"D
ECEMBER21, Saturday. To-day at noon we saw, dimly looming up from the redness of the southern horizon, a low range of hills; among them some cones of great height, mountains of a character differing from the naked table-lands of the northern coast. The land on the other side of Croker’s Bay, with one high headland, supposed to be Cape Warrender, is in view. From all of which it is clear that we are drifting regularly on toward Baffin’s Bay.
“An opening occurred last night in the ice to the northward. It is not more than a hundred yards from us, and it is already seventy wide. It was explored for about a mile in a northwest and southeast course. Another of the same character is about half a mile to the south of us.
“Our floe has now remained in peace fornearly three weeks; and, with the happy indifference of sailors' human nature, we are beginning to forget the driving ice and the groaning pressures which have perched us thus upon a lump of drift. I look, however, to the spring-tides for a renewal of the trouble. The ice about us is apparently as strong and solid as the slow growth of Wellington Channel; but we know it to be recent, and less able to withstand pressure. Every thing now depends upon preserving our vessel and stores. A breaking up must take place, and for us the later in the spring the better. At the present rate of progress, we shall be in Baffin’s Bay by the latter end of January. There the daylight will be with us again; most providentially, for the icebergs are wretched enemies in darkness. Thirty more days, and we may take a noonday walk; forty-four, and the sun comes back.
“Our men are hard at work preparing for the Christmas theatre, the arrangements exclusively their own. But to-morrow is a day more welcome than Christmas—the solstitial day of greatest darkness, fromwhich we may begin to date our returning light. It makes a man feel badly to see the faces around him bleaching into waxen paleness. Until to-day, as a looking-glass does not enter into an Arctic toilet, I thought I was the exception, and out of delicacy said nothing about it to my comrades. One of them, introducing the topic just now, told me, with an utter unconsciousness of his own ghostliness, that I was the palest of the party. So it is, ‘All men think all men,’ &c. Why, the good fellow is as white as a cut potato!"
In truth, we were all of us at this time undergoing changes unconsciously. The hazy obscurity of the nights we had gone through made them darker than the corresponding nights of Parry. The complexions of my comrades, and my own too, as I found soon afterward, were toned down to a peculiar waxy paleness. Our eyes were more recessed, and strangely clear. Complaints of shortness of breath became general. Our appetite was almost ludicrously changed: ham-fat frozen, and saur-kraut swimming in olive-oil were favorites; yet we were unconsciousof any tendency toward the gross diet of the Polar region. Most of my companions would not touch bear; indeed, I was the only one, except Captain De Haven, that still ate it. Fox, on the other hand, was a favorite. Things seemed to have changed their taste, and our inclination for food was at best very slight.
Worse than this, our complete solitude, combined with permanent darkness, began to affect ourmorale. Men became moping, testy, and imaginative. In the morning, dreams of the night—we could not help using the term—were narrated. Some had visited the naked shores of Cape Warrender, and returned laden with water-melons. Others had found Sir John Franklin in a beautiful cove, lined by quintas and orange-trees. Even Brooks, our hard-fisted, unimaginative boatswain, told me, in confidence, of having heard three strange groans out upon the ice. He “thought it was a bear, but could see nothing!” In a word, the health of our little company was broken in upon. It required strenuous and constant effort at washing, diet, and exercise to keep thescurvy at bay. Eight cases of scorbutic gums were already upon my black-list. One severe pneumonia left me in anxious doubt as to its result. There was, however, little bronchitis.
“December22, Sunday. The solstice!—the midnight of the year! It commences with a new movement in the ice, the open lead of yesterday piling up into hummocks on our port-beam. No harm done.
“The wind is from the west, increasing in freshness since early in the morning. The weather overcast; even the moon unseen, and no indications of our drift. We could not read print, not even large newspaper type, at noonday. We have been unable to leave the ship unarmed for some time on account of the bears. We remember the story of poor Barentz, one of our early predecessors. One of our crew, Blinn, a phlegmatic Dutchman, walked out to-day toward the lead, a few hundred yards off, in search of a seal-hole. Suddenly a seal rose close by him in the sludge-ice: he raised his gun to fire; and, at the same instant, a large bear jumped over the floe, and by a dive followed the seal.Blinn’s musket snapped. He was glad to get on board again, and will remember his volunteer hunt. Thermometer, minimum, -18°; maximum, -6°. A beautiful paraselene yesterday!
“December23, Monday. Perfect darkness! Drift unknown. Winds nearly at rest, with the exception of a little gasp from the westward. Thermometer never below -12°, nor above -7°.
“December24, Tuesday. ‘Through utter darkness borne!’
“December25. ‘YeChristmas of yeArctic cruisers!’ Our Christmas passed without a lack of the good things of this life. ‘Goodies’ we had galore; but that best of earthly blessings, the communion of loved sympathies, these Arctic cruisers had not. It was curious to observe the depressing influences of each man’s home thoughts, and absolutely saddening the effort of each man to impose upon his neighbor and be very boon and jolly. We joked incessantly, but badly, and laughed incessantly, but badly too; ate of good things, and drank up a moiety of our Heidsiek; and then we sangnegro songs, wanting only tune, measure, and harmony, but abounding in noise; and after a closing bumper to Mr. Grinnell, adjourned with creditable jollity from table to the theatre.
