AMONG THE BERGS—A NARROW ESCAPE.
Dr. Hayes describes an immense berg which resembled in its general aspect the Westminster Palace of Sir Charles Barry’s creation. It went to ruin before his eyes. First one tall tower tumbled headlong into the water, starting from its surface an innumerable swarm of gulls; then another followed; and at length, after five hours of terrible disruption and crashing, not a fragment that rose fifty feet above the water remained of this architectural colossus of ice.
These floating isles of ice are carried southward fully two thousand miles from their parent glaciers to melt in the Atlantic, where they communicate a perceptible coldness to the water for thirty or forty miles around, while their influence on the atmospheric temperature may be recognized at a greater distance. Their number is extraordinary. As many as seven hundred bergs, each loftier than the dome of St. Paul’s, some than the cross of St. Peter’s, have been seen at once in the Polar basin; as if the Frost King had despatched an armada to oppose the rash enterprise of man in penetrating within his dominions. The waves break against them as against an iron-bound coast, and often the spray is flung over their very summits, like the spray of the rolling waters of the Channel over the crest of the Eddystone Lighthouse. The ice crumbles from their face, and tumbles down into the sea with a roar like that of artillery; and as they waste away, through the combined action of air and water, they occasionally lose their equilibrium and topple over, producing a swell and a violent commotion which break up the neighbouring ice-fields: the tumult spreads far and wide, and thunder seems to peal around.
The fractures or rents frequently visible in the glittering cliffs of the icebergs are of an emerald green, and look like patches of beautiful fresh sward on cliffs of chalk; while pools of water of the most exquisite sapphirine blue shine resplendent on their surface, or leap down their craggy sides in luminous cascades. Even in the night they are readily distinguished from afar by their effulgence; and in foggy, hazy weather, by a peculiar blackness in the atmosphere. As the Greenland Current frequently drifts them to the south of Newfoundland, and even to the 40th or 39th parallel of latitude, the ships and steamers crossing between Europe and America sometimes meet them on their track. To come into collision with them is certain destruction; and it is probable that some of those ill-fated vessels which have left their harbours in safety, but have never since been heard of,—as, for example, the steamer President,—have perished through this cause.
But if they are sometimes dangerous to the mariner, they often prove his security. As most of their bulk lies below the water-surface, they are either carried along by under-currents against the wind, or else from their colossal size they are able to defy the strongest gale, and to move along with majestic slowness when every other kind of ice is driven swiftly past them. And hence it happens that, when the wind is contrary, the whaler is glad to bring his ship into smooth water under their lee. In describing the difficulties of his passage through the loose and drifting ice near Cape York, and the broken ice-fields, Dr. Kane records the assistance he derived from the large icebergs, to which he moored his vessel, and thus was enabled, he says, to hold his own, however rapidly the surface-floes were passing by him to the south.
Yet anchoring to a berg brings with it an occasional peril. As we have already said, large pieces frequently loosen themselves from the summit or sides, and fall into the sea with a far-resounding crash. When this operation, “calving,” as it is called, takes place, woe to the unfortunate ship which lies beneath!
All ice becomes excessively brittle under the influence of the sun or of a temperate atmosphere, and a single blow from an axe will suffice to split a huge berg asunder, burying the heedless adventurer beneath the ruins, or hurling him into the yawning chasm.
Dr. Scoresby records the adventure of two sailors who had been sent to attach an anchor to a berg. They set to work to hew a hole in the ice, but scarcely had the first blow been struck, when the colossal mass rent from top to bottom and fell asunder, the two halves falling in opposite directions with a tremendous uproar. One of the sailors, with remarkable presence of mind, instantly clambered up the huge fragment on which he was sitting, and remained rocking to and fro on the dizzy summit until its equilibrium was restored; the other, falling between the masses, would probably have been crushed to death if the current caused by their commotion had not swept him within reach of the boat that was waiting for them.
Fastening to a berg, says Sherard Osborn, has its risks and dangers. Sometimes the first stroke of the man setting the ice-anchor, by its concussion, causes the iceberg to break up, and the people so employed run great risk of being injured; at another time, vessels obliged to make fast under the steep side of a berg have been seriously damaged by pieces detaching themselves from overhead; and, again, the projecting masses, called tongues, which form under water the base of the berg, have been known to break off, and strike a vessel so severely as to sink her. All these perils are duly detailed by every Arctic navigator, who is always mindful, in mooring to an iceberg, to look for a side which is low and sloping, without any tongues under water.