they
halted for the night, shelterless on the bleak and open tundra, his
hungry men had once again to be content with nothing more
substantial to fill the aching voids in their stomachs than hot water
and half an ounce of alcohol. De Long, watching them drop feebly in
their tracks in the snow with Ku Mark Surk still (as he thought) over
twelve miles away, concluded sadly that they could never all cover
that last stretch alive. Without the slightest chance now of getting
food in the deserted delta, they would soon in their weakened
condition use up the last dregs of their fading vitality and quickly
freeze to death in their tracks. His only hope lay in sending a few
stronger men ahead for help, while in some shelter, if they could find
it now, the rest of them, fighting off starvation, conserved their little
remaining strength and awaited rescue. With that resolve, he
beckoned Nindemann to his side in the snow.
“Nindemann,” said the captain earnestly, “I’m sending you ahead
tomorrow to get through to Ku Mark Surk for aid. It should be only
twelve miles south now. You ought to do it in three days, maybe
four at the most, and get back in four more. Meanwhile, we’ll follow
in your trail. I’ll give you one of our two rifles, your share of the
alcohol for food, and you can take any man in the party with you
except Alexey to help you out. Alexey we must keep as a hunter.
Who do you want?”
The quartermaster thought a moment, then answered,
“I’ll take Noros, captain.”
“Isn’t Iversen better?” asked De Long anxiously. “I think he’s
stronger.”
“No,” replied Nindemann, “he’s been complaining of his feet three
days now.”
“That’s right, captain,” broke in Dr. Ambler who was alongside the
skipper. “Noros is best.”
“All right; Noros then. Be ready, both of you in the morning.”
Stiffly De Long stretched himself out before the tiny camp fire
crackling feebly in the snow.
Morning found thirteen somber seamen looking anxiously off over
the frozen tangle of rivers and of islands to the south. Somewhere
there beyond that terrible delta land lay Ku Mark Surk and life, but
all about them was only the vast snow-crusted tundra, an Arctic
waste of wintry desolation and the promise of slow death. Solemnly
De Long shook Nindemann’s hand.
“You’ll do all a man can do to get us help, I know, Nindemann,” he
said. “God keep you safe and bring you soon again to us.”
 “I ain’t got much hope of finding help, captain,” responded the
quartermaster gloomily. “It’s farther maybe to Ku Mark Surk than
you think.”
“Well, do the best you can. If you find assistance, come back to us
as quickly as possible. God knows we need it here! If you don’t—”
The captain’s voice broke at that implication, he paused a moment,
then concluded huskily, “Why then you’re still as well off as we; you
see the condition we are in.” He turned to Nindemann’s companion,
standing in the snow beside him,
“Noros, are you ready?”
“Yes, captain.”
De Long looked them over. They carried nothing but one rifle,
forty cartridges, and a small rubber bag with three ounces of
alcohol, their share of the party’s sole remaining substitute for food.
Their clothes were ragged, their sealskin trousers bare of fur, their
boots full of holes. The captain’s eyes lingered on the toes
protruding from the remnants of their footgear.
“Don’t wade in the river, men. Keep on the banks,” he finished
gently.
There was a bustling in the little knot of men surrounding them,
and Collins suddenly pushed through to confront De Long.
“I’m the New York Herald correspondent with this expedition,” he
said bruskly. “As James Gordon Bennett’s representative, I demand
the right to go with these men!”
De Long, surprised at the interruption, flushed slightly, then
answered evenly,
“Mr. Collins, we’ll settle that question with Mr. Bennett in New
York. At present, getting you or anybody through as a newspaper
correspondent interests me very little. And in any other capacity, just
now you’re only a hindrance to this expedition; you’re much too
weak to keep up with Nindemann. You wouldn’t last five miles!” and
turning his back on Collins, he gripped Noros’ hand, shook it warmly,
and repeated,
“Remember, Noros. Keep out of the water! That’s all. Shove off
now, men!”
Bending forward against the wind, Noros and Nindemann
staggered away toward the south, the last forlorn hope of the eleven
emaciated castaways standing in the frozen drifts behind them,
cheering them as they vanished in the blinding snow.
