THE QUEST BESET NEAR ROSS’S APPEARANCE OF LAND
It did not get completely dark at midnight. The increasing light in the early morning produced a wonderful sunrise. Owing to the gradual upward curve of the sun in these latitudes, the effects last for hours and change slowly, contrasting strongly with the evanescent tropical skies, where the sun rises abruptly above the horizon and in the evening falls back so suddenly that there is no twilight. The sky to the eastward was lit up with the most delicate and beautiful colours, which were reflected on the surface of the floe. The old floes passed slowly from pale pink to crimson and, as the sun came over the rim, to the palest and most delicate heliotrope. The darker newly frozen ice changed from bronze to light apple-green. To the westward a large golden moon was poised in a cloudless sky, turning the floes to the palest of gold. No words of mine can adequately convey the beauty of such a morning.
These days impressed themselves vividly in one’s memory, which has the knack of picking out the brighter spots in the greyness of these regions. I think it is impressions like these which, working perhaps subconsciously, produce that haunting restlessness which makes one feel suddenly, and without apparent cause, dissatisfied with civilization, its veneer and artificiality, its restrictions and its ugliness. Certain it is that few people who have travelled away from the beaten track and spent long, unbroken periods face to face with Nature can hope to escape the sudden feelings of restlessness and disquietude which come upon one without warning and drive one to pacing up and down, to face the rain on a gusty night, or do anything so long as one can be alone for a while. I think that every living being has at one time or another experienced that curious feeling—it is hard to say of what exactly—a sort of wondering lostness that comes over one in certain circumstances. In our own country one feels it on fine nights in the gloaming, when everything is stilled and the silence unbroken save by the full-throated song of some bird, which seems only to accentuate it. One feels something of it even in the cities in the quiet of a summer evening, with the smoke of countless chimneys winding lazily upwards, but it is in the great untouched areas of the earth that it makes its deepest impression and grips one with the greatest intensity.
It has been my fortune to visit many parts of the world, and I can recall wonderful evenings in many places which have created a deep impression on me, but there particularly stand out in my mind’s eye some of the long Antarctic autumn twilights too beautiful to describe. I have seen the most materialistic and unimpressionable of men strung to an absolute silence, scarcely daring to breathe, filled with something intangible and inexplicable. The very sledge dogs stand stock still, gazing intently into the farness, ears cocked, listening—for what? Suddenly the spell is broken and with a deep breath one turns again to work.
We pushed on and on throughout the 14th and made on the whole pretty good headway. I stopped just long enough to let Worsley take a sounding, depth 1,925 fathoms (lat. 68° 21´ S. and 16° 0´ E. long.). With every hour the ice increased in thickness and the Quest had all she could do to push forward. Work at the wheel was strenuous, for in the new ice the ship did not make a straight track, but swerved all the time from side to side, and the helm had to be swung repeatedly in either direction to check the deviation.
About midday we encountered heavy floe against which we made poor headway, and I began to realize that it would be touch and go as to whether we would get out or not. I sent for Kerr and told him to give his engines all they would stand. He increased the pressure of steam, and the ship began to make headway slowly but surely.
In the early afternoon the weather changed. McIlroy reported a rise of temperature to 22° Fahr., and there was a swell, very faint but quite noticeable. A skua gull and a giant petrel appeared. All these signs were good, indicating a more open pack ahead of us and open water within reasonable distance.
By 8.0 p.m. we were once more making good headway, and I went below, to fall soundly asleep after my days of anxiety and broken rest.
Owing to the darkness we were compelled to heave to for two hours at midnight, for with the northing we had made there was less daylight, and one cannot distinguish in the dim light between rotten floes and solid ones, which if rammed would fetch up the ship all standing and possibly start the timbers and carry away a certain amount of gear.
The temperature had risen to 24° Fahr., but when I came on deck in the early morning of the 15th the outlook was not good. The air was not warm enough to prevent freezing of the ice, and from the mast-head I saw heavy pack to the northward. There was one good sign, however, and that was an increased northerly swell coming along in slow leisurely rolls. It is a fine sight to see a huge field of ice rising and falling in this manner.