Chapter XIII

WE 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 we could 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.

Now began, with every one after his own fashion, the discussion what was best to be done in case of a wreck. Should we try our fortunes for the while on board the _Rescue_? 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.

"_January_ 15. The moon is now nearly full. Her light mingles so with the twilight of the sun that the stars are quite sobered down. Walking out at 4 P.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 the _qui vive_.

"_January_ 16. 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 whose versed 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.

"_January_ 18. 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 as to 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.

"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 of Possession 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.

"_January_ 20. 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 the _Rescue_, 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 saw to-day a group of foxes on the floes about our brig, who resolved our doubts by an illustration altogether simple and natural.

"_January_ 22. 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 reluctantly now, 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-adjusted _plexus_, 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 frozen _pedragal_. 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 its average 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.

"10 P.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 a very few points from the axis of the last set, puts every thing into commotion.

"_January_ 23. 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. 1/2 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 crimson flocculi; 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. I do 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 first as 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.

"_January_ 29. Going on deck after breakfast 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 relative after 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, walked backward 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 5 P.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.

"_January_ 30. 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, a _divertissement_ of 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:

ARCTIC THEATRE
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To be performed, on the night of Thursday, the
30th day of January, the Comic Play of the
Countryman. After which, a Pantomime.
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To begin with

A Song By R. Bruce.
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THE COUNTRYMAN.

Countryman R. Baggs.
Landlady C. Berry.
Servant T. Dunning.
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PANTOMIME.

Harlequin James Johnson.
Old Man R. Bruce.
Rejected Lover A. Canot.
Columbine James Smith.
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Doors to be opened at 8 o'clock. Curtain to rise
a quarter past 8 punctually.

No admittance to Children; and no Ladies admitted
without an escort.

Stage Manager,

S. BENJAMIN.

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The strictest order will be observed both inside
and outside.

We sat down as usual on the preserved-meat boxes, which were placed on deck, ready strapped and becketed (_nautice_ for 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.