Early in the evening the prow was turned southward. With sails and steam the good ship was rushed through the light streams of drift-ice. The sea rolled under her in great inky mountains and the ice, in response to the wave, gave off a noise like the crackle of a silk garment. At midnight we came to a region where the sea was closely covered with ice, but the pieces were still small and separated by bands of water covered with brash.
6 a.m. February 18. Those of us not directly connected with the navigation of the bark, and the men off watch, slept very little last night; the noise of the larger pans, as they struck the ship, and the grating and rasping of the smaller fragments, as the Belgica was forced through the ice, was such that sleep was impossible. We were all anxious and uneasy. There was little wind, but it was dark and foggy, and icebergs were everywhere to be expected. Mentally another berg collision was constantly before us and every unusual thump suggested a calamity. As the purple gray of dawn illuminated the horizon eastward, our hearts beat more easily, and our minds were more at rest, though the new scene which now lay before us was the most hopeless icy-desolation which, to the present, it had been our lot to see.
All about us the ice was very closely packed. There was a seemingly endless sea of ice, waving on the swell of the great restless waters under us. It was the first really good view which we had had of the characteristic ice, which covers the limitless expanse of this circumpolar ocean. Farther northward the true sea-ice was so much melted and weather-worn, and so much mixed with small angular fragments of icebergs and other land-ice, that the pack was a conglomerate mass entirely different from the true pack-ice. Now, as the sun rose and the mist dissolved, we saw pans of ice of an average diameter of one hundred feet, with a thickness of five feet, whose surfaces were raised here and there, by old wind-rasped hummocks or miniature mountains, from one to two yards high. Between these pans there were zones of water covered with closely packed pulverised ice, in which there were some pieces a few feet in diameter. In our efforts to push southward we selected these lanes between the larger pans, but the fine ice so effectually stopped our progress that even by using the full power of the engines we could not make more than two miles in six hours. A long and continuous swell of the Pacific was responsible for the steady pressure and forced continuity of the pack. Here, also, were large numbers of icebergs scattered in the pack, and from a distance they seemed to offer a continuous barrier. While this was not true when the horizon was closely examined, their influence, however, coupled with the power of the great swell of the sea, was an effective bar to farther progress.
Penguins on a Sea-worn Iceberg Resembling a Whale.
On the ice we see a number of crab-eating seals, mostly in pairs, but some in groups of five or six. They are in a sleepy mood and evidently enjoy the sharp sunbursts which now and then light up the beds of snow and the projecting icy spires with an electric glow. There are a few penguins about, and also some giant petrels; but the ornithological surprise of the day is the countless thousands of terns resting on, and hovering about, the icebergs. Great rows cover the ridges, and in some places the air is one hustling mass of bird life, all seeming to strive for a place to fly, or fighting for a resting spot on the higher angles of the bergs.
During the afternoon we saw a black zone along the northern horizon. It was a water-sky indicating that under it there was open, ice-free water. To the south, to the east, and to the west, however, there was everywhere the dazzling whiteness of the ice-blink on the heavens, offering no hope of advance.
We now tried to retrace our path, but we were held with such a firm embrace that we could not gain sufficient room to turn. At six o’clock the pressure slackened a little and, at the same time, we saw a black line of open water about two miles westward. We headed for this and for seven long hours we struggled with full force to press between the firmly packed floes. After midnight we were again in free waters, and set a course westerly along the edge of the pack-ice.
February 19, noon, latitude 69° 06′, longitude 78° 27′ 30″. The conditions permitting nautical observations are rare at the edge of the pack, because here the atmosphere is in a constant whirlpool of agitation. Storm, fog, rain, sleet and snow, are the normal conditions. One rarely gets a peep of the sun, and if by chance it should break through, it is seldom at noon or at an hour convenient for the Captain to make his reckoning. If then it happens, as it has to-day, that we obtain the observations which fix our position accurately in this lonely world of desolation, a kind of boyish rejoicing runs along the line of men on the decks; and even in the cabins, one hears comparisons. One says, “Now I am nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty-nine miles from home. It is noon, but at home they are just taking breakfast.” Another says, “Everybody that I love is nine thousand miles over our starboard quarter. They are just entering upon the duties of the day.” It has suddenly occurred to every one to think of home and of civilisation, for we are going farther and farther away from the known world of life and comfort into the unknown world of sterility and discomfort. To-day we know the exact spot on which we are being thrown about by a great unknown sea of mystery, and this knowledge seems to bring us nearer home because it offers us something tangible with which to make comparisons. In reality, however, we are as hopelessly isolated as if we were on the surface of Mars, and we are plunging still deeper and deeper into the white antarctic silence. A man at the verge of starvation takes a certain comfort in knowing, though it is out of his reach, that food exists. So with us, we extract a certain amount of satisfaction out of the numbers which record our latitude and longitude to-day, though our homes are proven by the figures to be out of all possible reach for months, perhaps for years, and possibly forever.
All day we have steamed westerly along the edge of the pack, passing very many icebergs and running through occasional streams of drift-ice. We have been looking for an opening into the ice offering us a passage southward, but we have found no promising break in the compact mass. Excepting the sunburst at noon it has been a dark, dull, gloomy day. A light fall of snow, mixed with a cold drizzling rain, has fallen over us almost constantly. This has again made the decks like a sliding pond. It is humorous, but also sorrowful, to see the men, whose clothing is sheeted with a plate of ice, stumble and glide and slip from rope to rope, always holding on to something to keep from spreading on the floor or glancing overboard into the icy waters. If one falls he swears and warms the cold air by heated language, but he is at once subdued by a companion, who says, “What! you complain of such little accidents, and you an explorer? No! that is the voice of a kitchen adventurer.”