This storm proved to us a melancholy affair. The wind at first was not strong or steady, but the sea which rolled under our starboard quarter tossed us about upon its bosom as a child does a toy. Occasionally it broke over us amidship, flooding the laboratory and the galley. There was a large quantity of coal on the decks, and some of this was carried by the swash into the scuppers, making escape of the water impossible. To free the scuppers one of our youngest sailors—Wiencke—was at work periodically during much of his watch. In the afternoon the tempest increased and gathered force hour after hour. Great seas broke over us with increasing violence, while the wind came and went with a cannon-like roar. Everything movable on the decks was swept overboard. At about three o’clock in the afternoon Amundsen and I were on the bridge, straining our eyes and levelling our glasses on a mysterious black object ahead, directly in our course; while thus engaged, we heard an unearthly cry,—a cry which made me shiver because of its force and painful tone. We turned about quickly, but saw nothing to indicate the direction of the noise. Amundsen, thinking there had been an accident in the engine-room, rushed in that direction. I went aft to the quarter-deck, and, looking astern, saw a man struggling among the foamy crests. It was Wiencke—in trying to free the scuppers he had lost his balance, and in falling, he had uttered the awful cry which had startled us. With quick presence of mind he sought the log-line and grasped it. I caught hold of the other end, and began to draw it slowly in, but he slipped until his hand was stopped by the log; upon this he held with a death-like grasp. Before I had pulled in the full length of the line everybody was on deck; but there was little to be done. With the sea tossing the ship about like a chip, and the wind blowing a gale, it was impossible to lower a boat. As I brought Wiencke close to the stern, Lecointe, with a bravery impossible to appreciate, volunteered to be lowered into the icy sea to pass a rope around the poor fellow. He followed his offer with demands for a rope, which was securely fastened around his waist. With two men at the rope, Lecointe was lowered into the churning waters, but he sank at once with the counter-eddies, and nearly lost his own life without being able to keep near Wiencke. Lecointe was raised, and without delay or undue excitement, we managed to tow Wiencke to the side of the ship, where we expected to lower another man. But while we were doing this, he gave up his grip on the log and sank. We waited there for an hour, but saw no more of our unfortunate shipmate. Wiencke was a boy with many friends, and his absence was deeply felt in our little party.
Before night the fog raised, and exposed under it a continuous wall of ice about one hundred and fifty feet high, extending as far eastward and westward as we could see. At first we thought it an iceberg. It had every resemblance to one, but its enormous size led us into doubts. We steamed eastward, keeping from it a distance of about four miles, and presently were able to make out a black line above the water, which later we determined to be rocks. Around the eastern termination were a number of small peaks of volcanic rocks, and from them came, first the odour of guano-beds, and then the deafening squawk—gha-a-ah, gha-a-ah,—of countless millions of penguins. This was Low Island. We rested here in the lee of its walls for the night, but owing to persistent fogs we did not get a glimpse of its interior.
A Penguin Rookery, Isle Cobalescou.
Penguins—A Family Gathering on the Pack-ice.
On the morning of the 23d the sea was easier but choppy, and the weather offered promises of clearing. We took advantage of the conditions to cross Bransfield Strait, which separates the South Shetlands from the mainlands of the true antarctic. The promise of a clear horizon was not realised, for it remained misty all day. Icebergs were passed in great numbers, most of them being table-topped and square cut, with great blue lines, crevasses, and cavities. The mist destroyed the fine outlines and the fascinating colours of the ice. The knife-like corners of the crowns were ill-defined, and the usual exquisite blues and greens were covered by the gloomy gray of the sky. There was about these bergs, even with their subdued colours, something wildly picturesque, but there was also a real danger in our proximity to them in hazy weather.
Historically the record of our predecessors in the region which we are about to enter is short. Early in the twenties the islands about Cape Horn and the South Shetlands were besieged by American fur sealers. They did their work of execution so thoroughly that in the short period of five years almost the entire race of fur seals was exterminated. One of these sealers, Captain Nathaniel Palmer, in a little shallop of forty tons, while seeking new sealing grounds southward, found an extensive country covered with ice and inhabited by penguins and seals. Some years later Captain Biscoe, a British sea-elephant hunter, saw a part of the same country somewhat farther to the south-west, and still later a German sealer, Dallman, saw a part of the same northern coast. To Palmer belongs the honour of the discovery of this vast tract of land. It is a disappointment that his records are so imperfect, but the record of everything antarctic is of a similar nature. Palmer has been forgotten by his own countrymen and ignored by foreign cartographers. In the arrangement of the new chart the Belgian Expedition will attempt to place his name where it belongs—on the land which he saw first of all men.
At 3 o’clock in the afternoon of the 23d a curious white haze appeared upon the southern sky. A little later an imperfect outline of land rose into this haze. It extended as far as we could see to the east and to the west. The top was everywhere veiled by a high mist, and this mist had within it a mysterious light, which is one of the most startling of all the south polar effects. As we drew nearer we noticed that the land was not as it at first appeared, an endless wall of ice, but rough, irregular and disconnected, though it was buried under a mantle of glacial ice, extending to the water’s edge. Here and there were large bays, and one directly over our bowsprit was so wide that it offered us a tempting path southward. Now the maps were carefully studied that we might be able to fix our position on paper; but in this effort we failed.