Chapter XVI

"_MARCH_ 20. Thursday, the 20th of March, opens with a gale, a regular gale. On reaching deck after breakfast, I found the wind from the southeast, the thermometer at zero, and rising. These southeast storms are looked upon as having an important influence on the ice. They are always warm, and by the sea which they excite at the southern margin of the pack, have a great effect in breaking the floes. Dr. Olrik told me that they were anxiously looked for on the Greenland coast as precursors of open water. The date of the southeast gale last year, at Uppernavik, was April 25th. Our thermometer gave +5° at noonday, +7° at one, and +8° at three o'clock!

"This is the heaviest storm we have had since entering Lancaster Sound, exactly seven months and a day ago. The snow is whirled in such quantities, that our thick felt housing seems as if of gauze: it not only covers our decks, but drives into our clothes like fine dust or flour. A plated thermometer was invisible fourteen feet from the eye: from the distance of ten paces off on our quarter, a white opacity covers every thing, the compass-stand, fox-traps, and all beyond: the _Rescue_, of course, is completely hidden. This heavy snow-drift exceeds any thing that I had conceived, although many of my Arctic English friends had discoursed to me eloquently about their perils and discomforts. As to facing it in a stationary position, nothing human could; for a man would be buried in ten minutes. Even in reaching our little Tusculum, we tumble up to our middle, in places where a few minutes before the very ice was laid bare. The entire topography of our ice is changing constantly.

"7 P.M. 'The wind is howling.' Our mess begin to talk again of sleeping in boots, and the other luxuries of Lancaster Sound. For my own part, better, far better this, with the spicy tingling of a crisis, than the corroding, scurvy-engendering sameness of the past two months. Every moment now is full of expectation.

"_March_ 21. The wind changed this morning to the westward, and by daylight was blowing freshly. After breakfast, Murdaugh and myself started on a tramp to the 'open water,' to see the effects of the gale. The drift was beyond conception; sufficient, in many places, to have covered up our whole ship's company. The wind made it as cold at -5° as I have seen it at -30°, and the fine snow pelted our faces; but the surface was frozen so hard that we walked over the crust, and in a little over half an hour we reached the lead.

"Planting a signal pole, with a red silk handkerchief as a mark, and taking compass-bearings to guide us back again, we began to look around us. Our expectations of hummock action were agreeably disappointed. We thought that the storm would have driven the ice from the southward, and that the change of wind would have marshaled opposing floes to meet it. But it was not so. Even the young, marginal ice, though warped, was unbroken. The pressure had evidently taken place, but with little effect. After the gigantic upheavings of Lancaster Sound, excited by winds much weaker, no wonder I was surprised. Upon thinking it over, I came to the conclusion that the absence of a _point d'appui_, either of land or land-ice, was the cause of these diminished actions. We were now in a great sea, surrounded by consolidated floes, and away from salient capes or shore-bound ice. The pressure was diffused throughout a greater mass, without points of special or even unequal resistance. If this reasoning holds, we will not experience the expected tumult until we drift into a region where forces are more in opposition; perhaps not until we reach the contraction of Davis' Straits.

"The young ice margin of this open lead had the appearance of a beautiful wave-flattened sand beach. The lead itself had opened so far that its opposite shores were barely visible. The wind checked the immediate formation of new ice; and, to our inexpressible joy, there, glittering in the cold sunlight, were little rippling waves. So long have we been pent up by this wretched circle of unchanging snow, that I make myself ridiculous by talking of trifles, with which you, milk-drinking, sun-basking, melted-water-seeing people at home can have no sympathy. In spite of the winds and the snow-drift, I could hear the babbling of these waves as they laughed in their temporary freedom.

"_March_ 22, Saturday. I started again for the ice-openings. There had evidently been a good deal of commotion in the night; but nothing so violent as to negative my yesterday's conclusions. Still there were hummocks of young tables, and some ugly twists of the beach line; and matters had not yet settled themselves into rest. As the great floe on which I stood traveled, under the influence of the west wind, obliquely eastward, I heard once more the familiar sounds of our _noctes Lancastrianæ_. The grating of nutmegs, the cork rubbing of old-fashioned tables, the young puppies, and the bee-hives; all these were back again; but we missed pleasantly the wailing, the howling, the clattering, the exploding din, which used to come to us through the darkness. The pulse-like interval was there too, like a breathing-time; but the daylight modified every thing, my feelings most of all. They became almost pleasant, as I listened, after a lullaby fashion, to the bees and puppies; and something very like gratitude came over me, as I thought of the uncertain gloom or palpable midnight which accompanied a few weeks ago the 'voices of the ice.' The thermometer was 21° below zero, and the wind blowing: naturally enough, my nose became a tallow nose in the midst of my reverie. So I rubbed the nose, blew the nose, buffeted my armpits until my fingers tingled, and then started off on a tramp.

