All hands were in the mean time actively at work. The floe had been to us terra firma so long that we had applied it to all the purposes of land. Clothes and clothes' lines, sledges, preserved meats, kindling wood and planking, were now all bundled on board. The artificial horizon, which had stood for eight months upon a little ice-pedestal, was barely saved; and I had to work hard to get one of my few remaining thermometers from a neighboring hummock.
The cause of this sudden disruption—I mean the immediate cause, for the summer influences had prepared the floe for disintegration—was evidently the sea-swell setting from the southeast. This swell had given us minor manifestations of its existence as far back as the 1st of June. Whether it was increased without, or our floe made more accessible to it by the drifting away of other and protecting floes, I can not say. This, however, was clear, that the great undulations propagated by wave action caused our disruption. The proof of this I shall not forget.
Standing on our little deck, and looking out on the floe, we had the strange spectacle of an undulating solidity, a propagated wave borne in swell-like ridges, as if our ice was a carpet shaken by Titans. I can not convey the effect of this sublime spectacle. The ice, broken into polyhedric masses, gave at a few hundred yards no indications to the eye of the lines of separation; besides which, the infiltration of salt water had no doubt increased the plasticity of the material. Imagine, then, this apparently solid surface, by long association as unyielding to us as the shore, taking suddenly upon itself the functions of fluidity, another condition of matter. It absolutely produced something like the nausea of sea-sickness to see the swell of the ice, rising, and falling, and bending, transmitting with pliant facility the advancing wave.
A hummock hill, about midway between us and the Rescue, gave me an opportunity of measuring rudely the height of the swell. It rose till it covered her quarter boat; sinking again till I could see the side of the brig down to her water-line, an interval of five feet at least.
“As we walk along the edge of the open fissures, we see a wonderful variety in the thickness of the ice. Our apparently level surface is, in fact, a mosaic work of ices, frozen at separate periods, and tesselated by the several changes or disruptions which we have undergone. Thus I can see the tables under our stern extending down at least twenty-five feet: adjoining this is ice of four feet; next comes a field of six feet; and then hummock ridges, with tables choked below, so as to give an apparent depth of twenty.
“The ‘calves’ also, of which a great many have now risen to the surface, are worthy of note. These singular masses are evidently fragments of tables, of every degree of thickness, which have been forced down by pressure, and afterward, by some change in the temperature of the water, or by wave and tidal actions, have been liberated again from the floe, and find their way upward wherever an opening permits. We saw them honeycombed and cellular, water-sodden and in rounded bowlders, rising from the depths of the sea. Their density, so near that of the liquid in which they were submerged, made this rise slow and impressive. We could see them many fathoms below, voyaging again to the upper world. Once between the gaping edges of the lead, they effectually prevent the closing. They are about us in every direction, interposed between the fields.
“The appendage which sustains our brig has a good deal of this character. I will try to make an exact drawing of it as a curiosity, if it hangs on to us much longer. Its buoyancy indicates great submerged mass. A strong cable and ice anchor have been carried to a floe on our starboard bow, and the swell drives it upon us like a great battering-ram. This ingenious method of pounding us out of our tenacious cradle subjects us to a regular succession of heavy shocks, which would startle a man not used to ice navigation. At the time I write, 11 P.M., we have been nearly three hours subjected to this banging without any apparent impression. To-morrow we will, if not liberated, apply the saw; and then again to the warps!
“11:20 P.M. In the midst of fragments, few more than a hundred yards in length, nearly all much smaller. Between them are zigzag leads of open water. Astern of us is an expansion of some fifty yards across; ahead, a winding creek, wider than our brig. Thus closes the day.
“One thing more: a thought of gratitude before I turn in. This journal shows that I have been in the daily habit of taking long, solitary walks upon the ice, miles from the ship. Suppose this rupture to have come entirely without forewarning! I had greased my boots for a walk a few hours before the change, and only postponed it because I happened to get absorbed in a book.”
