Cape Hotham was at this time nearly in range, from our position, with the first headland to the west of it; and our captain estimated that we were about thirty miles from the eastern side of the strait. The balloon was to leeward, nearly due north of us, more so than could be referred to the course of the wind as we observed it, supposing it to have set out from any vessel of whose place we were aware. It appeared to me, the principal one, about two feet long by eighteen inches broad; its appendage larger than an ordinary dinner-plate. The incident interested us much at the time, and I have not seen any thing in the published journals of the English searchers that explains it.
T
HE region, which ten days before was teeming with animal life, was now almost deserted. We saw but one narwhal and a few seal. The Ivory gull too, a solitary traveler, occasionally flitted by us; but the season had evidently wrought its change.
Several flocks of the snow bunting had passed over us while we were attached to the main ice off Griffith’s Island, and a single raven was seen from the Rescue at her holding grounds. The Brent geese, however, the dovekies, the divers, indeed all the anatidæ, the white whales, the walrus, the bearded and the hirsute seal, the white bear, whatever gave us life and incident, had vanished.
The following Sunday, the 15th, was signalized by the introduction of a bright new “Cornelius” lard lamp into the cabin, a luxury which I had often urged before, but which the difficulties of opening the hold had compelled the captain to deny us. The condensation of moisture had been excessive; the beams had been sweating great drops, and my bedding and bunk-boards bore the look of having been exposed to a drizzling mist. The temperature had been below the freezing point for a week before. The lamp gave us the very comfortable warmth of 44°, twelve degrees above congelation. It was a luxury such as few but Arctic travelers can apprehend.
For some days after this, an obscurity of fog and snow made it impossible to see more than a few hundred yards from the ship. This little area remained fast bound, the ice bearing us readily, though a very slight motion against the sides of the vessel seemed to show that it was not perfectly attached to the shores. But as I stood on deck in the afternoon of the 16th, watching the coast to the east of us, as the clouds cleared away for the first time, it struck me that its configuration was unknown to me. By-and-by. Cape Beechy, the isthmus of the Graves, loomed up; and we then found that we were a little to the north of Cape Bowden.
The next two days this northward drift continued without remission. The wind blew strong from the southward and eastward, sometimes approaching to a gale; but the ice-pack around us retained its tenacity, and increased rapidly in thickness.