"Seal were seen, curious as usual, but indulging in the weakness afar off. Presently two poor winter-mated little divers met my meat-seeking senses. One of these I killed with my rifle, covetously regretting that my one ball could not align his mate. This was the first game we had obtained since the fall: he was divided, poor fellow, between two of my scurvy patients. In getting this bird out, I came very near getting myself in; and that, when a ducking means a freezing, is no fun.

"10 P.M. To-night finds me knocked up. Be it known, that after crawling on my belly, not like the wisest of animals, for two hours, I came nearly within shot of a week's fresh meat. The fresh meat dived, first shaking his whisker tentacles at my disconsolate beard, leaving me half frozen and wholly discontented. Fool-like, after the long walk back, the warming, the drying, and the feeding, I returned by the other long walk to the ice-openings, tramped for two hours, saw nothing but frost-smoke, and came back again, dinnerless, with legs quaking, and spirits wholly out of tune.

"Our drift to-day, at meridian, was in the neighborhood of 9 miles; our latitude was 71° 9' 18''.

"_March_ 23, Sunday. After divine service, started for the ice-openings. We are now in the centre of an area, which we estimated roughly as four miles from north to south, and a little more east and west. On reaching what was yesterday's sea-beach, I was forced to recant in a measure my convictions as to the force of the opposing floes. Yesterday's beach existed no longer; it was swallowed up, crushed, crumbled, submerged, or uplifted in long ridges of broken ice.

"The actions were still in progress, and fast intruding upon the solid old ice which is our homestead. The ice-tables now crumbling into hummocks were from eight to fourteen inches thick, generally ten. Not even in Lancaster Sound did the destruction of surface go on more rapidly. The wind was a moderate breeze from the northwest, and the floes were advancing on each other at a rate of a knot and a half an hour, building up hummock tables along their Hue of collision. Several rose in a few minutes to a height of ten or twelve feet. I have become so accustomed to these glacial eruptions, that I mounted the upheaving ice, and rode upon the fragments--an amusement I could hardly have practiced safely before I had studied their changes.

"The snow-covered level upon which Brooks and myself were walking was about thirty paces wide, between the older ice on one side and the encroaching hummock-line on the other. Upon our return, after a walk of a short half mile, we found our footsteps obliterated, and the hummock-line within a few yards of this older ice. Things are changing rapidly.

"A new crack was reported at one o'clock, about the third of a mile from our ship; and the bearings of the sun showed that our brig had, for the first time since entering Baffin's Bay, rotated considerably to the northward. Here were two subjects for examination. So, as soon as dinner was over, I started with Davis and Willie, two of my scurvy henchmen, on a walk to the openings. Reaching the recent crack, we found the ice five feet four inches thick, and the black water, in a clear streak a foot wide, running to the east and west.[G] I had often read of Esquimaux being carried off by the separation of these great floes; but, knowing that our guns could call assistance from the brig, we jumped over and hurried on. We were well paid.

[G] This direction, transverse to the long axis of Baffin's Bay, seems to be that of most of our fissures.

"The hunamockings of this morning had ceased; the wind so gentle as hardly to be perceptible: the lead before me was an open river of water, and in it were narwhals (_M. monoceros_), in groups of five or six, rolling over and over, after the manner of the dolphin tribe. They were near me; so near that I could see their checkered backs, and enjoy the rich coloring that decorates them. The horn, that monodontal process which gives them their name of sea-unicorn, was perfectly examinable. Rising in a spirally indented cone, this beautiful appendage appeared sometimes eight and ten feet out of water; one especially, whose tall curvetings astonished my body-guard. I never saw a more graceful, striking, and beautiful exhibition than the unrestrained play of these narwhals.[H] In the same open water, almost in company with the narwhals, were white whales (_Delphinopterus albicans_, or _Beluga_: these cetacea have so many names, they puzzle me), and seal besides.

[H] I have seen many of these fish since, but never under such circumstances. I stood on a ledge of hummock within short gunshot. The animals were entirely unapprehensive. The non-symmetrical character of the "horn" (an unduly developed tooth, say the naturalists) was not seen; and as this long lance-like process played about at a constantly varying angle, it reminded me of the mast of some sunken boat swayed by the waves.

"I was tempted to stay too long. The wind sprang up suddenly. The floe began to move. I thought of the crack between me and the ship, and started off. The walking, however, was very heavy, and my scurvy patients stiff in the extensors. By the time I reached the crack, it had opened into a chasm, and a river as broad as the Wissahiccon ran between me and our ship. After some little anxiety--not much--I saw our captain ordering a party to our relief. The sledges soon appeared, dragged by a willing party; the India rubber boat was lowered into the lead, and the party ferried over. So ends this last trip to these ice-openings.

"It is evident that these gradual crack-formings and chasm-openings, with the hummocking and other attendant actions, are but preludes to a complete breaking up. Our previous observations show that the disruption of these large areas can not be effected suddenly. It is a gradual process; so gradual, even in Lancaster Sound, as to allow time for personal escape, although the vessel be a victim.