“It was on deck, of course, but veiled from the sky by our felt covering. A large ship’s ensign, stretched from the caboose to the bulwarks, was understood to hide the stage, and certain meat-casks and candle-boxes represented the parquet. The thermometer gave us -6° at first; but the favoring elements soon changed this to the more comfortable temperature of -4°.
“Never had I enjoyed the tawdry quackery of the stage half so much. The theatre has always been to me a wretched simulation of realities; and I have too little sympathy with the unreal to find pleasure in it long. Not so our Arctic theatre: it was one continual frolic from beginning to end.
“The 'Blue Devils:' God bless us! but it was very, very funny. None knew their parts, and the prompter could not read glibly enough to do his office. Every thing, whether jocose, or indignant, or commonplace,or pathetic, was delivered in a high-tragedy monotone of despair; five words at a time, or more or less, according to the facilities of the prompting. Megrim, with a pair of seal-skin boots, bestowed his gold upon the gentle Annette; and Annette, nearly six feet high, received it with mastodonic grace. Annette was an Irishman named Daly; and I might defy human being to hear her, while balanced on the heel of her boot, exclaim, in rich masculine brogue, ‘Och, feather!’ without roaring. Bruce took the Landlord, Benson was James, and the gentle Annette and the wealthy Megrim were taken by Messrs. Daly and Johnson.
“After this followed the Star Spangled Banner; then a complicated Marseillaise by our French cook, Henri; then a sailor’s horn-pipe by the diversely-talented Bruce; the orchestra—Stewart, playing out the intervals on the Jew’s-harp from the top of a lard-cask. In fact, we were very happy fellows. We had had a foot-race in the morning over the midnight ice for three purses of a flannel shirt each, and a splicing of the main-brace.The day was night, the stars shining feebly through the mist.
“But even here that kindly custom of Christmas-gifting was not forgotten. I found in my morning stocking a jack-knife, symbolical of my altered looks, a piece of Castile soap—this last article in great request—a Jew’s-harp, and a string of beads! On the other hand, I prescribed from the medical stores two bottles of Cognac, to protect the mess from indigestion.[E]So passed Christmas. Thermometer, minimum, -16°; maximum, -7°. Wind west.
[E]An offense which I thus publicly acknowledge in advance of the court-martial, to which this illegal dispensation of the public stores may subject me.
[E]An offense which I thus publicly acknowledge in advance of the court-martial, to which this illegal dispensation of the public stores may subject me.
“December26, Thursday. To-day, looming up high in the air, we catch a sight of new unknown land. Of our drift, save by analogy, we know nothing.
“December27, Friday. The shores of this coast seem to have changed their scale. At Cape Riley, as my sketches show, the limestone rises in a mural face, based by a deposit of detritus, which extends out in tongues, indentations, and salient capes; andbetween these, a cemented shingle, full of corallines and encrinites, forms a beach of varying extent.
“Sometimes this beach is backed by rolling dune-like hills of the scaly mountain limestones; but after a mile or two of intermission, the high cliffs rise up again in abutments, and continue unbroken until another interval occurs. As we proceeded east, these escarped masses became more buttress-like and monumental, rising up into plateau-topped masses, separated by chasms, which seem mere ruptures in the continuous hill-line. Now, however, a trace is seen in the clouds indicative of distant land, higher, more mountainous, rolling, and broken. It may be the Cunninghame Mountains toward Cape Warrender.
“The wind is quietly blowing from the west, and the misty haze gives us barely a vestige of daylight.
“December28, Saturday. From my very soul do I rejoice at the coming sun. Evidences not to be mistaken convince me that the health of our crew, never resting upon a very sound basis, must sink underthe continued influences of darkness and cold. The temperature and foulness of air in the between-deck Tartarus can not be amended, otherwise it would be my duty to urge a change. Between the smoke of lamps, the dry heat of stoves, and the fumes of the galley, all of them unintermitting, what wonder that we grow feeble. The short race of Christmas-day knocked up all our officers except Griffin. It pained me to see my friend Lovell, our strongest man, fainting with the exertion. The symptoms of scurvy among the crew are still increasing, and becoming more general. Faces are growing pale; strong men pant for breath upon ascending a ladder; and an indolence akin to apathy seems to be creeping over us. I long for the light. Dear, dear sun, no wonder you are worshiped!
“Our drift is still eastward, with a slow but unerring progress. The high land mentioned yesterday took, in spite of the obscuring haze, a distinguishable outline. It is not more than eight miles off, and so high that, with its retiring flanks on either side, it can be none other than the projectingCape Warrender. Its structure is unmistakably gneissoid. We have now left the limestones.
“This cape is the great entering landmark of the northern shores of Lancaster Sound. Just one hundred days ago we passed it, urged by the wings of the storm; our errand of mercy filling us with hope, and the gale calling for our best energies. We were then but a few hours from Baffin’s Bay, and not over twenty-four from the coast of Greenland. How differently are we journeying now!
