At ten o’clock we reached a point where the main body of the pack again refused us a path. The Belgica, however, will not be discouraged. She ploughs on between the heavy masses of ice, to some open lakes beyond, where she seems to gain fresh courage, and then rushes upon the offending fields with a spirit of animation altogether in keeping with that of her directors. There are about us great numbers of white and gray petrels seeming to urge us on. The fog rises and falls offering a peep, now and then, into the white world to which we are so anxious to force our way. Most of the men are standing about on the decks, offering words of encouragement to the bark as she batters and breaks the offending floes which hinder her passage. A few men, sitting on the anchor chains, have premonitions of impending danger and discuss the prospects of an antarctic winter, and the incidents of starving and freezing, cast adrift on the ice. While thus making our way energetically, and with our hopes raised to the highest pitch of anticipation, some mystic force brought the ice together, and early in the afternoon we found ourselves again beset—powerless either to advance or retreat.
Again, disappointed and discouraged, we tried to turn the bark in an effort to retrace our track. The entire afternoon was devoted to this effort, but we were held with fetters not easily broken. This battle with the ice has been the worst to the present. We go full speed ahead, then full speed astern. Each change in direction is followed by crash after crash, until it seems that every part of the good ship has been loosened. Either the ice or the Belgica must go to pieces. After many hours of hard struggling the Belgica obtains sufficient room to give her a good headway, and then she rushes against and upon the ice in a manner to make her mistress of the situation. Ploughing, and jamming, and crushing her way through the huge masses of ice, she scraped off her new dress of paint, and tore away many pieces of her outer sheathing. Her path was marked by specks of paint and pieces of wood, the result of scratches and bruises, but as she fought her way again out into the open sweep of the new antarctic sea she had the appearance, and we had for her the admiration, of a battleship after a destructive engagement.
While the Belgica was engaged battering the ice, Racovitza, Tollefsen, and myself, started out over the ice to study the life and to secure zoölogical specimens, as well as photographs. We saw numbers of penguins, some giant petrels, and a few crab-eating, or white antarctic seals; but the surprise of the day was a lone seal with a thick neck and a big head, altogether different from any variety which we had seen before. We at once recognised it as the “new seal” claimed to have been discovered by Borchgrevink, in 1894. While it agreed in every particular with the descriptions of the adventurous Norwegian sailor, the animal proved, upon minute examination, to be a yearling of the true sea-leopards. Borchgrevink’s discovery then, in this case as in another, which will be cited later, is a myth, for the sea-leopard has been known for about one hundred years.
February 21, 10 A. M.—During the night we skirted the pack, steaming slowly westward. Now we are steaming south-west by the compass, whose variation is here 39° west. The prow is cutting clear, blue waters entirely free of ice. Along the horizon, from the north to the south-west, there is a marked ice blink. In the south-east, just over the horizon barely visible, is the edge of the pack. There are one hundred and ten icebergs visible from the mast head; of this number ten are true table-topped masses ranging, in height, from one hundred to two hundred and fifty feet, and in length from a thousand feet to one mile. All of the others were of the usual arctic type, with fantastic towers of every conceivable shape. Some five or six had the form of an easy chair, others that of a giant couch, still others assumed the forms of human faces. Some of the forms were particularly striking and needed no explanation; but at nearly every hour of the day some one went into raptures about a fetching figure, which generally required a vivid, and often a poetic imagination with a liberal artistic license.
