DURING winter moonlight this view of the ship was a familiar one; for it is from the end of the half-mile marked out for exercise on the Hoes. The foretopmast has gone to make a roof-tree for the thick awnings that house in the deck. The crow’s nest and much of the rigging are packed away till next wanted. The unshipped rudder hangs across the stern, out of the way of damage from any crushing of the floes. Snow packed up carefully all round the ship is an all-important protection against the increasing cold.
Fortunately, the last gale had so far hardened the snow-drifts in this spot that snow-house building had become possible. Every few days a new “house” sprang up. A group of men would come out from the ship, warmly booted and mitted, carrying shovels and saws, and perhaps a lantern. They shovel off the loose surface snow, and proceed to mark out two sets of concentric circles, one slightly larger than the other, and follow the marks with the saw driven vertically into the snow. The rings thus sawn out are then cut into blocks about two feet square. The outer ring of blocks from the larger circles, placed round the circular pit left by the removal of blocks from the smaller set, makes the first tier. Then comes the outer ring from the smaller set, and so on alternately, till a good flat block closes in the top. The resulting edifice is all in steps, but it is thoroughly substantial, and will last till midsummer. Thus our town sprang up, and each part soon received its appropriate name—Markham Hall, Kew, Deptford, Greenwich, &c., while at a safe distance southward an eccentric edifice, surmounted by a broom handle to represent a lightning conductor, acted as magazine and spirit-store.
Long before winter had passed, our town had disappeared as completely as Nineveh or Pompeii. Only an uncertain mound here and there projected over the bleak slope of drifted snow. Some of the storehouses, indeed, were so effectively hidden that they were not found till after several days’ excavations in the following July. The great advantage of a snow-house is that it takes its temperature from the earth, and not from the air. Some of ours were occasionally as much as forty degrees warmer than the atmosphere, so that an observer well muffled in furs could remain for four or five hours at a time watching the swinging magnetic needle, or the progress of some icy experiment. His meditations would sometimes be disturbed by the wandering footfall of one of our dogs overhead, sounding strangely loud and reverberating. The snow was curiously retentive of odours: a little spirit spilt in one house made it ever afterwards smell like a gin-palace; another had an unaccountable odour of oysters that puzzled all our savans; but, as a rule, the smell of burnt candle predominated. The manner, by-the-bye, in which the flame of a candle gradually sank into a tallowy net-work cylinder afforded a striking illustration of the still air and low temperature of a snow-house. In strong moonlight, or after daylight returned, the effect inside one of our buildings was most peculiar. The snow transmits a subdued greenish-blue light, such as a diver sees deep under water.
BUILDING SNOW-HOUSES.
While twilight lasted, many excursions were made landwards, but the uncertain state of the deep snow made even a short walk a serious undertaking. In places it lay merely dusted over the ground; in others in deep drifts, here soft, and there hardened by wind. If we turned to the north, we soon came to a steep ravine, by no means easily crossed, winding down from Mount Pullen. All inland was a monotonous waste of snow, and ten minutes’ walk to the south brought us to another ravine—a smaller one—which somehow or other acquired the name of the “Gap of Dunloe.” Here a summer torrent had cut a way under the ice and snow that half filled the ravine. A few little frozen pools amongst the boulders was all that remained of the torrent, but its size might be estimated by the long flat cavern it had washed out under the ice, lit from above by a number of dangerous “man-holes” opening through the snow overhead. At the other side of the ravine, the land rose towards the high capes overlooking Robeson Channel, and afforded very rough walking, for the vertical slate strata was either smoothed over with treacherous snow, or stuck up through it in various-sized flat slabs, making the land look like a vast graveyard. As a rule, however, there was really nothing to see but interminable snow. Sometimes, when it was a little overcast, even the distinction between land and sky was confused, and everything assumed a uniform whiteness. More than once it occurred to us that our scenery was very simply portrayed: a spotless sheet of white paper could not be improved upon. Under such circumstances, it may easily be imagined that the discovery of a hare track was quite an exciting event. Who could think of returning to a half-past two o’clock dinner before the track was followed, and the quarry found! A second hare track was fallen in with on the 29th October, but after following it for some hours it became plain that the creature had more than once been within thirty yards, and had escaped unnoticed in the twilight. The chase was given up, and it was at any rate a satisfaction to know that at least one live thing was left to pass the winter in our neighbourhood. There was no use in trying to hunt after this. That day we had hoped to get something better than hare, for one of the ice quartermasters had reported that he had heard wolves howling inland during the middle watch, and wolves would hardly pay us a visit so far north unless they were driving musk oxen or reindeer. A long walk on snow-shoes failed to discover any tracks, and indeed the beasts themselves might have been close at hand without being seen, for darkness was already stealing over the land.