 CHAPTER XXXVII

“And that was on October 9th, Mr. Melville,” sobbed Nindemann. “But
Ku Mark Surk wasn’t twelve miles away like the captain thought; it
was over seventy miles! His chart was bad, and besides before,
every day he hadn’t traveled so far as he guessed maybe. For ten
whole days after that, Noros and me went south over terrible
country, and we found to eat only one ptarmigan I shot with the
rifle, and we ate up first our boot soles and then most of our
sealskin pants and we froze and kept on going till even the sealskin
pants was all gone and we had traveled over forty miles and still we
had not come to Ku Mark Surk. And all the while we dragged
ourselves along because we knew our shipmates could get no food
in that country we had gone over and they were starving and the
captain trusted Noros and me to get help for them.
“But after ten days we were freezing in only our underwear for
clothes and we were so weak without food that we could not go on
and when we saw at last an empty hut, we crawled inside there to
die but we found in it a little rotten dried fish that looked like
sawdust and tasted like it too and we ate that, thinking maybe then
we could keep on again but the mouldy fish made us so sick with
dysentery we could not even any more crawl, and we lay there three
days expecting only to die soon, when at last some natives looked in
that hut and found us! We would be dead there in that hut long ago
if not for them!” Nindemann choked back a bitter sob and gripped
my hand feebly. “We couldn’t make them natives understand they
had to go back north for the captain and they brought us first to Ku
Mark Surk and then here to Bulun. And now it is November 2nd,
eleven more days even since they found us, and there is no hope for
anybody any more! The captain and our shipmates must now all be
dead in that snow!” And racked with sobs at the idea that somehow
he had failed in the captain’s trust, Nindemann wept hysterically.
 “Perhaps they found shelter in a hut,” I suggested, trying to calm
him. “I’ll start back right now to look anyway.”
“No use,” repeated the quartermaster hopelessly. “For a long ways
from where we left them, there ain’t no huts, only a hundred rivers
going every way and for a man twice to find the same spot there is
impossible. You ain’t so strong no more. You’ll only die yourself!”
I laid the weeping seaman back on his couch. Probably he was
right. But so long as the faintest shred of hope existed for Captain
De Long and his comrades, I must look for them.
I got the best directions I could from Noros and from Nindemann
as to the route south they had traveled, where they had stopped
each night, the rivers they had crossed. Taking either man with me
as a guide was impossible; they could not travel. So leaving
instructions for my whaleboat party that, except for Bartlett (who
was to stay in Bulun to search for me if in a month I did not return),
all the others on arrival there were to proceed under Lieutenant
Danenhower’s charge south to Yakutsk, I got a dog sled and
immediately started north. At Ku Mark Surk I met the Russian
Commandant next day; he helped me with another dog team and a
ten day supply of fish. With that I proceeded northward along
Nindemann’s trail from Ku Mark Surk, having two native drivers and
twenty-two dogs.
Through fierce November storms we pushed on down the delta,
sometimes finding Nindemann’s trail, often losing it. The going was
slow, the cold was intense, we were frequently stopped by gales
which completely blinded us and against which the dogs refused to
travel, instead lying down in the snow and howling dolefully. The
river began to divide as it spread out over the flat and treeless delta.
One after another I searched along innumerable streams for
Nindemann’s trail but in the deepening snows found no sign as we
went north. Wrapped in thick furs, I nevertheless nearly froze to
death on my sledge. It was inconceivable that De Long and his
companions, long without food, clothed only in scanty rags, could
live through such weather. But still I searched, hopeful now at least
of recovering their bodies.
Our food gave out, the Yakut drivers wanted to return to Ku Mark
Surk. I enquired if there were any village on the delta itself from
which we might continue our search. They said there was one. On
the far northwestern corner of the delta on the Arctic shore, some
thirty miles due west of where from Nindemann’s account De Long
had landed on the coast, was a small village called Tomat. I looked
at my chart, a copy I had long ago made at Semenovski Island of De
Long’s. There was no village marked there on that chart, but
knowing now the chart to be wholly unreliable, I accepted my
drivers’ statements as being true and ordered them to head for
Tomat to replenish our food supply, intending then to pick up De
Long’s trail at the abandoned boat, and follow him southward from
there till I came upon his party, whether alive or dead. But my
drivers protested; we must turn about and return to Ku Mark Surk;
without food, we would all perish on the desolate road to Tomat.