“The Bay of Baffin, with its moving ice and opposing icebergs, bathed in foggy darkness and destitute of human fellowship or habitable asylum, is before us; and we, so utterly helpless, hampered, and nonresistant, must await the inevitable action of the ice. This nearness to Cape Warrender makes us feel that our silent marches have brought us near to another conflict.
“December29, Sunday. The drift shows an indent of the cape now abaft our beam. We are slowly making easting. The day is one of the same obscure and dimmed fogwhich for the past week has wrapped us in darkness. The ice gives no change as yet: the same great field of moving whiteness.
“December30, Monday. By a comparison of our several days' positions, I find that from the 18th to the 28th we have drifted fifty-two miles and a half, something over five miles a day. The winds during this period have been from the westward, constant though gentle; and our progress has been of the same steady but gentle sort. At this rate, we will in a few days more be within the Baffin’s Bay incognita.
“Looking round upon my mess-mates with that sort of scrutiny that belongs to my craft and my position, I am startled at the traces, moral and physical, of our Arctic winter life. Those who con it over theoretically can hardly realize the operation of the host of retarding influences that belong to a Polar night. If I were asked to place in foremost rank the item that has been most trying, it would be neither the perpetual cold, nor the universal sameness, nor our complete exclusion from the active world of ourbrother men, but this constant and oppressing gloom, this unvaried darkness.
“To-day was clear toward the south, so that the blessing of light came to us more largely than of late. I walked about a mile on the recent lead, now frozen to a level meandering lane. We see to the north the Cunninghame Mountains of Cape Warrender, but can not make out our change of position definitely. To the south, an outlined ridge of doubtful mountain land shows itself high in the clouds; probably a part of the high ridges east of Admiralty Inlet.
“The thermometer fell at eight this morning to -21°. By noonday it gave us -26° and -27°. It is now -22°. The wind is gentle and cold, but not severe.
“December31, Tuesday. The ending day of 1850! So clear and beautiful is this parting day, that I must take it as a happy omen. Pellucid clearness, and a sky of deep ultra-marine, brought back the remembrance of daylight. I give the record of the day.
“9A.M.The stars visible even to the lesser groups; but a deep zone of Italianpink rises from the south, and passes by prismatic gradations into the clear blue. The outline of the shore to the northward is well defined.
“10. The day is growing into clearness. The thermometer is at twenty-seven degrees below zero. Your lungs tingle pleasantly as you draw it in.
“11. Can read ordinary over-sized print. Started on a walk, the first time for twenty-odd days. Saw the great lead, and traveled it for a couple of miles, expanding into a plain of recent ice.
“M. Passed noon on the ice. Can read diamond type. Stars of the first magnitude only visible. Saturn magnificent!
“1P.M.With difficulty read large type. The clouds gathering in black stratus over the red light to the south.
“2. The heavens studded with stars in their groupings. Night is again over every thing, although the minor stars are not yet seen.
“Since the first of this month, we have drifted in solitude one hundred and seventy miles, skirting the northern shores of LancasterSound. Baffin’s Bay is ahead of us, its current setting strong toward the south. What will be the result when the mighty masses of these two Arctic seas come together!"
CHAPTER XII
1
851,January1, Wednesday. The first day of 1851 set in cold, the thermometer at -28°, and closing at -31°. We celebrated it by an extra dinner, a plumcake unfrosted for the occasion, and a couple of our residuary bottles of wine. But there was no joy in our merriment: we were weary of the night, as those who watch for the morning.
It was not till the 3d that the red southern zone continued long enough to give us assurance of advancing day. Then, for at least three hours, the twilight enabled us to walk without stumbling. I had a feeling of racy enjoyment as I found myself once more away from the ship, ranging among the floes, and watching the rivalry of day with night in the zenith. There was the sunward horizon, with its evenly-distributed bands of primitive colors, blending softly into the clear blue overhead; and then, by an almostmagic transition, night occupying the western sky. Stars of the first magnitude, and a wandering planet here and there, shone dimly near the debatable line; but a little further on were all the stars in their glory. The northern firmament had the familiar beauty of a pure winter night at home. The Pleiades glittered “like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver-braid,” and the great stars that hang about the heads of Orion and Taurus were as intensely bright as if day was not looking out upon them from the other quarter of the sky. I had never seen night and day dividing the hemisphere so beautifully between them.
On the 8th we had, of course, our national festivities, and remembered freshly the hero who consecrated the day in our annals. The evening brought the theatricals again, with extempore interludes, and a hearty splicing of the main-brace. It was something new, and not thoroughly gladsome, this commemoration of the victory at New Orleans under a Polar sky. There were men not two hundred miles from us, now our partners in a nobler contest, who had bled in thisvery battle. But we made the best of the occasion; and if others some degrees further to the south celebrated it more warmly, we had the thermometer on our side, with its -20°, a normal temperature for the “laudatur et alget.”
