Chapter VII

THREE days after this entry the thermometer had fallen to 11° below zero. Our housings were not yet fixed, and we had no fires below; indeed, our position was so liable to momentary and violent change that it would have been impracticable to put up stoves. Still, our lard-lamp in the cabin gave us a temperature of +44°; and so completely were our systems accommodated to the circumstances in which we were, that we should have been quite satisfied but for the condensed moisture that dripped from every thing about us. Our commander had allowed me to place canvas gutters around the hatchways, and from these we emptied every day several tin cans full of water, that would otherwise have been added to the slop on our cabin floor. But the state of things was, on the whole, exceedingly comfortless, and, to those whom the scurvy had attacked, full of peril. I remember once, when the lard-lamp died out in the course of the night, the mercury sunk in the cabin to 16°. It was not till the 19th that we got up our stoves.

The adaptation of the human system to varying temperatures struck me at this time with great force. I had passed the three winters before within the tropics--the last on the plains of Mexico--yet I could now watch patiently for hours together to get a shot at seals, with the thermometer at +10°. I wrote my journal in imaginary comfort with a temperature of 40°, and was positively distressed with heat when exercising on the ice with the mercury at +19°.

I return to my diary.

"_October_ 3. I write at midnight. Leaving the deck, where I have been tramping the cold out of my joints, I come below to our little cabin. As I open the hatch, every thing seems bathed in dirty milk. A cloud of vapor gushes out at every chink, and, as the cold air travels down, it is seen condensing deeper and deeper. The thermometer above is at 7° below zero.

"The brig and the ice around her are covered by a strange black obscurity--not a mist, nor a haze, but a peculiar, waving, palpable, unnatural darkness: it is the frost-smoke of Arctic winters. Its range is very low. Climbing to the yard-arm, some thirty feet above the deck, I looked over a great horizon of black smoke, and above me saw the heaven without a blemish.

"_October_ 4. The open pools can no longer be called pools; they are great rivers, whose hummock-lined shores look dimly through the haze. Contrasted with the pure white snow, their waters are black even to inkyness; and the silent tides, undisturbed by ripple or wash, pass beneath a pasty film of constantly forming ice. The thermometer is at 10°. Away from the ship, a long way, I walked over the older ice to a spot where the open river was as wide as the Delaware. Here, after some crevice-jumping and _tickly-bender_ crossing, I set myself behind a little rampart of hummocks, watching for seals.

"As I watched, the smoke, the frost-smoke, came down in wreaths, like the lambent tongues of burning turpentine seen without the blaze. I was soon enveloped in crapy mist.

"To shoot seal, one must practice the Esquimaux tactics of much patience and complete immobility. It is no fun, I assure you after full experience, to sit motionless and noiseless as a statue, with a cold iron musket in your hands, and the thermometer 10° below zero. But by-and-by I was rewarded by seeing some overgrown Greenland calves come within shot. I missed. After another hour of cold expectation, they came again. Very strange are these seal. A countenance between the dog and the mild African ape--an expression so like that of humanity, that it makes gun-murderers hesitate. At last, at long shot, I hit one. God forgive me!

"The ball did not kill outright. It was out of range, struck too low, and entered the lungs. The poor beast had risen breast-high out of water, like the treading-water swimmers among ourselves. He was thus supported, looking about with curious, expectant eyes, when the ball entered his lungs.

"For a moment he oozed a little bright blood from his mouth, and looked toward me with a sort of startled reproachfulness. Then he dipped; an instant after, he came up still nearer, looked again, bled again, and went down. A half instant afterward, he came up flurriedly, looked about with anguish in his eyes, for he was quite near me; but slowly he sunk, struggling feebly, rose again, sunk again, struggled a very little more. The thing was drowning in the element of his sportive revels. He did drown finally, and sunk; and so I lost him.

"Have naturalists ever noticed the expression of this animal's phiz? Curiosity, contentment, pain, reproach, despair, even resignation I thought, I saw on this seal's face.

"About half an hour afterward, I killed another. Scurvy and sea-life craving for fresh meat led me to it; but I shot him dead.

"On returning to the ship, I found one toe frost-bitten--a tallow-looking dead man's toe--which was restored to its original ugly vitality by snow-rubbing. Served me right!

"Spent the afternoon in unsuccessful seal stalking, and in rigging and contriving a spring-gun for the Arctic foxes: a blood-thirsty day. But we ate of fox to-day for dinner; and behold, and it was good.

"_October_ 5, Saturday. The wind evidently freshens up. The day has been bitterly cold. Although our lowest temperature was zero and--1°, we felt it far more than the low temperature of yesterday. Our maximum was as high as 4°; yet, with this, it required active motion on deck to keep one's self warm.

"At 12h. 55m., we had an interval of clear sunshine. The utmost, however, to which it would raise one of the long register Smithsonian thermometers was 7°. The air was filled with bright particles of frozen moisture, which glittered in the sunshine--a shimmering of transparent dust.[C]

[C] Under the microscope these again showed obscure modifications of the hexagon.

"At the same time, we had a second exhibition of parhelia, not so vivid in prismatic tints as that of the 30th of September, but more complete. The sun was expanded in a bright glare of intensely white light, and was surrounded by two distinct concentric circles, delicately tinted on their inner margins with the red of the spectrum. The radius of the inner, as measured by the sextant, was 22° 04'; that of the outer, 40° 15'. The lowest portions of both were beneath the horizon, and of course not seen.

"From the central disk proceeded four radii, coincident with the vertical and the horizontal diameters of the circles.