It is curious that the eye generally sees what the mind intends to picture. An illustration of this point is the different forms which we ascribe to these icebergs. The Captain points to a berg, not particularly attractive to anyone, but he insists in describing upon it the face and the form of a beautiful woman, chiseled in walls of alabaster. We look, and try to be interested while Lecointe grows enthusiastic, but we see only dead white cliffs. There are some irregularities, a few delicate blue lines, some suggestive hummocks, and various dark cavities; but these we see in every berg, and with our different mental attitudes we fail to recognise the ascribed topography of a human figure. We dare not, however, admit our ignorance, for such a lack of sympathetic support, especially on a sentimental subject, would be equal to a challenge for a duel on the Belgica. The naturalist comes along next, he is always realistic, sometimes poetical, but never sentimental. Upon a small tabular berg there is a shapeless mass of ice-blocks, and these blocks are so piled that one cannot help but notice them. To me the thing seemed like a marble statue of England’s Prime Minister, Salisbury, raised upon a huge, rounded block of granite. I heard Arctowski suggest the Egyptian Sphinx, but Racovitza insisted upon the likeness of a polar bear and some one shouted, “It moves!” At once the picture became real, and the sailors refused to believe that it was not a living bear. Racovitza’s imagination was accepted by all, for to doubt him was to have humorous abuse and sarcastic caricatures heaped upon us for weeks. There was, however, one man with a glass. He looked intently for an hour at the thing without saying much. This was Michotte, the cook. After we had all finished our discussions, and had come to a general agreement about the bear, he shattered our allegory with a little giggle and followed it by the announcement that it was all a mistake;—“to me it looks like a pot of boiling soup.” Next to the Captain the cook is the most important personage on the ship; there are short instances when he even rises above the Captain. It was so in this case. Michotte canvassed the observers one by one, gave them his glasses and pointed out the rounded base of the huge polished kettle, and then he made steam out of our beautiful statuary in the centre. Dobrowolsky suggested that pots were generally black, but Koren, the cook’s assistant, took a look at the thing and said, “That’s just like our pots, they are always clean and white and polished.” I noticed that everybody, even Racovitza, gave a hearty assent. We dared not do otherwise, for it meant no soup to-morrow, and Kydbolla every day. We can afford to dispute with the naturalist somewhat, we can even doubt the Captain’s eyesight, but we cannot dream of endangering the good-will of Michotte,—it is, then, a pot of boiling soup, and I think Koren added it was “hot stuff;”—even this is granted.
10 P. M.—It is still light enough to write on deck, but there is a little wind coming out of the south which makes ungloved fingers stiff. The temperature is -4° C. (24.8° F.). At two o’clock this afternoon we again came to a region of pack-ice which loved us too well. It closed about and squeezed our sides with such force that we were powerless to resist. We have remained here since, and shall remain for the night. The engine fires have been burned down, but Gerlache says he will make another attempt to push southward to-morrow.
There has been considerable animal life about us to-day. In the air we have seen the usual songless and noiseless birds, the giant and the white petrels. Finback whales have been spouting and showing their huge blue backs in the open triangles of water. Seals have been stealing about the ship under the water, curiously examining the hull of the bark without coming to the surface to vent their curiosity by a look upon us. The speck of blackness which the Belgica makes in their world of perennial whiteness must be of rare interest to these semi-human subaqueous denizens. On the ice we have seen a few king penguins, uttering, now and then, a weird gha-a-ah. They were always alone, generally standing to the lee of hummocks with heads bowed, looking as solemn and dignified as deacons at a love feast. Roaming about on the floes we see the ever-restless little black-billed, yellow-footed pack penguins. This flightless bird is gregarious and sociable, and must have companions to be happy. It congregates in groups, numbering from six to thirty, and these gatherings are the only cheerful signs of life in the great silent circle around the south pole.
The air is cold and bracing, bringing with it a wine of action which is opposed to fatigue. With it we seem to require little sleep, keeping at hard physical and mental work from early morning till midnight. With the much lower temperature the air is now getting glassy, the fog is dispersing, and the sky shows signs of clearing, with considerable colour. Mirages were seen to-night for the first time. All along the horizon, from the north-east to the south-east, there are elongated, raised and distorted masses of ice, with their bases resting upon the water. There seem to be no inverted images, as in the arctic regions.
The sun set in the south-south-west to-night at 7:30. We rarely have a sky at the edge of the pack permitting a view of this phenomenon, but we can notice that the days are rapidly getting shorter, and the light is progressively fading. Only two weeks ago we could take instantaneous photographs until ten o’clock, but now, a picture taken at eight is very feeble. With the sun almost perpetually screened by a black icy mist the sky has remained cheerless and depressing, but southerly winds seem to brush aside this gloomy curtain. Along the southern sky to-night there is a streak of gold, fringed with orange and a suggestion of carmine. At best, however, colours are sparingly distributed along the outer fringe of this antarctic pack. We have seen the stars and the moon but once since entering the Pacific, and, to the present, there have been no auroras visible.