Fiercely I turned on them in their native tongue.
“Head north!” I ordered savagely. “And when we have to, we’ll eat
the dogs! And when they’re gone, by God, I’ll eat you if necessary to
get north to Tomat! Keep on north!”
Cowed by my threats, and thoroughly believing that this wild
stranger from the sea might well turn cannibal, the dog drivers
headed northwest toward Tomat, the solitary village on that
northern Arctic coast. For three days our laboring dogs dragged us
through the drifts along the road to Tomat, fortunately for us
following a chain of deserted huts in each of which we found refuse
scraps of fish heads, entrails of reindeer, and such similar offal, the
which we (both men and dogs) ate greedily to save us from
starvation, and on the fourth day, so frozen that I had to be carried
from my sledge into a hut, we arrived at Tomat.
Staying there only a day to thaw out, to change my dogs for fresh
ones, and to replenish my food supply (in that poor village, itself
facing the winter with scanty food, getting each solitary fish was
harder indeed than extracting from the villagers their teeth), I
started east along the Arctic coast, with my feet so badly frozen I
could not walk.
By evening, marked by a pole, I found the cache De Long had left
on the beach but so thick was the falling snow I could not see the
first cutter offshore. Salvaging the log books and the Jeannette’s
navigating outfit, I loaded them on my sledges and turned south till
I came on the first hut where De Long had stopped. For a week
after, amid frigid Arctic gales with the temperature far below zero, I
searched along the solidly frozen Lena, visiting every hut, finishing
finally in that hut on the promontory where for three days De Long
had waited for the rivers to freeze so he might cross, and where Dr.
Ambler had sliced off Erichsen’s toes. There beyond the frozen river,
on the wind-swept further shore, for a short distance I could follow
where his toiling shipmates had dragged Erichsen along on his
sledge, for the deep grooves left in the soft slush a month and a half
before now stood clearly out in solid ice.
But there finally I lost the trail. The deep drifts of many snows
buried all tracks. Facing a myriad of wandering streams, any one of
which De Long might have followed south, I searched in vain for
further tracks, for the hut in which Erichsen had finally died, for the
epitaph board which Nindemann told me he had left there to mark
it, but not another trace of De Long or of his party could I find in the
ever-thickening snow as storm succeeded storm and buried the Lena
Delta in drifts so deep that my floundering dogs could scarcely drag
me through them.
It was now late November, six wintry weeks since without food
and without shelter, De Long had parted somewhere thereabouts in
that ghastly wilderness from his two messengers. Only one of two
things now was possible—either De Long and his party had
somehow been found by natives who were sheltering him, quite as
safe as I myself; or he had long since perished and was somewhere
buried beneath the snowdrifts on the open tundra, where in the
dead of winter it was hopeless to search for him. Weak and frozen
myself from my desperate search, coming on top of my long
exposure in the open whaleboat, it was now imperative that I get
out of the delta before my frozen corpse found an unmarked grave
beneath the snows alongside my missing shipmates. So sadly I
ordered my worn dogs south. It took us a week to fight our way
back to Ku Mark Surk at the delta head, and two days more to cover
the final fearful miles along the Lena through the mountain gorges
up to Bulun, where at last at the end of November I arrived, sick at
heart at my failure to find my comrades, terribly sick physically from
rotten food, from hunger, and with numbed limbs from which the
Arctic cold had drained away every vestige of life.
 CHAPTER XXXVIII

All winter long, while endeavoring to recuperate my frozen arms and

legs, I gathered supplies and sledges from Bulun, from far-off
Yakutsk, from all the villages between, for an intensive search of the
delta in early March before the annual springtime freshets, feeding
the Lena with the melting snows of southern Siberia, should come
pouring out on the flat delta, burying it in a flood of raging waters
and sweeping my shipmates out into the Arctic Sea.