"From the 12th of January, the date of our last break-up, down to the present movement, is two months. The intense cold, with feeble winds and the absence of impact or collisions, have kept up the integrity of this great pack. I think it may reasonably be doubted whether it will now close again before our liberation or destruction. The excessive thickness of the tables, the wave and tidal actions, the mildening temperature, and the probable continuance of winds, all point to this. We have already a system of fissures within a third of a mile of us; and a continued augmentation of their number must soon place us in a centre of commotion. It is pleasant by one's ice-experience to anticipate the state of things: and now that the battle is coming on again, I make a record of these reasoned expectations, to show you hereafter how well I am reasoning.

"One thing more: the days have stolen upon us--longer, and longer, and longer, until now the long twilight lets me read on deck as late as eight P.M. In fact, the sun's greatest depression below the horizon is now 18°, the limit of theoretical twilight.

"_March_ 26, Wednesday. The same peculiar crisping or crackling sound, which I noted on the 2d of February, was heard this morning in every direction. This sound, as the 'noise accompanying the aurora,' has been attributed by Wrangell and others, ourselves among the rest, to changes of atmospheric temperature acting upon the crust of the snow. We heard it most distinctly between seven and eight A.M., when the solar ray should begin to affect the snow. The mercury stood at -27° at five, rising to -19° by nine A.M., and attaining a maximum of -2° by noonday. But this is not to be regarded as indicating the temperature of the snow surface. The snow, when horizontal, according to all my observations, differs but little in temperature from the atmosphere, owing probably to its oblique reception of the solar ray; while the snow-coverings of the hummocks and angular floe-tables, which receive the rays at right angles, show by repeated trials a marked augmentation. I venture, therefore, to refer this peculiar crisping sound to the unequal contraction and dilatation of these unequally presenting surfaces, not to a sudden change of atmospheric temperature acting upon the snow.

"To-day we saw a couple of icebergs looking up in the far south.

"_March_ 27, Thursday. The sun shone out, but not as yesterday. The little cirrus clouds interfere with its brightness, and affect very perceptibly its warmth. To the eye, however, the day is undimmed.

"The wind, which we watch closely as the index of our ice-changes, our leading variety, came out at seven in the evening from the northward; and with it came a rise of black frost-smoke to the south, showing that the old ice-opening had gaped again. I had started before this at half past five, with old Blinn, my faithful satellite, for a bright plain, glittering in the low sunshine some three miles to the west, a new direction. We did not get back till eight.

"Let me make a picture for you without a jot of fancy about it, and you may get H. to put it into colors if he can. The sun was low, very low; and his long, slanting beams, of curious indescribable purple, fell upon old Blinn and myself as we sat on a crag of ice which overhung the sea. The chasm was perhaps a mile wide, and the opposite ice-shores were so painted by the glories of the sunshine, that they appeared like streaks of flame, licking continuous water. The place to which we had worked ourselves had been subjected to forces which no one could realize, so chaotic, and enormous, and incomprehensible were they. A line of old floe, eight feet thick and four miles long, had been powdered into a pedragal of crushed sugar, rising up in great efflorescing knobs fifteen and twenty feet high; and from amid these, like crystal rocks from the foam of a cataract, came transparent tables of blue ice, floating, as it were, on unsubstantial whiteness. Some of these blocks measured eight feet in thickness by twenty-two long, and of indeterminate depth, one side being obliquely buried in the mass. On one of these tables, that stretched out like a glass spear-point, directly over the water, were straddled your brother and his companion. Underneath us the narwhals were passing almost within pole-reach. As they rolled over, much after the fashion of our own porpoises, I could see the markings of their backs, and the great suction of their jaws throwing the water into eddies. Seal, breast-high, were treading water with their horizontal tails, and the white whale was blowing purple sprays into the palpable sunshine.

"_March_ 23, Friday. I visited the western opening of yesterday. The sea has dwindled to a narrow lane, flanked by the heavy hummocks, whose rupture formed the sides. Although the aperture was so distant yesterday that I could barely see the further banks, here and there dotting the horizon, it has now closed with such nice adaptation of its line of fracture, that, but for a few yards of lateral deviation, this 'yesternight sea' would be nothing but a crack in the ice-field. The area of filmy ice that was between the edges of the lead had been thrust under the floe, thus aiding the process of re-cementation. These ice-actions are very complicated and various.

"Retracing my steps by a long circuit to the southward, I came to a spot where, without any apparent axis of fracture (chasm), the ice presented all the phenomena of table-hummocks. It was very old and thick, at least nine feet in solid depth. About a little circle of a hundred yards diameter, it had been thrown up into variously-presenting surfaces, with a marked bearing toward a focus of greatest energy and accumulation, presenting an appearance almost eruptive. The crushed fragments exuding and falling over, and rolling down toward the level ice, so as to cover it for feet in depth with powdery, granulated rubbish!"