We must now return to the Discovery. As soon as she had taken up her winter quarters, her crew began to unload her, landing the boats, stores, and spare spars, and otherwise preparing for the winter. The first day ashore they shot a herd of eleven musk-oxen. A few days afterwards the sea was frozen all round the ship, so that they could freely move to and fro about the ice. A week later they saw a large number of musk-oxen, and shot about forty—thus laying in a considerable supply of provisions.
Their winter port, which was surrounded by snow-clad hills, about two thousand feet high, they christened Discovery Harbour.
As soon as the sea was completely frozen over, the sledging-parties were organized and duly despatched; but as the autumn was rapidly passing, very little could be done in this direction. The usual preparations on the part of Arctic explorers were then made for “hybernating.” Houses were built; also a magnetic observatory and a theatre of ice—recalling the glittering edifice constructed by Catherine II. of Russia on the Neva, and celebrated by Cowper in the well-known lines,—
“No forest fell
When thou wouldst build, no quarry sent its stores
To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods,
And make thy marble of the glassy wave.”
A smithy was erected on the 11th of November, being the first the Arctic ice had ever borne. Its roof was made of coal-bags, cemented with ice. The ship’s stoker reigned supreme in it as blacksmith; and when we consider the accessories,—the ice, the snow, the darkness,—we must admit that his blazing forge must have made a curious picture. The chaplain tells us, humorously, that the smith adorned the interior wall with a good many holes, as each time that his iron wanted cooling he simply thrust it into the ice!
As for the theatre, which, as we know, has always been a favourite source of amusement with Arctic explorers when winter-bound, it was sixty feet long and twenty-seven feet broad; and, in honour of the Princess of Wales, was named “The Alexandra.” Her birthday was selected as the day of opening—December 1st; and the opening piece was a popular farce—“My Turn Next.” As sailors are generally adepts at dramatic personations, we may conceive that the piece “went well,” and that the different actors received the applause they merited. It is recorded that foremost among them was the engineer, Mr. Miller, who appears to have been, emphatically, the Polar Star. Several of the men sung songs; and recitations, old and new, were occasionally introduced; the result of the whole being to divert the minds and keep up the spirits of the ship’s company during the long, long Arctic night.
The Fifth of November and its time-honoured associations were not forgotten. A huge bonfire blazed on the ice; a “Guy Fawkes” was manufactured and dressed in the most approved fashion; and the silence of the frozen solitudes was broken by the sounds of a grand display of fireworks and the cheering of the spectators.