But the sun was now gradually coming up toward the horizon: every day at meridian, and for an hour before and after, we were able to trace our progress eastward by some known headland. We had passed Cape Castlereagh and Cape Warrender in succession, and were close on the meridian of Cape Osborn. The disruptions of the ice which we had encountered so far, had always been at the periods of spring-tide. The sun and moon were in conjunction on the 21st of December; and, adopting Captain Parry’s observation, that the greatest efflux was always within five days after the new moon, we had looked with some anxiety to the closing weeks of that month. But they had gone by without any unusual movement; and there needed only an equally kind visitation of the January moon to give us our final struggle with the Baffin’s Bay ice by daylight.
Yet I had remarked that the southern shore of Lancaster Sound extended much further out to the eastward than the northern did; and I had argued that we might begin to feel the current of Baffin’s Bay in a very few days, though we were still considerably to the west of a line drawn from one cape to the other. The question received its solution without waiting for the moon.
I give from my journal our position in the ice on the 11th of January:
“January11, Saturday. The floe in which we are now imbedded has been steadily increasing in solidity for more than a month. Since the 8th of December, not a fracture or collision has occurred to mar its growth. The eye can not embrace its extent. Even from the mast-head you look over an unbounded expanse of naked ice, bristling with contorted spires, and ridged by elevated axes of hummocks. The land on either side rises above our icy horizon; but to the east and west, there is no such interception to our winteryness.
“The brig remains as she was tossed atour providential escape of last month, her nose burrowing in the snow, and her stern perched high above the rubbish. Walking deck is an up and down hill work. She retains, too, her list to starboard. Her bare sides have been banked over again with snow to increase the warmth, and a formidable flight of nine ice-block steps admits us to the door-way of her winter cover. The stores, hastily thrown out from the vessel when we expected her to go to pieces, are still upon the little remnant of old floe on our port or northern side. TheRescueis some hundred yards off to the south of east."
The next day things underwent a change. The morning was a misty one, giving us just light enough to make out objects that were near the ship; the wind westerly, as it had been for some time, freshening perhaps to a breeze. The day went on quietly till noon, when a sudden shock brought us all up to the deck. Running out upon the ice, we found that a crack had opened between us and theRescue, and was extending in a zigzag course from the northward and eastward to the southward and westward. At oneo’clock it had become a chasm eight feet in width; and as it continued to widen, we observed a distinct undulation of the water about its edges. At three, it had expanded into a broad sheet of water, filmed over by young ice, through which the portions of the floe that bore our two vessels began to move obliquely toward each other. Night closed round us, with the chasm reduced to forty yards and still narrowing; theRescueon her port-bow, two hundred yards from her late position; the wind increasing, and the thermometer at -19°.
My journal for the next day was written at broken intervals; but I give it without change of form:
“January13, 4A.M.All hands have been on deck since one o’clock, strapped and harnessed for a farewell march. The water-lane of yesterday is covered by four-inch ice; the floes at its margin more than three feet thick. These have been closing for some time by a sliding, grinding movement, one upon the other; but every now and then coming together more directly, the thinner ice clattering between them, and marking theirnew outline with hummock ridges. They have been fairly in contact for the last hour: we feel their pressure extending to us through the elastic floe in which we are cradled. There is a quivering, vibratory hum about the timbers of the brig, and every now and then a harsh rubbing creak along her sides, like waxed cork on a mahogany table. The hummocks are driven to within four feet of our counter, and stand there looming fourteen feet high through the darkness. It has been a horrible commotion so far, with one wild, booming, agonized note, made up of a thousand discords; and now comes the deep stillness after it, the mysterious ice-pulse, as if the energies were gathering for another strife.
“6½A.M.Another pulse! the vibration greater than we have ever yet had it. If our little brig had an animated centre of sensation, and some rude force had torn a nerve-trunk, she could not feel it more—she fairly shudders. Looking out to the north, this ice seems to heave up slowly against the sky in black hills; and as we watch them rolling toward us, the hills sink again, and a distortedplain of rubbish melts before us into the night. Ours is the contrast of utter helplessness with illimitable power.
“9:50A.M.Brooks and myself took advantage of the twilight at nine o’clock to cross the hummocky fields to theRescue. I can not convey an impression of the altered aspects of the floe. Our frozen lane has disappeared, and along the line of its recent course the ice is heaped up in blocks, tables, lumps, powder, and rubbish, often fifteen feet high. Snow covered the decks of the little vessel, and the disorder about it spoke sadly of desertion. Foot-prints of foxes were seen in every imaginable corner; and near the little hatchway, where we had often sat in comfortable good-fellowship, the tracks of a large bear had broken the snow crust in his efforts to get below.
“TheRescuehas met the pressure upon her port-bow and fore-foot. Her bowsprit, already maimed by her adventure off Griffith’s Island, is now completely forced up, broken short off at the gammoning. The ice, after nipping her severely, has piled up round her three feet above the bulwarks.We had looked to her as our first asylum of retreat; but that is out of the question now; she can not rise as we have done, and any action that would peril us again must bear her down or crush her laterally.
“The ice immediately about theAdvanceis broken into small angular pieces, as if it had been dashed against a crag of granite. Our camp out on the floe, with its reserve of provisions and a hundred things besides, memorials of scenes we have gone through, or appliances and means for hazards ahead of us, has been carried away bodily. My noble specimen of the Arctic bear is floating, with an escort of bread barrels, nearly half a mile off.
