The main objections offered to our voluntary stay in the pack are the ignorance of the home authorities of our whereabouts, and the certain death which would follow the loss of the Belgica by pressure, or by other accidents. If an expedition has planned to winter in the unknown antarctic pack she should have two vessels, so that if one is crushed another might remain to bring home her precious cargo of human life, and the records of the equally precious work. If this is not the fortune of an expedition, there should, at least, be left at home a clear outline of the prospective route. It is unnecessarily hazardous to trust to the pitfalls and certain misfortunes of polar work without such safeguards. In our case no one knows of our whereabouts. If our vessel should be lost, no relief could possibly reach us, because it is not definitely known where we may be found. Death by freezing and starvation would be our lot if our trusty ship were disabled, and such a possibility must always remain in view, in a battle against the ponderous polar-ice. With this prospect before us we do not take kindly to a voluntary berth among the ever restless floes during the many weeks of sure darkness and unknowable cold.
February 24.—A sharp southerly wind has been blowing all night. The sky is again gray and cheerless and full of promise for an early tempest. Sailors at sea rarely pray for a tempest, but this is the only hope we now have of securing freedom from the ice. We are longing for a gale of wind. We are not particular from what direction, anything will do so long as it breaks the ice and gives us a little room. With this promise before us, and while still beset, the Commandant comes forward with the first of a long series of new programmes. We are to gain the open sea northward, as quickly as possible, from here make a line of soundings from the edge of the pack northward, and another line parallel to the western shores of Grahamland, then go to Yankee Harbour, Deception Island, and return to Belgica Strait for a short period. As the season for ice exploration ceases we are to go to Ushuaia, where Racovitza and I are to be left for the winter to make zoölogical and anthropological studies of the Fuegian life, while the Belgica returns to Buenos Aires to winter. Next season we are to go south of Australia to Victorialand.
The Hummocks of a Pressure-Angle.
Cestrugi.
CHAPTER XIV
OVER UNKNOWN WATERS INTO THE FROZEN SEA
February 25.—The expected storm has not struck us, but the ice has separated a little and offers us a chance to push westerly. We are passing through a loose pack with much new ice, which offers but little resistance to the vessel. On the ice there are many groups of small penguins, and we have also seen several royal penguins. Many snowy petrels follow in the wake of the ship, but they are silent companions, never uttering a song or a cry of delight or fear, always gliding lightly in the air and dropping easily into the water to seek the pelagic fish, which is their food. There is no wind to-day. The temperature is again higher -3.5° C. (25.7° F.), and the sky is lined with stratus and alto-stratus clouds of the usual steel gray. Our position at noon was latitude 69° 17′, longitude 82° 24′.
From here we again pushed out into the open sea northward, and following closely the edge of the pack westerly, we continued our cheerless voyage still in search of a promising bay or open lead which might permit us to push to a higher latitude. At noon on the twenty-seventh our position was 69° 26′, longitude 86° 46′. After the ensnaring powers of the pack-ice, which we have learned in the past few weeks, we were not eager to put ourselves again in a position to become entangled. For such an entanglement would now mean confinement. The season for a campaign to the far south is past. The nights are becoming long and black, and new ice is forming on every side; but in spite of these forbidding signs M. de Gerlache believes it incumbent upon himself to abandon the new programme, and push heedlessly into the freezing waters to make as strong an effort as possible to beat the “farthest south” of other explorers.
The entire scientific staff are opposed to this effort, because it is thought too late in the season. No direct opposition, however, was offered when the Belgica was again headed southward. She was forced into the pack and out again, time after time, making after each rebuff a new effort farther westward. On February twenty-eighth we were forced to take to the ice that the ship might better ride out a howling storm.