Chapter XI

"_DECEMBER_ 21, 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 for nearly 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, from which 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 unconscious of 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 our _morale_. 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 the scurvy 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.

"_December_ 22, 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!

"_December_ 23, 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°.

"_December_ 24, Tuesday. 'Through utter darkness borne!'

"_December_ 25. 'Y{e} Christmas of y{e} Arctic 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 sang negro 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.

"_December_ 26, 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.

"_December_ 27, 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; and between 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.

"_December_ 28, 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 under the 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 projecting Cape 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.

"_December_ 29, 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 fog which for the past week has wrapped us in darkness. The ice gives no change as yet: the same great field of moving whiteness.

"_December_ 30, 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 our brother 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.

"_December_ 31, 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.

"9 A.M. The stars visible even to the lesser groups; but a deep zone of Italian pink 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!

"1 P.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 Lancaster Sound. 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!"