I kept only Nindemann, now recovered, and Bartlett with me to
help me in my search. All the remaining survivors, a pitiful party,
under Lieutenant Danenhower’s charge, went south over the fifteen
hundred mile trail to Irkutsk. Poor Aneguin, weakened by exposure,
died before he got out of Siberia; Jack Cole, violently insane,
reached America only to die soon after in a government asylum; and
Danenhower himself, broken in health, after a few brief years spent
undergoing a long series of operations, soon followed him to the
grave. The rest except for Leach, whose toes had to be amputated,
reached America safe and sound. Meanwhile by courier from Bulun
to Irkutsk, the head of the telegraph lines in Siberia, the news of the
disaster to the Jeannette finally went out on December 21.
For two and a half years not a word of us had ever reached
civilization. As the months since our departure lengthened into years
and no news came, anxiety in America and in Europe over our fate
deepened into keen alarm. Swallowed by the trackless Arctic, fear
for us grew, and in the summer of 1881, two relief expeditions fitted
out by the American government went north to search for us. But
where should they look? Which way did the polar currents go from
Behring Strait where we had entered? No one knew save we on the
Jeannette and our knowledge was useless to a world facing a search
of the unknown north.
 One expedition in the Revenue Cutter Corwin, searched for us
fruitlessly off Wrangel Land but not daring to enter the ice, found no
trace. A second expedition, in the U.S.S. Alliance, thinking perhaps
we might have drifted east over North America and come out
beyond Greenland into the Atlantic, searched during the whole
summer the fringe of the polar pack around Spitzbergen, getting in
open water as far as 82° North, five degrees higher than we in the
Jeannette were ever carried by the pack before it crushed us.
But neither expedition found the slightest sign of us, and more
alarmed than ever, an international search was being organized by
our Navy, with the help of England, Russia, and Sweden for the
summer of 1882. In the midst of these preparations in late
December, 1881, from far up in the Arctic Circle, my first brief
telegram from Bulun at last reached Irkutsk and flashed out over the
wires to an astonished world, ending the mystery of the Jeannette’s
disappearance, bringing joy to some whose friends had definitely
escaped; blank despair to others whose lives were bound up with
poor Chipp and his lost boat’s crew; and a terrible state of mingled
fear and hope, not to be resolved for unknown months yet, to Emma
De Long and the families of those men still with her husband. I felt
that they were dead, but I did not know it, and dared not say so. I
could only announce them as having landed safely, but yet unfound.
My heart ached for Emma De Long, half the globe away from me,
clinging to her daughter, praying that her husband might yet be
alive, tortured by the long drawn out fear of waiting for word from
Siberia, dreading each knock at the door as announcing the
messenger bringing definitely the black news of his death, and all
the while with her imagination able to dwell only on the agonies
which her husband had undergone, and if by some miracle (for
which she prayed) he still were living among those Arctic wastes, he
must yet be suffering.
I received carte blanche from Washington for funds to pursue the
search; from St. Petersburg, I was assured all the resources of
Russia were at my command. But Washington and St. Petersburg
were far away from the trackless delta where I must pursue my
search, and carte blanche telegrams helped me little. A few dogs, a
few interpreters, a supply of dried fish sold under compulsion by
natives who could ill afford to spare them, was the total extent of
the assistance I could use and get delivered to distant Bulun up in
the Arctic Circle, fifteen hundred long miles away from civilization
and the telegraph wires at Irkutsk, when in late February with
practically all the fish in the Lena Delta in my possession and the
poor Yakuts face to face with famine, I resumed my search.
Dividing my forces, I sent Bartlett and an interpreter to cover the
eastern branches of the Lena, while with Nindemann to guide me, I
started again to search the western branches myself.
I had seven dog teams hauling fish, having practically stripped
Jamaveloch and every Lena village of its entire supply. Delayed
considerably still by fierce snow storms, we went north from Ku Mark
Surk into the delta, but it took two weeks for the straining dogs to
drag our stores along to where the Lena started branching widely at
Cass Carta, and many a burdened dog froze to death in the drifts
before he got there. At Cass Carta at last, I reorganized my
remaining teams and on March 12, still in the midst of-winter
weather, sent Bartlett east, and with Nindemann, began myself the
search of western rivers.