“The thermometer records only—17°; but it blows at times so very fiercely that I have never felt it so cold: five men were frost-bitten in the attempt to save our stores.
“9P.M.We have had no renewal of the pressure since half past six this morning. We are turning in; the wind blowing a fresh breeze, weather misty, thermometer at -23°."
The night brought no further change; buttoward morning the cracks, that formed before this a sort of net-work all about the vessel, began to open. The cause was not apparent: the wind had lulled, and we saw no movement of the floes. We had again the same voices of complaint from the ship, but they were much feebler than yesterday; and in about an hour the ice broke up all round her, leaving an open space of about a foot to port, indented with the mould of her form. The brig was loose once more at the sides; but she remained suspended by the bows and stern from hummocks built up like trestles, and canted forward still five feet and a quarter out of level. Every thing else was fairly afloat: even the India-rubber boat, which during our troubles had found a resting-place on a sound projection of the floe close by us, had to be taken in.
This, I may say, was a fearful position; but the thermometer, at a mean of -23° and -24°, soon brought back the solid character of our floating raft. In less than two days every thing about us was as firmly fixed as ever. But the whole topography of the ice was changed, and its new configurationattested the violence of the elements it had been exposed to. Nothing can be conceived more completely embodying inhospitable desolation. From mast-head the eye traveled wearily over a broad champaigne of modulating ice, crowned at its ridges with broken masses, like breakers frozen as they rolled toward the beach. Beyond these, you lost by degrees the distinctions of surface. It was a great plain, blotched by dark, jagged shadows, and relieved only here and there by a hill of upheaved rubbish. Still further in the distance came an unvarying uniformity of shade, cutting with saw-toothed edge against a desolate sky.
Yet there needed no after-survey of the ice-field to prove to us what majestic forces had been at work upon it. At one time on the 13th, the hummock-ridge astern advanced with a steady march upon the vessel. Twice it rested, and advanced again—a dense wall of ice, thirty feet broad at the base and twelve feet high, tumbling huge fragments from its crest, yet increasing in mass at each new effort. We had ceased to hope; when a merciful interposition arrestedit, so close against our counter that there was scarcely room for a man to pass between. Half a minute of progress more, and it would have buried us all. As we drifted along five months afterward, this stupendous memento of controlling power was still hanging over our stern. The sketch at the head of the next chapter represents its appearance at the close of the month.
THE ADVANCE, FEBRUARY, 1851.
CHAPTER XIII
W
E had lost all indications of a shore, and had obviously passed within the influences of Baffin’s Bay. We were on the meridian of 75°; yet, though the recent commotions could be referred to nothing else but the conflict of the two currents, we had made very little southing, if any, and had seen no bergs. But on the 14th the wind edged round a little more to the northward, and at six o’clock in the morning of the 15th wecould hear a squeezing noise among the ice-fields in that direction. By this time we had become learned interpreters of the ice-voices. Of course, we renewed our preparations for whatever might be coming. Every man arranged his knapsack and blanket-bag over again with the practiced discretion of an expert. Our extra clothing sledge, carefully repacked, was made free on deck. The India-rubber boat, only useful in this solid waste for crossing occasional chasms, was launched out upon the ice for the third time. Our former depôts on the floe had fared so badly that we were reluctant to risk another; but our stores were ready to be got out at the moment.[F]
[F]I have avoided speaking of my brother officers. From myself, a subordinate, only accidentally recording their exertions, it would be out of place; yet I should speak the sentiment of all on board were I to recognize how much we owed to our executive officer, Mr. Griffin. All our systematized preparation for the contingencies which threatened us, the sledges, the knapsacks, the daily training, and the provision depôts, were due to him. Our commander, then so ill with scurvy that we feared for his recovery, was compelled to delegate to his second in command many executive duties which he would otherwise have taken on himself.
[F]I have avoided speaking of my brother officers. From myself, a subordinate, only accidentally recording their exertions, it would be out of place; yet I should speak the sentiment of all on board were I to recognize how much we owed to our executive officer, Mr. Griffin. All our systematized preparation for the contingencies which threatened us, the sledges, the knapsacks, the daily training, and the provision depôts, were due to him. Our commander, then so ill with scurvy that we feared for his recovery, was compelled to delegate to his second in command many executive duties which he would otherwise have taken on himself.
Now began, with every one after his ownfashion, the discussion what was best to be done in case of a wreck. Should we try our fortunes for the while on board theRescue? She would probably be the first to go, and could hardly hope for a more protracted fate than her consort. Or should we try for the shore, and what shore? Admiralty Inlet, or Pond’s Bay, or the River Clyde? We have no reason to suppose the Esquimaux are accessible on the coast in winter; and if they are, they can not have provisions for such a hungry re-enforcement as ours; besides, the chance of reaching land from the drift-field through the broken ice between them is slender at the best for men worn down and sick; much more if they should attempt to carry two months' stores along with them. There was only one other resort, to camp out on the floe, if it should kindly offer us a foothold, and then move as best we might from one failing homestead to another, like a band of Arabs in the desert. Happily, Captain De Haven was spared the necessity of choosing between the alternatives: the ice-storm did not reach us.
