The ice-floe on which their cabin stood was assiduously and carefully explored in all directions. It was about seven miles in circuit, and its average diameter measured nearly two miles.
The out-of-door amusements consisted chiefly of skating, and building up huge images of snow—Egyptian sphynxes and the like.
The borders of the ice-floe, especially to the west and south-west, presented a curious aspect; the attrition and pressure of the floating ice had built up about it high glittering walls, upwards of ten feet in elevation. The snow-crystals flashed and radiated in the sun like myriads of diamonds. The red gleam of morning and evening cast a strange emerald tint on the white surface of the landscape. The nights were magnificent. The glowing firmament, and the snow which reflected its lustre, produced so intense a brightness, that it was possible to read without fatigue the finest handwriting, and to distinguish remote objects. The phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis was of constant occurrence, and on one occasion was so wonderfully luminous that it paled the radiance of the stars, and everything upon the ice-floe cast a shadow, as if it had been the sun shining.
Near the coal-cabin stood two small huts, one of which served for ablutions, the other as a shed. Round this nucleus of the little shipwrecked colony were situated at convenient points the piles of wood for fuel, the boats, and the barrels of patent fuel and pork. To prevent the wind and snow from entering the dwelling-hut, a vestibule was constructed, with a winding entrance.
The greatest cold experienced was -29° 30’ F., and this was in December. After Christmas the little settlement was visited by several severe storms, and their ice-raft drifted close along the shore, sometimes within eight or nine miles, amidst much ice-crushing,—which so reduced it on all sides, that by the 4th of January 1870 it did not measure more than one-eighth of its original dimensions.
On the 6th of January, when they had descended as far south as 66° 45’ N. lat., the sun reappeared, and was joyfully welcomed.
On the night of the 15th of January, the colony was stricken by a sudden and terrible alarm. The ice yawned asunder, immediately beneath the hut, and its occupants had but just time to take refuge in their boats. Here they lay in a miserable condition, unable to clear out the snow, and sheltered very imperfectly from the driving, furious tempest. But on the 17th the gale moderated, and as soon as the weather permitted they set to work to reconstruct out of the ruins of the old hut a new but much smaller one. It was not large enough to accommodate more than half the colony; and the other half took up their residence in the boats.
February was calm and fine, and the floe still continued to drift southward along the land. The nights were gorgeous with auroral displays. Luminous sheaves expanded themselves on the deep blue firmament like the folds of a fan, or the petals of a flower.
March was very snowy, and mostly dull. On the 4th, the ice-raft passed within twenty-five miles of the glacier Kolberger-Heide. A day or two later, it nearly came into collision with a large grounded iceberg. The portion nearest to the drifting colony formed an immense overhanging mass; its principal body had been wrought by the action of the sun and the waves into the most capricious forms, and seemed an aggregate of rocks and pinnacles, towers and gateways. The castaways could have seized its projecting angles as they floated past. They thought their destruction certain, but the fragments of ice which surrounded the raft served as “buffers,” and saved it from a fatal collision.
On the 29th of March, they found themselves in the latitude of Nukarbik, the island where Graab, the explorer, wintered, from September 3rd, 1827, to April 5th, 1830. They had cherished the hope that from this spot they might be able to take to their boats, and start for Friedrichstal, a Moravian missionary station on the south coast of Greenland. However, the ice was as yet too compact for any such venture to be attempted.