1 B H WH 11 OSTENDE, 10.45P (Via 369 Fulton St Brooklyn,)
DR COOK,
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
FOUVEZ REJOINDRE MONTEVIDEO MAIS HIVERNEREZ PAS
GERLACHE.
To this I answered yes, and it was followed by, “Meet us at Rio, end of September.” I had only a few days to prepare myself and my outfit for a journey which might take one year, or ten, or a lifetime. But I was determined to go, and so it came about that in September I found myself on the way to meet my prospective companions on the unfriendly bosom of the Atlantic, seasick and miserable from rough weather and tropical heat. I should have had a longer time to afford better means to prepare for a journey of this kind. To consent by cable to cast my lot in a battle against the supposed unsurmountable icy barriers of the south, with total strangers, men from another continent, speaking a language strange to me, does indeed seem rash. But I never had cause to regret it. The antarctic has always been the dream of my life, and to be on the way to it was then my ideal of happiness. To be on the way from it was an ambition quite as strong two years later.
Captain Lecointe describes the final departure and the voyage down the Atlantic thus: “There was a great storm of sentimental and serious enthusiasm as we left Ostend on August 24th. Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and other men’s sisters were there to press upon us their last tokens of love. This was done in different ways. Some cried, others laughed and took the matter in a good humor, and still others were angry that one of their number should, with eyes open, go from a warm home to what was predicted to be a certain icy grave. Many of the old seamen about gave gratuitous advice to our friends, based upon their own experiences about Cape Horn, which in substance was generally ‘these men will never return.’ As the Belgica drew out from the docks and we saw for the last time for many months the red faces of sadness, the pale faces of anxiety, the waving handkerchiefs, and as we felt the parting girlish kisses coming with the soft breezes, we were, indeed, half sorry to leave our little land of home delights. Amid the cheer of enthusiastic voices and the thunder of salutations from whistles and guns we glided out into the broad Atlantic, whose beating swells were henceforth to be our home and our highway to the chosen field of action, the snowy south polar regions.”
The Belgica.