“January15. The moon is now nearlyfull. Her light mingles so with the twilight of the sun that the stars are quite sobered down. Walking out at 4P.M., with the thermometer at -24°, to find, if I could, the cause of a sound a good deal like that of the surf, I was startled by a noise like a quarry blast, explosive and momentary, followed by a clatter like broken glass. Some ten minutes afterward, it was repeated, and a dark smoke-like vapor rose up in the moon-light from the same quarter. These things keep us on thequi vive.
“January16. In the course of a tramp to-day about noon, the thermometer standing at -18°, I came across a wonderful instance of the yielding elasticity of ice under intense pressure. About two hundred yards from the brig, on her starboard quarter, was an unbroken plain of level ice, which before our recent break-up used to form one of my daily walks. It measured one hundred and thirty paces in its longer diameter and eighty-five in its shorter, and its thickness I ascertained this morning was over five feet. I found in crossing it to-day that the surface presented a uniform curve, a segment whoseversed sine could not have been less than eight feet, abutted on each side by a barricade of rubbish. It strikes me that the dehiscence, lady’s slipper or Rupert’s drop fashion, of such tensely-compressed floes, must be the cause of the loud explosions we have heard lately. At -30° or -40° the ice is as friable and brittle as glass itself; besides, one of those yesterday was followed by a ringing clatter.
“January18. The extreme stillness, and the facility with which sound travels over these Polar ice-plains, make us err a good deal in our estimates of distance at night. I went out to-day with Dr. Vreeland in search of a violent disruption of the ice, which our look-outs declared they had heard at the very side of the brig. We had some difficulty in finding it: it was the closing of a fissure considerably more than half a mile off.
“As we were returning we noticed some additional results of the ice action of the 13th. Among them was a table of ice, four feet thick, eighteen long, and fifteen broad, so curved without destroying its integrity asto form a well-arched bridge across a water chasm. It had evidently reared up high in air, and then, toppling over, bent into its present form—a marked instance of the semi-solid or viscous character which forms the basis of Professor Forbes’s glacial theory. It is not, however, the first extreme change of form that I have noticed in apparently matured ice at a low temperature: its plasticity at +32° must be much greater.
AN ICE-BRIDGE FORMED BY PRESSURE.
“Observations by meridian altitudes of Saturn and Aldebaran give us to-day a latitude of 73° 47′ north. Yesterday we were at 73° 5\ This progress to the south is shown also by the bearing of the Walter Bathurst coast in the neighborhood ofPossession Bay. We are fully inside of Baffin’s Bay, and with the wind at northwest. There are some signs of ice trouble ahead; a crack has been gradually opening toward our quarter, and has got within eight hundred yards of us."
The day after this the crack approached us till it was only about three hundred yards off, and then began closing again, with the usual accompanying phenomena. The ice between it and us was apparently quiescent; but our ship quivered and jumped under the transmitted pressure. Soon after, in the midst of a heavy snow-drift, and with a temperature of -30°, another crack showed itself close upon our cut-water. The shocks which reached us during these commotions are noted in the log-book as “apparently lifting the vessel aft:” the feeling was, indeed, not unlike that which has been observed during an earthquake, immediately before and sometimes during a vibration.
“January20. The ice sounded last night like some one hammering a nail against the ship’s side, clicking at regular intervals. Another crack on the other side of theRescue,now showing open water, was perhaps the cause.
“We already begin to experience the change in our axis of drift. The changes of the wind and the currents of Baffin’s Bay have impressed the great system which surrounds us with a marked progress to the south.
“Throughout last night, and until nine o’clock this morning, a column of illumination depended from the moon. Viewing it obliquely, its penciled rays could be seen reaching nearly to the horizon; while in its direct aspect a manifest but intermitting interval was apparent. It struck me as an illustration, perhaps, of Sir John Herschell’s remark when observing the Pleiades, that the centre of the retina is not the seat of greatest sensibility.
“Our snow-water has been infected for the past month by a very perceptible flavor and odor of musk, to such a degree sometimes that we could hardly drink it. After many attempts to find out its cause, and at least as many philosophical disquisitions to account for it without one, I accidentally sawto-day a group of foxes on the floes about our brig, who resolved our doubts by an illustration altogether simple and natural.
“January22. On reaching the deck at half past eight this morning, after my usual sleepless night in the murky den below, I found the horizon free from cloud stratus, and the feeble foreshadowings of day bathing the snow with a neutral tint. By nine we could see to walk; and as late as five in the afternoon, the refracted twilights hung about the western sky. How delicious is this sensation of coming day! In less than a fortnight the great planet will be lifted by the bountiful refraction of the Arctic circle into clear eye presence.
