Except for the little touch of colour at sunrise this morning, the weather has been one of a type which we now style gray days. These gray days are entirely characteristic of the antarctic. There is no brightness, no sparkle, no moving wind or water, nothing to infuse new life or to lighten our spirits. The atmosphere is heavy, but not opaque, the sky is low and gray, the extensive pans and bands of new ice are a smoky colour, the water is leaden, and only the snow-decked old pans form a contrast to the gray monotony, and even these take on a dirty aspect. All of this is impressed upon the mind, and when taken together with our immobility it sets up a greyness in our moods. To-night we saw a sight which aroused us to other thoughts. The sun had set rather tamely, leaving only a narrow zone upon which colour was poured; this zone was light blue at the water-line, a little darker above, merging into a violet, and then into an orange red, and over all was a mouse-coloured sky. These colours soon vanished, leaving a lemon colour which followed the sun on its journey eastward. At about eight o’clock a speck of fire was seen above the purple ice northward, but neither the ice nor the sky showed any signs of a reflected light. The sky was a dark purple blue. All was still and dead; there was not a breath of air stirring. The dull flame slowly increased in size and changed its form with marvellous rapidity. Above it there was a little blackness suggestive of smoke, and under it was a cone-like image of a mountain peak from which the fire and smoke seemed to ooze. Excitement ran high on the Belgica. The thing came upon us out of the smoky purple sky with the suddenness of a flash-light. To many of us it seemed like a volcanic fire; to all it was an awe-inspiring, but fascinating, puzzle. As it rose slowly higher it seemed to pull the mountain up with it; presently we noticed that the weird object had not only an upward movement but also a lateral progress. Then the fire separated from the mountain and later the smoke separated from the fire, and then both smoke and mountain vanished, leaving only a cone of rayless flame. Every few seconds for fifteen minutes this extraordinary object underwent a remarkable transfiguration; now it was oblong with its greatest diameter parallel to the line of the horizon, again it formed an inverted cone, at other times it became semi-circular, and, most curious of all, it was a globe divided by a line. There was at no time any sign of luminosity about the spot. It remained a dull red, fading into orange, and when it had ascended about five degrees it assumed the form of a ragged ball of old gold. By this time we had discovered that it was the moon making anomalous faces as it passed through the icy atmosphere resting on the pack. (It was a sight which we saw many times afterwards, and it was always full of a sort of weird glory, of which we never tired.)
March 13.—For ten days we have had clear skies with a falling thermometer, and though the ice has spread considerably, leaving large open leads and lakes, new ice has covered the water so quickly that we have been unable to push out of our icy imprisonment. Few of us now entertain any hope of seeing real water or land again until the Frost King loosens his grasp upon us. There is considerable difference of opinion as to our present position. When one walks about the decks the men are frequently heard discussing the recent efforts to push out of the ice. They say the attempts have been half-hearted, and that we are in the pack to winter by intention. This opinion is shared also by some members of the scientific staff. Within the past four or five days the ice has been much separated, but our efforts to force out have been made with half-steam and for short periods. There is a claim of indifference among the officers as to whether we return to South America to winter, or harbour in the pack, and this indifference is shown in the feeble attempts to navigate the ship.
M. van Rysselberghe at the condenser, which was converted into a snow melter. This apparatus, by the combined ingenuity of van Rysselberghe and van Mirlo, was taken out of the engine-room, placed on deck, and so altered that it burned seal blubber. From this the Belgica was supplied with water.
Most of us have assumed the responsibility of criticising the management, and all blame the director for entering the main body of the pack at the season’s end. After airing opinions, though adverse and bitter to the men in charge, everybody feels better. These complaints are a sort of safety-valve, and the grunts are taken good-humouredly. The opportunity to find fault is the privilege of men on the threshold of polar darkness, and, according to my experience, the members of every expedition do it freely, but such sentiments are generally expunged from the narratives. In spite of our disheartening prospects, fits of melancholy, and spells of fault-finding, there is, in general, hearty laughter and jolly good feeling on board. In the forecastle the men sing, whistle, and squeeze out old tunes on the accordion. On deck they kick and dance and tell funny stories. In the cabin the music boxes are kept on cheerful notes, and altogether we are making the dead world of ice about us ring with a boisterous noise. Even the most disheartened among us now begins to see new charms in the curious chance which may make us the first of all human beings to pass through the long antarctic night.
CHAPTER XV
HELPLESS IN A HOPELESS SEA OF ICE
We are now doomed to remain, and become the football of an unpromising fate. Henceforth we are to be kicked, pushed, squeezed, and ushered helplessly at the mercy of the pack. Our first duty is to prepare for the coming of the night, with its unknowable cold and its soul-depressing effects. Aboard, the crew are re-storing coal and re-arranging the store of provisions. The scientific men are making plans for a year of observations, while the cook is racking his brain to devise some new dishes to appease our fickle appetites. His soups are full of “mystery,” and the “embalmed meats” are on every tongue for condemnation. Outside there has been a rapid transformation. The summer days of midnight suns are past, and the premonitory darkness of the long night is falling upon us with marvellous rapidity, for in this latitude the sun dips below the southern skies at midnight late in January. This dip increases, and sweeps more and more of the horizon every day until early in May, when the sun sets and remains below the horizon for seventy-one days. When we first skirted the pack-ice in February there were a few hours, at midnight, of bright twilight. The darkness then was not sufficient to prevent navigation throughout the night; but now it is really dark for eight hours. The temperature, too, is falling rapidly. We have been led to believe by the experiences of previous antarctic explorers that the temperature, compared with arctic, would be more moderate; but in this we are disappointed. An icy wind comes from the south, brushing the warm, moist air seaward and replacing it by a sharp, frigid atmosphere. The temperature falls to ten degrees below zero, then to twenty (and later it descends to thirty, forty, and finally forty-five).
Racovitza at the Microscope.
