I looked steadily, and at first saw nothing. Then, low down, and stretching from rim to rim across our watery world, far-off and faint, rising, falling, lifting and disappearing. I saw a thin, uncertain, glittering edge—the ice-pack!
It was our turn, now, to cheer. Captain Biffer ran up to see and verify. By nightfall (the radiant dusk fell late now, for it was November, and the sun shone till ten o’clock) we were in the midst of loose, grinding ice—the edge of the pack.
The second stage of the Great Billowcrest Expedition had begun.
XIII.
IN THE “FIGHTING-TOP.”
Our crow’s nest became at once the nucleus of the expedition. Edith Gale named it our “fighting-top” because of the fierce discussions that took place there.
This warfare concerning the new objects that appeared daily on our horizon was almost continual, and when not actively engaged in the combats, I was supposed to adjust them. They occurred most frequently between Edith Gale and her father, both of whom delighted in our lookout, and remained with me there a greater part of the time, in spite of bitter cold, and even the wet freezing discomfort that often swept in about us.
A paragraph of Borchgrevink’s came back to me now—the fulness of which I had not before realized. “Only from the crow’s nest,” he says, “can one fully appreciate the supernatural charm of Antarctic scenery. Up there you seem lifted above the pettiness and troubles of everyday life. Your horizon is wide, and from your high position you rule the little world below you. Onward, onward stretch the ice-fields, the narrow channels about the ship are opened and closed again by the current and wind, and as you strain your sight to the utmost to find the best places for the vessel to penetrate, your eyes wander from the ship’s bow out toward the horizon, where floes and channels seem to form one dense vast ice-field. Ice and snow cover spars and ropes, and everywhere are perfect peace and silence.”
I have quoted this because we felt it all, and he has given it to us so much better than I could say it. No ordinary attempt of the elements could dismay us, or chill the exalted joy of our high, swinging perch. From our fighting-top we looked away to the south, across leagues of lifting, shifting, grinding ice—split here and there by long, black waterways—studded by iridescent island bergs—garish with every splendor of the spectrum, and blending at last into that overwhelming fathomless hue of the South, Antarctic Violet.
New wonders were constantly appearing before and below us. From our lofty vantage we discussed them fully, and photographed them when they came within range. With the luminous icy mist about us, there was still a gratification and a rapture, and when it passed and the sun returned, a new blazing enchantment lay all below us, even to the northward, where, beyond the dazzle of drifting ice-pans, rolled the black, uplifting sea.
We observed and studied the haze or “blink” in the sky that always indicates the presence of ice, and the black, or “water” sky that tells of an open way—keeping well in among the floes, that we might not miss any lead or northward drift that would reveal our current from the South.