“I long for day. The anomalous host of evils which hang about this vegetation in darkness are showing themselves in all their forms. My scurvy patients, those I mean on the sick-list, with all the care that it is possible to give them, are perhaps no worse; but pains in the joints, rheumatisms, coughs, loss of appetite, and general debility, extend over the whole company. Fifteen pounds of food per diem are consumed reluctantlynow, where thirty-two were taken with appetite on the 20th of October. We are a ghastly set of pale faces, and none paler than myself. I find it a labor to carry my carbine. My fingers cling together in an ill-adjustedplexus, like the toes in a tight boot, and my long beard is becoming as rough and rugged as Humphrey of Gloster’s in the play.
“12 M. The thermometer keeps steadily at -20°, but to-day is the coldest I have ever felt. It blows a young gale. Brooks and myself have been flying kites. The wind was like prickling needles, and the snow smoked over the moving drifts.
“I am struck more and more with the evidences of gigantic force in the phases of our frozenpedragal. Returning from a chase after an imaginary bear, we came across, yesterday, a suspended hummock, so imposing in its form, that, half frozen as we were, we stopped to measure it. It was a single table of massive ice, supported upon a pile of rubbish, and inclined about 15° to the horizon. Its length was ninety-one feet six inches, its breadth fifty-one feet, and itsaverage solid thickness eight feet. At its lower end it was seven feet above the level of the adjacent floe; at its upper, twenty-seven. The weight of such a mass, allowing 113 lbs. to the cubic foot, would be 1883 tons. I almost begin to realize Baron Wrangell’s account of the hummocks on the coast of Siberia. We have here, perhaps, some five hundred fathoms of water: the six, or twelve, or twenty fathoms of slimy mud, that he speaks of as forming the inclined plane of the shore, must facilitate very much the upheaval of ice-tables.
“10P.M.The wind has freshened to a gale of the first order, and it howls outside like the dog-chorus of outer Constantinople. But cheerless as these heavy winds are in all out-of-the-way, undefended places, it is only when they announce or accompany a change of direction that we fear them. So stable and so elastic withal is the cementing effect of the cold here, that the strongest gales do not break up the ice after it has been once set in the line of the wind. On the other hand, a trifling breeze, if it deviates avery few points from the axis of the last set, puts every thing into commotion.
“January23. The gale of last night subsided into the usual quiet but fresh westerly breeze, sometimes inclining to the W.N.W. To-day is very clear; the stars, except one or two of the northern magnates, invisible at noonday; and two or three well-marked crimson lines streaking the dawning zone above the sun. The hills around Walter Bathurst and Possession Bay, the entering southern headlands of Lancaster Sound, have sunk in the distance. Two summits, bearing southwest by west, probably belonging to Possession Mount, are all that remains of the coast. We are more than fifty miles from land, and still drifting rapidly to the east. To the southwest, by compass (true S.E. ½ E.), little volumes of smoke have been rising; but after a tolerably long walk, I could not find any further signs of the open water. We are now in latitude 73° 10'.
“The daylight is very sensibly longer: the moon was quite joyous with its little crimsonflocculi; and five, or even five and a half hours afterward, when we looked toward the day quarter, instead of a grim blackness, or, as we had it more recently, a stain of Indian-red, we saw the pale bluish light, so gratefully familiar at home."
The appearances which heralded the sun’s return had a degree of interest for us which it is not easy to express in words. I have referred more than once already to the effects of the long-continued night on the health of our crowded ship’s company. It was even more painful to notice its influence on their temper and spirits. Among the officers this was less observable. Our mess seemed determined, come what might, to maintain toward each other that honest courtesy of manner, which those who have sailed on long voyages together know to be the rarest and most difficult proof of mutual respect. There were of course seasons when each had his home thoughts, and revolved perhaps the growing probabilities that some other Arctic search party might seek in vain hereafter for a memorial of our own; yet these were never topics of conversation. Ido not remember to have been saddened by a boding word during all the trials of our cruise.
With the men, however, it was different. More deficient in the resources of education, and less restrained by conventional usages or the principle of honor from communicating to each other what they felt, all sympathized in the imaginary terrors which each one conjured up. The wild voices of the ice and wind, the strange sounds that issued from the ship, the hummocks bursting up without an apparent cause through the darkness, the cracks and the dark rushing water that filled them, the distorted wonder-workings of refraction; in a word, all that could stimulate, or sicken, or oppress the fancy, was a day and nightmare dream for the forecastle.
We were called up one evening by the deck-watch to see for ourselves a “ball of fire floating up and down above the ice-field.” It was there sure enough, a disk of reddish flame, varying a little in its outline, and flickering in the horizon like a revolving light at a distance. I was at firstas much puzzled as the men; but glancing at Orion, I soon saw that it was nothing else than our old dog-star friend, bright Sirius, come back to us. Refraction had raised him above the hills, so as to bring him to view a little sooner than we expected. His color was rather more lurid than when he left us, and the refraction, besides distorting his outline, seemed to have given him the same oblateness or horizontal expansion which we observe in the disks of the larger planets when nearing the horizon.
For some days the sun-clouds at the south had been changing their character. Their edges became better defined, their extremities dentated, their color deeper as well as warmer; and from the spaces between the lines of stratus burst out a blaze of glory, typical of the longed-for sun. He came at last: it was on the 29th. My journal must tell the story of his welcoming, at the hazard of its seeming extravagance: I am content that they shall criticise it who have drifted for more than twelve weeks under the night of a Polar sky.