"Their visible points of intersection were marked by bright parhelia; each parhelion having its circumference well defined, but compressed so as to have no resemblance to the solar disk.

"Six of these were visible at the same moment; those of the outer circle being fainter than the inner. Touching the upper circumference of this outer circle was the arc of a third, which extended toward the zenith. Indeed, at one time I thought I saw a luminosity overhead, which may have corresponded to its centre. The tints of this supplemental circle were very bright. The glowing atmosphere about the sun was very striking.

"The strange openings in the water of a few hours ago are now great rivers, lined by banks of hummocks, and wreathed in frost smoke. The continually increasing wind from the northward explains this southern drift of the ice, and with it these unwelcome openings. We are stationary, and the detached ice is leaving us.

"The strong floe of ice-table under ice-table, and hummock upon hummock, makes our position one of nearly complete solidity. We are glued up in ice; and to liberate us, some fearful disruption must take place. Twenty-five feet of solid ice is no feeble matrix, for a brig drawing but ten. Yet the water is wider, and still widening around us; so that now we hold on--that is, our floe holds on, to the great mass to the north of us, like a little peninsular cape.

"To the south every thing is in drifting motion--water, sludge, frost-smoke--but no seals.

"We caught a poor little fox to-day in a dead-fall. We ate him as an anti-scorbutic.

"_October_ 6, Sunday. A dismal day; the wind howling, and the snow, fine as flour, drifting into every chink and cranny. The cold quite a nuisance, although the mercury is up again to +6°. It is blowing a gale. What if the floe, in which we are providentially glued, should take it into its head to break off, and carry us on a cruise before the wind!

"8 P.M. Took a pole, and started off to make a voyage of discovery around our floe. After some weary walking over hummocks, and some uncomfortable sousings in the snow-dust, found that our cape has dwindled to an isthmus. In the midst of snow and haze, of course, I did not venture across to the other ice.

"We look now anxiously at the gale--turning in, clothes on, so as to be ready for changes.

"12 Midnight. They report us adrift. Wind, a gale from the northward and westward. An odd cruise this! The American expedition fast in a lump of ice about as big as Washington Square, and driving, like the shanty on a raft, before a howling gale.

"_October_ 7, Monday. Going on deck this morning, a new coast met my eyes. Our little matrix of ice had floated at least twenty miles to the south from yesterday's anchorage. The gale continues; but the day is beautifully clear, and we have neared the western coast enough to recognize the features of the limestone cliffs, although many a wrinkle of them is now pearl-powdered with snow-drift.

"Prominent among these was Advance Bluff; and to the south of it, a great indentation in the limestone escarpment, which ran back into a gray distance--a sort of gorge, with a summer water-course. Further off. Point Innes again, and the shingle beach of 'the Graves'; and a high bluff-like cape or headland to the southward and westward, which the captain supposes to be Barlow's Inlet.

"10 P.M. Our master got an observation this evening of a Aquila (circum-meridian altitude), giving us a latitude of 74° 54' 07''. The seat of our late resting place was in latitude 75° 24' 52" N. We have therefore voyaged 30 miles 45 seconds since this new start. At this rate, should the wind continue, another day will carry us again into Lancaster Sound.

"_October_ 8. Still we drift. Barlow's Inlet is nearly abreast of us, and Cape Hotham seen distinctly. The broad, unterminated expanse of ice to the south is Lancaster Sound, sixty miles distant when we first began our prisoner's journey. Thermometer at +8°.

"To-day seemed like a wave of the handkerchief from our receding summer. Winter is in every thing. Yet the skies came back to us with warm ochres and pinks, and the sun, albeit from a lowly altitude, shone out in full brightness. It was a mockery of warmth, however, scarcely worthy the unpretending sincerity of the great planet; for the mercury, exposed to the full radiance of his deceitful glare, rose but two degrees: from +7° to 9°. In spite of this, the day was beautiful to remember, as a type of the sort of thing which we once shared with the world from which we are shut out; a parting picture, to think about during the long night. These dark days, or rather the dark day, will soon be on us. The noon shadows of our long masts almost lose themselves in the distance.

"A little white fox was caught alive in a trap this morning. He was an astute-visaged little scamp; and although the chains of captivity, made of spun-yarn and leather, set hardly upon him, he could spare abundant leisure for bear bones and snow. He would drink no water. His cry resembled the inter-paroxysmal yell of a very small boy undergoing spanking. The note came with an impulsive vehemence, that expressed not only fear and pain, but a very tolerable spice of anger and ill-temper."

He was soon reconciled, however. The very next day he was tame enough to feed from the hand, and had lost all that startled wildness of look which is supposed to characterize his tribe. He was evidently unused to man, and without the educated instinct of flight. Twice, when suffered to escape from the vessel, he was caught in our traps the same night. Indeed, the white foxes of this region--we caught more than thirty of them--seemed to look at us with more curiosity than fear. They would come directly to the ship's side; and, though startled at first when we fired at them, soon came back. They even suffered us to approach them almost within reach of the hand, ran around us, as we gave the halloo, in a narrow circle, but stopped as soon as we were still, and stared us inquisitively in the face. One little fellow, when we let him loose on the ice after keeping him prisoner for a day or two, scampered back again incontinently to his cubby-hole on the deck. There may be matter of reflection for the naturalist in this. Has this animal no natural enemy but famine and cold? The foxes ceased to visit us soon after this, owing probably to the uncertain ice between us and the shore: they are shrewd ice-masters.