Christmas upon a Greenland Iceberg
One hot June day in 1869 there was a great stir in the new harbor of Bremerhaven in Germany; at its entrance lay two stout ships, theGermaniaand theHansa, fully fitted out for Arctic exploration. Visitors and messengers were going back and forth. The King of Prussia himself, with many of his nobles, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, Schwerin, Count Bismarck, and General von Moltke among them, had come from Berlin to say Godspeed to the commander and the scientific gentlemen who were braving unknown dangers, and certain privations and hardships “for the honor of the German navy and of German science,” as his Majesty expressed it.
The last of the cases of stores hoisted on board theHansawere stowed away with a peculiar laughing tenderness. They were stout chests cased in lead in which friends of these explorers had placed such friendly little trifles as are inseparable from the celebration of Christmas wherever the Germans may be.
There is no place in this book for the story of their adventures in the slow voyage up beyond the ice line. In July, by some misunderstanding of signals, the two ships separated, never to meet again. In September theHansawas caught in a great field of floating ice and was carried for two hundred days thereafter in the drift of the floe. An October storm so racked the ship that her captain and crew were forced to abandon her and carry everything out uponthe ice. The great coal-bin of the ship was taken out and turned into a store hut. All the supplies were taken there, the ship’s three boats were carefully secured, everything was taken from theHansawhich could be used for fuel, and at last the ship was cut away from the ice lest in sinking she destroy them.
Then began a frightful period of drifting. Storm after storm put them in danger of a sudden death which may have seemed more desirable than waiting for the winds and currents to carry them slowly into a warmer sea and toward the natural breaking up of the ice-floe. Hope of rescue in those lonely waters was faint.
But they lived bravely and worked steadily, constructing around the main hut, from the timbers saved from theHansa, small black shelters in which, all but buried in the snow, the men lived. And that they kept Christmas in true German fashion the log of the vessel tells:—
“The tree was erected in the afternoon, while the greater part of the crew took a walk; and the lonely hut shone with wonderful brightness amid the snow. Christmas upon a Greenland iceberg! The tree was artistically put together of firwood and ravelled matweed [hemp?], and Dr. Laube had saved a twist of wax taper for the illumination. Chains of colored paper and newly baked cakes were not wanting, and the men had made a knapsack and a revolver case as a present for the captain. We opened the leaden chests of presents from Professor Hochstetter and the Geological Society, and were much amused by their contents. Each man had a glass ofport wine; and we then turned over the old newspapers which we found in the chests, and drew lots for the presents, which consisted of small musical instruments, such as fifes, jews’-harps, trumpets, etc., with draughts and other games, puppets, crackers, etc. In the evening we feasted on chocolate and gingerbread.”
From paintings by RaphaelHEADS OF THE CHRIST CHILD
From paintings by RaphaelHEADS OF THE CHRIST CHILD
From paintings by Raphael
HEADS OF THE CHRIST CHILD
“We observed the day very quietly,” wrote Dr. Laube in his diary. “If this Christmas be the last we are to see, it was at least a cheerful one; but should a happy return home be decreed for us, the next will, we trust, be a far brighter. May God so grant!”
And He did. But that is not a Christmas story, and you will have to look elsewhere for it.