“January29. Going on deck afterbreakfast at eight this morning, I found the dawning far advanced. The whole vault was bedewed with the coming day; and, except Capella, the stars were gone. The southern horizon was clear. We were certain to see the sun, after an absence of eighty-six days. It had been arranged on board that all hands should give him three cheers for a greeting; but I was in no mood to join the sallow-visaged party. I took my gun, and walked over the ice about a mile away from the ship to a solitary spot, where a great big hummock almost hemmed me in, opening only to the south. There, Parsee fashion, I drank in the rosy light, and watched the horns of the crescent extending themselves round toward the north. There was hardly a breath of wind, with the thermometer at only -19°, and it was easy, therefore, to keep warm by walking gently up and down. I thought over and named aloud every one of our little circle, F. and M., T. and P., B. and J., and our dear, bright little W.; wondered a while whether there were not some more to be remembered, and called up one friend or relativeafter another, but always came back to the circle I began with. My thoughts were torpid, not worth the writing down; but I was not strong, and they affected me. It was not good ‘Polar practice.’
“Very soon the deep crimson blush, lightening into a focus of incandescent white, showed me that the hour was close at hand. Mounting upon a crag, I saw the crews of our one ship formed in line upon the ice. My mind was still tracing the familiar chain of home affections, and the chances that this one or the other of its links might be broken already. I bethought me of the Sortes Virgilianæ of my school-boy days: I took a piece of candle paper pasteboard, cut it with my bowie-knife into a little carbine target, and on one side of this marked all our names in pencil, and on the other a little star. Presently the sun came: never, till the grave-sod or the ice covers me, may I forego this blessing of blessings again! I looked at him thankfully with a great globus in my throat. Then came the shout from the ship—three shouts—cheering the sun. I fixed my little star-target to the floe, walkedbackward till it became nearly invisible; and then, just as the completed orb fluttered upon the horizon, filled my ‘salut.’ I cut M in half, and knocked the T out of Tom. They shall draw lots for it if ever I get home; for many, many years may come and go again before the shot of an American rifle signalizes in the winter of Baffin’s Bay the conjunction of sunrise, noonday, and sunset.
“The first indications of dawn to-day were at forty-five minutes past five. By seven the twilight was nearly sufficient to guide a walking party over the floes. I have described the phenomena at eight. At nine the deck-lantern was doused. By 11h. 14m. or 15m. those on board had the first glimpses of the sun. At 5P.M.we had the dim twilight of evening.
“Our thermometric records on board ship can not be relied on. I mention the fact for the benefit of those who may hereafter consult them. My wooden-cased Pike thermometer, hung to a stanchion on the northern beam of the brig, gave at noonday—19°; exposed to the sun’s rays on the southern, -14°. The observation repeated at 12h.30m., gave -20° for the northern, and -15° for the southern side; the difference in each case being five degrees. The same thermometer, carefully exposed about a hundred yards from the ship, gave at noon, on the north and windward side, -21°; on the south, exposed to the sun, -18°; and at thirty minutes afterward (nearly), on the north, -20° 5'; toward the sun, -16°. The difference in these last observations of 3° in the first and 4° 5′ in the second was owing unmistakably to the effect of the solar rays. The ship’s record for the same hours was simply -19° and -18°. The fact is, that there is always a varying difference of two to five degrees of temperature between the lee and weather sides of the brig; the quarter of the wind and its intensity, the state of our fires, the open or shut hatches, and other minor circumstances, determining what the difference shall be at a particular time.
“January30. The crew determined to celebrate ‘El regresado del sol,’ which, according to old Costa, our Mahonese seaman, was a more holy day than Christmas or All-Saints. Mr. Bruce, the diversely talented,favored us with a new line of theatrical exhibition, adivertissementof domestic composition, ‘The Countryman’s first Visit to Town;’ followed by a pantomime. I copy the play-bill from the original as it was tacked against the main-mast:
We sat down as usual on the preserved-meat boxes, which were placed on deck, ready strapped and becketed (nauticefor trunk-handled) for flinging out upon the ice. The affair was altogether creditable, however, and everybody enjoyed it. Here is an outline of the pantomime, after the manner of the newspapers. An old man (Mr. Bruce) possessed mysterious, semi-magical, and wholly comical influence over a rejected lover (M. Auguste Canot, ship’s cook), and Columbine (Mr. Smith) exercised the same over the old man. Harlequin (Mr. Johnson), however, by the aid of a split-shingle wand and the charms of his “motley wear,” secures the affections of Columbine, cajoles the old man, persecutes the forlorn lover, and carries off the prize of love; the fair Columbine, who had been industriously chewing tobacco, and twirling on the heel of her boot to keep herself warm, giving him a sentimental kiss as she left the stage. A still more sentimental song, sung in seal-skin breeks and a “norwester,” and a potation all round of hot-spiced rum toddy, concluded the entertainments.
CHAPTER XIV