The two ships, which had separated in the fog, effected a union on the 18th, and the Germania taking the Hansa in tow, they made towards Sabine Island. After awhile, the towing-rope was thrown off, the Germania finding it necessary to extinguish her fires and proceed under canvas. They then followed up, in a southerly direction, the great icy barrier, seeking for an opening which might afford them a chance of steering westward.
On the 20th, the Germania found the ice so thick in the south-west that she adopted a westerly Course, and hoisted a signal for the captain of the Hansa to come on board to a conference. The latter, however, misinterpreted it, and instead of reading the signal as “Come within hail,” read it as “Long stay a peak;” crowded on all sail, and speedily disappeared in the fog, which grew wonderfully intense before the Germania could follow her. Through this curious error the two ships were separated, and for fourteen months the crew of the Germania remained in ignorance of the fate of their comrades’.
Before following the Germania on her voyage of discovery, we propose to see what befell the Hansa among the Arctic ice.
Captain Hegemann had understood the signal of his senior officer to mean that the ships were to push on as far as possible to the westward, and, as we have seen, he crowded on all sail. But when the fog closed in, and he found himself out of sight of the Germania, he lay-to, in the hope that the latter might rejoin him. Disappointed in this, he kept on his way, and on the 28th of July sighted the rocky and gloomy coast of East Greenland, from Cape Bröer-Ruys to Cape James.
The weather continued fine. By the light of the midnight sun, which illuminated the fantastic outlines of the bergs, the adventurers engaged in a narwhal-hunt. Nothing is more extraordinary than the effect of the rays of the midnight sun penetrating into an ocean covered with floating ice. The warm and cold tones strike against each other in all directions; the sea is orange, leaden-gray, or dark green; the reefs of ice are tinged with a delicate rose-bloom; broad shadows spread over the snow, and the most varied effects of mirage are produced everywhere in the tranquil waters.
THE CREW OF THE “HANSA” TRYING TO LASSO A BEAR.
THE MIDNIGHT SUN, GREENLAND.