AFLOAT ON AN ICEBERG.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XX, Issue 2063, 6 January 1925, Page 3

AFLOAT ON AN ICEBERG.

TRIP OF 600 MILES. DANES' STRANGE VOYAGE. TwenXyj-oae white clad Danes with boots came tramping cobbles of Rekkjavik, in Iceland, in the first week in September, (fcihey were a queer sight, ana all the 'lcelander** stood by the wharf-side to stare at them, for these men had sailed the Arctic seas not on a ship, but on un ioeberg, and had been plucked from death by a miracle. They had lost their ship, their iceberg had split boneatli their feet, a storm had carried them to imminent destruction, and then the wind, veering round, had carried them within sight of safety. Peril from drowning, peril from freezing, peril from starving to death, they had .survived them all, and here they were back in Iceland, safe and well. No wonder the Iceland sailors and fishermen, who know what peril means, stared at them. GIVEN UP OR LOST. They were the crew of the Danish ship Teddy, which was sent last year with fur-trappers and explorers to see whether Greenland could be lived in. They got there, did their job, started back in August, and were caught in the ice pack eleven days out at sea, | and stayed there till at home they | were given up for lost, j Being caught in an ice pack is all in 1 the day's work for an Arctic expedii tion. The ships are built for it, but ; the crew of the Teddy had an experience such as no men ever had before. Their ship was jammed there for a month. Luck might have got it out, but it did no. Tho Teddy cracked under the strain. Sho leaked so that tho pumps could not keep the water down. The first thing to do was to put tho best man they had in command. So the crew elected the young third officer, Louis Jensen, captain. Jensen was only 23, but he was the square peg in the leaky hole. "We'll get to Augmakslik for Chrrsimas," said he. •And ho did. Auguiakslik is a settlement in Greenland. The first thing Jensen did was to take his men off the ship on to the biggest iceberg that had crashed them. It was a tidy-looking berg, 300 ft. across, a good deal bigger than tho Utile Teddy, which it lowed beside it like (i dinghy, mid Hie strange companions bore south ai about a mile an hour. A VISIT KROM the BEARS. The deckhouse and all the .stores were moved to the iceberg. In the middle .stood tho deck-house, with tho hammocks slung inside, the stores [tacked behind, and a workshop put up where sledges and sleeping bags and winter-clothing could all be got ready. What a life they had in those desolato, ice-packed seas! Not ontrely decollate, for polar bears would sometimes, join them. As the crew were short of fresh meal, the visitors were sometimes shot. On the other hand, if they had not been shot, they would probably have eaten the explorers. But it is pleasant to record that one shaggy old polar bear who came prying about the deck-house when there was no meat shortage was treated as a visitor. Someone played a tune on a concertina for him. He slept. He left next morning without breakfast. That was all very well when the weather was fine, though even so, the chances of reaching Auguiakslik, COO miles away, by Christmas, were not rosy. Suppose the weather changed and the wind blew? It did. It blew a hurricane. A ship in a Greenland hurricane is no bed of roses . But a brittle iceberg! In the dark waste and middle of the night when all but the watch were in their hammocks, there was a crack like a cannon shot. Someone cried: "We're Hooded!" In the middle of the deck-house the iceberg had split. A crevasse six feet wide had opened beneath the hammocks, and tho watre was Hooding up. The deckhouse broke in half. The men, slipping and falling, made frtr the Teddy, their only raft in the storm. THE LAST OF THE TEDDY.

Morning came, and the Teddy broke away, giving them only just time to scramble back to ono half of the iceberg. The Teddy drifted away half a mile to the south. There was but one desperate chance for them. They must sledge it over the broken fragments of the ice pack, if they could, and try to reach the distant shore of Greenland. When they got there it might be merely to starve, but it was the only way. So they started out with the sledges, and in he first day they made only hailf *a mile, but eventually •cached the shore.