CHAPTER IV.
The Ships Part Company—Robeson Channel—Strange Ice—Lincoln Bay—A Gale—A Rush North—The “Alert” reaches a Latitude never before attained by Ship, and enters a Polar Sea—Precarious Position—Disappointment—No Land to the North—Perennial Ice—Altered Prospects—Autumn Sledging—Pioneering—Dog-sledging—Romance and Reality.
ON the 26th August the ships parted company, but the beginning of the voyage was ominous. A quarter of an hour after the “Alert” had received the last well-wishes of her consort, she grounded on a sunken rock, and got off again only to be checked within sight of her starting-point by a close-packed barrier of heavy floes. Two days afterwards she pushed successfully past Cape Murchison, but soon afterwards became entangled in a chaos of broken floes of most formidable proportions, and was forced to take refuge in a shallow bay with, fortunately, no worse injury than a broken rudder. While the rudder was being replaced, three more musk oxen were obtained, and, with our larder thus replenished, we entered Robeson Channel. Heavy floes completely filled the strait, moving rapidly north and south with each tide. Sometimes the whole pack would check for a moment against a projecting point of coast, and then rush on again, leaving a lane of eddying water filled with broken fragments between it and the wall-like cliffs. Through this lane, with a precipice of rock and ice-foot on the left, and square-sided floes gliding irresistibly past on the right, the path northward lay. It changed continually, one moment opening out invitingly, and the next closing like the jaws of a vice. It required the most unwearying watchfulness to advance through such a lead, especially as the numerous little bays which had so often enabled us to hold our own further south had now given place to an almost unindented coast. Late on the afternoon of the 27th we passed a broad inlet, which was identified as Lincoln Bay of the “Polaris.” Twice we were forced back into its shelter. The second occasion was after an attempt had been made to force a passage through the pack away from shore. After an hour’s charging and crushing amongst heavy blocks, the little patches of water became smaller and smaller, and the ship became beset amongst broken floes of most unusual proportions. The level surface of many of them was as high as the ship’s sides out of water, and their whole thickness little if at all under eighty feet. The gentlest touch between such floes would be instant destruction; but, fortunately for us, there was much broken ice between them, and the ship was able to struggle away from the larger pieces till some change in the tide allowed her to escape back to the protecting land.
The first of September was an eventful day for the Expedition. A gale blew from the south-west, and after it had continued with undiminished violence for some hours, we could see through the drifting snow, blown in clouds from the land, that the ice was separating from the shore, and leaving a lane of water between it and the “ice-foot.” Such a chance would not come twice, and there was no time to be lost. Under full steam, and with reefed topsails and foresail, our ship was soon flying northwards, trusting to chance for security when the floes would close again. Flying mists of snow left little to be seen but the black band of water ahead, and the bases of dark, steep cliffs on the left. We were passing Cape Union, but which of the numerous bold bluffs had received that name we could not tell. After a few hours, it was plain that it lay behind us, for the land began to trend to the westward. At noon the ship still advanced, but at right angles to her former course. The cliffs of Robeson Channel were past, and what could be seen of the shore was a low undulating beach fringed by a barrier reef of grounded icebergs. Our lane of water extended about two miles along this shore, and then ended at a low point of land, from which the pack had never moved in spite of the violence of the gale. The wind was now lessening rapidly, and the floes were closing steadily and resistlessly inwards. To be caught between them and the wall of grounded ice would be instant and hopeless destruction.
A mile behind us we had noticed a gap in the barrier of ice. There was just time to run back and push the ship through it, into the shallow water between the grounded ice-blocks and the shore, and to make her fast under the shelter of one of the blocks, when the pack closed in with a grinding crush that made some of us at least expect to see ice-barrier, ship, and all pushed high and dry on the beach.
In a few hours it again came on to blow, and this time furiously. The ice-pack was again driven off shore, carrying part of our barrier with it, the hawsers holding the ship to hillocks of grounded ice tightened like bars, and finally, in a fierce gust, snapt, and the ship drifted outside her shelter, but was again brought up by her anchor. Then the wind suddenly veered, and drove the ice in on us with alarming speed. There was no time to turn the ship; struggling sideways and sternwards through the tide of slush and tumbling ice that raced along the outside of the barrier, she reached the friendly gap just in time to be helped in by the closing pack. The roar of crushing ice had already commenced on the point of land north-west of the ship. It approached and increased every moment, till the whole beach was in full chorus, creaking, screaming, and crashing. Under such an enormous pressure the strongest ship that ever floated would have been reduced to matches in one minute.
For months afterwards the same harsh sound was to be heard outside our barrier, till it became familiar and commonplace. It can be very closely imitated by rubbing dinner plates together. As soon as the position of the ship ceased to claim immediate attention, many an anxious look was cast over the chaos of ice beyond in search of the coast-line to the northwards. The truth broke on us very slowly. President’s Land was not there. The shore off which we lay curved to the left in a broad bay, and thirty or forty miles north-west of the ship the land ended in an abrupt cape. Behind us, and beyond Robeson Channel, Greenland spread away to the eastward, dwindling off in a perspective of rounded snow-covered hills, while to the north between these two lands’ ends there was nothing but an icy horizon.