For a week, systematically Nindemann scouted along each river,
trying to pick out the one that he and Noros had followed south. But
the innumerable storms since had changed the whole face of that
frozen country. How many streams we examined, I cannot even
guess. Nindemann, his broad brows knit with puzzled furrows, could
find nothing familiar in any of them. Baffled, we gave up searching
there and went far to the north, to follow down De Long’s trail from
the coast, but at the same point where in November I had lost the
track, Nindemann himself was able to do no better in pointing out
the path. And then came a raging storm which held us snowbound
for three days.
Despairingly I considered the situation. Would we ever pick up De
Long’s track? It must be soon or never! Before long the river ice
would break up, we could no longer travel, and swollen with melting
snow from the whole interior of Siberia, the Lena would come
flooding down in torrents to drown out the low delta lands, washing
away forever every trace of my comrades! De Long must be
somewhere to the south. In desperation, I gave up searching the
central delta for his track, and decided to go back again to the delta
head, to sweep the spreading rivers there as I came north.
Soon after, starting from the southward again, since Nindemann
also felt that there he could do best, we began at a wide bay, from
which one tremendous river flowed eastward toward Jamaveloch,
another flowed westward and northward toward Tomat, and in
between the Lena, in many smaller branches, flowed due north,
spreading widely out and meandering over the delta, though now of
course it flowed beneath the ice as every stream was still solidly
frozen over.
Following the edge of this tremendous bay, I examined every
headland on it. Broken slabs of ice were piled up in tangled masses
on the banks; the snow, drifted by the winds, ran in smooth slopes
from the river ice to the tops of the promontories, filling in the
banks; dozens of frozen streams, like twigs spreading from a limb,
branched out from the bay, complicating the search.
Coming in the late afternoon to a high headland on the western
side of the bay, I left my sledge as usual on the river ice, and
clambered up the crust of snow to its top. The crest was strongly
wind-swept and fairly bare of snow; as I stooped to brace myself
against the wind, I saw right on the point of the promontory signs of
a long-dead fire, with half-burned driftwood logs hove into the wide
bed of ashes and apparently many footprints in the ice about.
Beckoning to Nindemann to come up, I asked him,
“Did you or Noros build that fire here?”
“No,” said Nindemann, “it looks to me we came this way, but we
never had a fire like that.”
I motioned up my dog-driver, questioned him in native dialect,
 “Do Yakuts build fires this way?”
“No, no, master,” he protested volubly, “Yakuts build only small
fires, never big fires like this.”
“Well, Nindemann,” I said, “I think we’re on the trail at last. This
looks to me like a signal fire, especially since it’s built on this
promontory to shine out over the bay. De Long must have passed
here.”
“Yah,” agreed the quartermaster, “that is right. There! See? There
is the old wreck of a flatboat on the bank and I remember Louis and
me passed by that wreck the same day we left the captain! This is
the way we came, and the captain said he’d follow our trail!”
Going down to the river again, we climbed aboard our dog
sledges. Nindemann on his sledge led along the ice, and with me
following on mine, we set off on a short journey up the stream to
examine the bare skeleton of that flatboat, stranded on the bank a
quarter of a mile downstream.
I rode, sitting sideways on my sledge, facing the high bank which
rose some thirty feet above the river, and which, as usual, had hard-
driven snow packed in a glistening slope from its crest down over
the frozen river. Going swiftly along over the ice this way while
eagerly scanning the river bank, I noted standing up through the
sloping snow what seemed to be the points of four sticks lashed
together with a rope.
Immediately I rolled off the speeding sledge, and swiftly going to
the spot, found a Remington rifle slung from the sticks, its muzzle
some eight inches out of the snow. A real sign of De Long at last!
Instantly I sent my driver to bring Nindemann back, feeling that
here the weakening wanderers might have made a cache of such
belongings as they could no longer carry, and perhaps even have left
a record of their progress. We were certainly on the trail now!
While the Yakuts at my orders began digging in the snow around
those sticks, Nindemann returned to the flatboat, and I with a