True Sea-Leopard (Ogmorhynus Leptonyx).
April 12.—Snow is falling in huge flakes. The temperature is now rising, but during the night it fell to -23.5° C. The wind is east-north-east. The ice continues to separate, but we have seen no life to-day. We are still at work housing the Belgica and fitting the cabins for the long imprisonment. It is warm, and dull, and gloomy, making the air on board unendurable. Everything about the decks and the doors is moist, and the coating of hoar-frost, which yesterday made every nail and every bit of iron sparkle, is melting, making the floors, the table, and the chairs uncomfortably wet.
April 14.—The wind has veered to the south-east and is coming with increasing force charged with a dry sand-like snow which cuts the skin like a knife. Temperature, 6 A.M., -8°; 10 A.M., -19°. We saw two finback whales and one snow petrel. As is always the case when the air is charged with drift snow, we have a variety of sun and moon dogs to-day. At 7 P.M. there was in the south-east an unusual aurora. It was an arc with steady brilliancy, and to the westward were fragments of two additional arcs.
April 15.—To-night we saw an aurora of exactly the same form as last night, in the same position, appearing first at the same hour. The zenith has been clear, but the horizon has been hazed by the suspended ice specular which again made a countless number of sun and moon halos, parhelias, and paraselenes.
April 16.—In this shiftless sea of ice everything depends upon the wind. If it is south, we have steady, clear, cold weather. If it is north we have a warm, humid air with snow and unsettled weather. If it is east or west it brings a tempest with great quantities of driving snow; but it never ceases blowing. It is blow, blow, from all points of the compass. It is because of this importance of the wind, because it is the key-note to the day which follows, that our first question in the morning is “how is the wind?” To-day it is east, and has increased to a gale, in which it is absolutely impossible to take even a short walk on the pack. For recreation we have taken to mending. Racovitza is patching his pantaloons for the tenth time. This, he says, will be the last time, and I think he is right, for he has used leather to strengthen all the weak parts. Amundsen is patching boots; Lecointe is mending instruments; Danco and I are trying to repair watches. Nearly all of our good timepieces are out of commission. Our hands are better adapted for the trade of a blacksmith than that of a jeweller, but we are trying hard and have, to some extent, succeeded. Just at present it is the crystals which we wish to replace. We have no extra glasses, but we have found some small pocket compasses with crystals too small. How can we make them fit? Danco said, “Try sealing wax,” which we did. We covered half of the watch and a good part of the crystal and thus made a very effective job, but in appearance it is a woeful object.
April 20.—The easterly storm which has raged unceasingly for a week, and almost continuously for a month, shows some signs this morning of ceasing. At 4 A.M. the barometer began to rise, and the temperature fell to -2° C. The wind shifted to the north-east, but its force was soon spent. During the day the wind came only in intermittent puffs. The mouse-coloured clouds separated, permitting an occasional sunburst to light up the awful gloom which has so long hung over us. To-night, at ten o’clock, it is actually calm, and snow is falling lightly in huge, feathery flakes. This sudden calmness and dark unbroken silence, after the many days of boisterous gales, instill within us a curious sensation. The ship no longer quivers and groans. The ropes about the rigging have ceased their discordant music, and the floes do not utter the usual nerve-despairing screams. This sudden stillness, seemingly increased by the falling snow, brings to us a notion of impending danger.
April 21.—The night and the morning continued calm. What a relief to be able to step out upon the open expanse of the frozen sea without being pounded, and battered, and smothered with needle-like ice crystals driven by these damnable storms! We are all out on the pack to-day to get a breath of air in comfort and to see once more the height of the sky and the broadness of the horizon. This polar underpart of the world is decidedly unfit for human life, for it is seemingly the part which receives the kicks of the angered spirits as the globe passes through space. The temperature has fallen from -3° this morning to -17° at eight to-night. The sun has struggled to pierce the heavy cloud of ice crystals which rests on the pack, but its efforts have been rewarded only by prismatic effects. Halos, and parhelias, and fog-bows have been on the sky most of the day; the warmth of direct beams, however, has not been felt. For two days we had seen no life, but to-day we heard a whale spout, and saw two white petrels.
At noon the sun was visible behind a screen of suspended ice particles. Its edges were barely perceptible, but the captain tried an observation to find our location on this unknown sea. The result of the calculations was latitude 71° 03′ 18″. The sun is now extremely unreliable as a fixed point to find our positions. It is so low on the horizon at noon that, owing to the great refraction caused by the increased depth of the atmosphere and the increased refractive quality of the air at this temperature, it is difficult to make the necessary corrections. From this time on, until the sun rises higher next summer, Captain Lecointe will use the stars to get positions.
April 22.—During the night there was another fall of snow of about two inches. This morning the sky was dull and gray. The air continues calm, which is remarkable, but because of the unstability of the barometer and the persistent gloominess of the sky we anticipate another storm presently. At noon we felt coming, this time from the north, the first breath of this promised gale. It swept the pack with a blackness and a moisture which are characteristic of northerly winds. The temperature ranges from -6° to -9° C. The ice is in considerable agitation; old leads are closing and new ones are opening, with a direction almost due north. We made a sounding at two o’clock in the afternoon, hoping that the night would be clear enough to permit an observation for position, but the night is cloudy, which makes the work of sounding useless. The captain has figured out the declination of the compass for our position of yesterday and finds it to be 38° 37′ east of north.
April 25.—It has been a charming, clear day, with only a few stratus clouds along the horizon, and a light, pearly mist rising in a straight line from the ice. Several times during the day we saw parts of a white rainbow or fog-eater. The photographs which we now take prove that the light is feeble, though seemingly bright. It is quite impossible to make good negatives at the present time. This, I believe, is due not only to the feebleness of the light, but to the glancing direction of the rays, the yellowness of their colour, and the fact that the beams of light strike the snow at such an angle that they glance off into space, and make the atmosphere itself partly luminous, which destroys the plates.