Through the first Antarctic night, 1898-1899

by Frederick Albert Cook

CHAPTER XIII
ALONG THE EDGE OF THE PACK-ICE

For the last few days we have had under discussion a striking peculiarity of the antarctic pack. It is a noticeable yellowness in the second sheets of newly broken pieces of ice. We saw this first in the ice close to Dancoland, and at this time most of us thought it due to earthy material from the neighbouring lands. But we have seen it to-day and we have seen it every day since we left this land now hundreds of miles eastward. Can it be earthy matter? In the laboratory there have been a number of experiments made. Almost every department claims the mysterious yellow as its special preserve, but all are at work either guessing or making painstaking experiments, or observations. The discussions grow quite heated. The navigating officers, with whom I coincided, held that it was earthy matter brought down upon the sea-ice by glacial streams. The fact that it is seen most close to the land, and only in patches in our present position, seems to bear out this fact; but the geologist, who is a chemist of ability, will not agree to this, and heaps upon us all sorts of mild humourous abuse. Arctowski has experiments in hand which he thinks will prove a chemical origin of the knotty yellow question. None of us are chemists, and of course we cannot dispute the theory of a chemical origin, but we hold fast to our first idea. The zoölogist would not venture a theory, but he said it belonged to his department, and we tried to talk him down also, but he would say little and took our unkindly jests goodnaturedly. Late in the afternoon Racovitza came out of his laboratory all aglow with good humour, but he heaped upon us of the majority, a stream of abuse which made us, for the time, abandon all theories. He has examined the yellow stuff carefully under the microscope and finds the ice literally alive with sea algæ, which prove to be the cause of the yellow colour. For a short time this is hailed as a discovery, but presently some one finds that it had been noticed by Hooker sixty years ago. Then followed a discordant murmur on the strains, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

A Tabular Iceberg, Seen at the Pack-edge in the South Pacific. About 200 Feet High.

Shortly after noon we made a sounding. We found the water 480 metres deep, under which there was a gray clay bottom. There is very little variation in the temperature of the sea at various depths. At the bottom it is 1° C.; coming up there are little variations of a half degree, and at the surface it is -1.5°C.(29.3°F.). At the time of making these soundings there were seventy-eight icebergs on the horizon, most of them southward, a few miles within the edge of the pack-ice. There were also a few lines of drift-ice flowing northward in the trough of the sea. The sea is running in easy undulations with an oily, unbroken surface of blue, and though the sky is slaty, there is a charm in the solitude and a fascination in the scenic effects as the pearly mountains and streams of ice rise and fall with the sea of sapphire.

At ten o’clock to-night we turned around a point of heavy drift-ice and headed southward. Before us here there seemed to be little ice to offer an obstruction to our ambitions to reach the regions beyond. To the east and the west there was a distinct ice-blink, but southward we saw a smoky water-sky. The sea, as we advanced, became even smoother than it had been, and was entirely free of ice.

We seem to select the nights for our attacks upon the barriers of ice which everywhere have threatened to prevent our entry into the snowy preserve beyond. During the night the temperature falls, the fog, which always screens the ice in daytime, is congealed and deposited as snow; and, though the sky here at the edge of the pack generally remains dark at night, there is an incomprehensible metallic glow on the glassy surface of the water, and a sharp phosphoretic glitter from every spire and pan of ice. The night is a long twilight, and when the demons of storm are not hovering about it is a long, dreamy spell of joy. The inspiration of this solitude, the transcendental and indescribable something about this continued twilight from sunset to dawn, and the wine which one drinks with the wintry atmosphere raises the soul into a plane of superhuman existence. The glory of these midnight glimmers will haunt me for the rest of my days. But we are below the antarctic circle, and the average reader will expect that we are flooded by the almost perpetual light of the polar summer day. This would be true earlier in the season; but now the sun is low on the horizon. The darkness, which is soon to throw the icy splendours into a hopeless, sooty gloom, is gathering its hellish fabric to cover the laughing glory of day. The sunless winter of storm, of unimaginable cold, of heart-destroying depression, is rapidly advancing. We are hoping to continue our voyage of exploration as long as possible, and when the darkness and cold become too great we expect to steal away and winter in more congenial latitudes. (How utterly we failed to gain freedom from the icy fetters of this heartless Frost King of the night is shown by our imprisonment later.)

Bird’s-eye View of the Pack-ice Near the Outer Edge.

February 20, 8 a. m.—We have steamed south by east, since midnight, through a sea free of drift-ice, but icebergs are in great numbers on all sides. Over the port gunwale, about two miles off, there is still the white line indicating the edge of the main body of the pack. There is a little swell, but the sea has a gray and cold aspect. There is almost no wind stirring the glassy air. The temperature has fallen to -2° C. (28.4° F.). The sky above us is smoky, with leaden streaks here and there. To the south a narrow strip of horizon is clear, and above this there are a few divisions with ragged silvery edges, beyond which is the gladdening blue of the unscreened heavens, which is so rare here. Nearly everywhere on the horizon to the south there is reflected the glitter of the ice-blink. The narrow sooty bands, however, which interrupt this blink, indicate that the ice is separated by open lanes of water. We shall try these lanes, so nicely mapped on the sky, for our benefit, and as our bowsprit is laid for one due south, we again stir our hopes and discouraged spirits to fresh ambitions of further discoveries. “Shall we succeed, or will the ice seize us with a final and relentless embrace?” A fog soon fell over the scene, but we continued our renewed efforts to push poleward with increasing vigour.