STOVE IN COOK’S GALLEY WITH APPARATUS FOR MELTING SNOW.
The month of November found us oscillating still with the winds and currents in the neighborhood of Beechy Island. Helpless as we were among the floating masses, we began to look upon the floe that carried us as a protecting barrier against the approaches of others less friendly; and as the month advanced, and the chances increased of our passing into the sound, our apprehensions of being frozen up in the heart of the ice-pack gave place to the opposite fear of a continuous drift. We had seen enough, and encountered enough of the angry strife among the ice-floes in the channel, to assure us of disaster if we should be forced to mingle in the sterner conflicts of the older ice-fields of the sound. Yet, as the new fields continued forming about us, thickening gradually from inches to feet, and locking together the floes in one great amorphous expanse, we retained a hope to the last that our island floe, thickening like the rest, and piling its wall of hummocks around us, would continue to ward us from attack, till the all-pervading frost had made it a stationary part of the great winter covering of the Arctic Sea. It encountered almost daily immense hummocks, some of them impinging against us while we were apparently at rest; some, apparently motionless, receiving the impact from us. At such times our floe would be deflected at an angle from its normal course, or would rotate slowly round its centre, and pass on—not, however, always in the same direction; sometimes nearing the western shore, sometimes closing in upon the beach of “the Graves,” and sometimes fluctuating slowly to the northward.
But our general course was toward the south and east. On the 17th we were fairly in the sound. It welcomed us coldly. The mercury stood for a while at -19°, and sunk during the night to -27°.
The next day, however, a shift of wind, gradually increasing in force, combined with a tidal influence to drive us back to our old position. The thermometer was at this time lower than we had ever seen it, and the sky seemed to sympathize with the temperature. The moon had a solid look, resting upon the snow-hills of Cape Riley, like a great viscid globe of illumination. In the morning the sky combined all the tints of the spectrum in regular zones, a broad band of orange girding the horizon with an almost uniform intensity of color. The stars shone during the entire day. At daybreak on the 18th, Leopold’s Island rose by refraction above the ice, standing with its unmistakable outline clearly black against the orange sky; but it went down as the sun neared the horizon, and passed to the south of his low circuit. My journal for the next two days shows the degree of illumination at the different hours.
“November 20, Wednesday. The winds are unlike those encountered by Parry, our only predecessor in this region at this season of the year. It has been very providential, and very unexpected for us, this predominance of breezes from the southward and eastward. It has prevented our drifting into the dreaded sound, there to be carried, if it pleased Fortune, into Baffin’s Bay by the easterly current.
“We had a heavy gale from 2 P.M. of yesterday (19th) until this morning at 9 A.M., hauling round from southeast to east-south-east. After this last hour, it gradually died away; and now, at 3 P.M., we have a gentle breeze from the same quarter. The wind has left the north since the 18th.
“Our temperature, which on the 18th gave us -27°, the lowest we have yet recorded, was at the close of the next day but -6°; and to-day its extreme was -4°. Now, by gradual elevation, it has reached zero.
“Zero once more, and a positive sensation of warmth! There was no wind; and the haze vapors so softened this once greatest cold, that I walked about with bare hands and sweating body.
“The daylight is hardly now worthy of the name, according to the Philadelphia notions of the blessing; but to us it is the last leaf of the sibyl. Here is a little record of its incomings and outgoings.
“9 A.M. Breakfast over; furs on; deck covered in with black felt, the frozen condensation patching it with large white wafers of snow. A lantern makes it barely light enough to walk. No red streak to the east: one misty haze of visible darkness.