(Ommatophoca Rossi.)
It was my delight to ascend to the masthead and from the crow’s nest view our horizon day by day. The general aspect of our view changed very little. Some new cracks formed in the ice, and old ones closed. Some of the icebergs occasionally turned a little, showing a different face, but no marked alteration was ever visible in the general topography of the pack. Moving about as we were, there always seemed to be a possibility of finding a speck of land, a rock, or something new in our path; but this never happened. We saw no land during the entire drift. Appearances of land were reported every few days, but always proved deceptions. They were only illuminated clouds. Along the edge of the field in which we were frozen were large ridges or pressure lines, where the contact and pressure against neighbouring fields raised fragments of ice above the surface. These ridges were from three to fifteen feet in height. The field, usually about two miles in diameter, was everywhere dotted by pyramidal and dome-shaped miniature mountains, which arose above the surface from two to twenty feet. These are technically called “hummocks.” Around the hummocks and along the edge of the floe penguins and seals rested, sheltered from the wind. Near the ship and about the outhouses the snow was thrown up in great banks, dotted by black spots representing sledges, snowshoes, sleighs, and general implements. As we emerged from the little hold on the port side which was our only exit, a narrow path led out about one hundred yards to a circular hole through the ice. Over this we had erected a large tripod, from which we suspended the instruments for sounding and fishing and recording deep-sea temperatures. About midway between this and the ship, we built a box-shaped hut for nautical observations. About one hundred yards from the stern of the ship, Mr. Danco contrived a curiously shaped box for magnetic observations, and a little distance beyond, upon a convenient hummock, were placed the meteorological instruments. About two hundred yards off the port bow, a small house had been put up to capture the electricity from the aurora australis. Efforts were made to keep a path open to each of these houses, but the work generally proved futile. The quantity of drift-snow was always so great that it buried every path and every irregularity in the vessel’s vicinity.
It was at no time possible to leave the ship without snowshoes of some sort. The little exercise on the ice, which freedom from duties permitted, was taken on the Norwegian snowshoe, the ski. For mere pleasure-journeys these proved in every way superior to the Canadian rackets and other patterns; but where it became necessary to pull sledges or travel over rough paths, the other kinds were better. We made several long journeys to neighbouring icebergs. Sometimes on these journeys we met with serious obstructions and detentions. It was not found practicable to carry food, extra clothing, or camping equipments, and yet often the need of these became very great. The ice, in separating, would leave large zones of water between us and the next field, thus cutting off our retreat, and leaving us to spend hours of meditation upon the prospect of starvation and of death by freezing.
May 1.—The day is fair with a light south-westerly wind at noon. Low down on the northern sky the sun has been edging along the pack, screened by flying banks of ice crystals, but it has given no perceptible heat and only a feeble light. Hardly had the sun sunk under the sea when a furious westerly gale swept over us, and drove snow into every crack and opening of the Belgica. Leads have spread again, and great lakes are pictured on the sky by smoky patches. We secured five small and two king penguins and saw some seals and whales. Life is always abundant when large continuous leads are open. There is so much movement now among the individual floes, and so much pressure and crushing about the ship that we believe it unsafe to venture out in the dark for fear of stepping into one of the many new crevasses. For the same reason we entertain some anxiety regarding the safety of our outhouses and the implements scattered about on the ice. It is curious that we should have such continued warm weather, and equally curious to find the pack breaking up when the days are already far advanced in the antarctic winter. The only explanation for this unexpected condition of things is that we have drifted to a region close to the edge of the pack.
There are many changes in our surroundings which seem to indicate our nearness to open water. There is a noticeable swell which is shown by the alternate advance and retreat of floes about the icebergs, and by a total rise and fall of six inches of the sea-ice on the walls of the icebergs. The time between each rise is from 24 to 32 seconds. The evidence, then, of a wave under the ice is quite conclusive. Just how far beyond the pack edge the swell can be made to penetrate will depend very much upon the size of the floes and the amount of space between them. From our present experience it seems likely that a northerly storm is able to send an undulation at least fifty miles under a loose pack and, perhaps, much farther. But there are other signs of a nearness to an open sea. The floe into which the Belgica is frozen is getting noticeably smaller, and all of the other floes are diminishing likewise. There is a great deal of brash, broken blocks, and pulverised ice and snow, in the water. The icebergs turn and move about, changing their relations to each other. New cracks and new leads are daily appearing. The temperature is rising steadily instead of falling, as it should with the retreat of the sun. The weather is unsteady, and constantly changing, but always in such a way as to indicate a nearness to an open sea. A month ago a storm had little effect upon the ice, but now even light winds bring about a noticeable commotion.
May 4.—At seven o’clock this morning Lecointe rushed out of his bunk to get a glimpse of the stars, which broke through the high mist for a short period. From this observation he calculates our position at latitude 70° 33′ 30″, longitude 89° 22′. A sounding made at about the same time gave a depth to the sea of 1150 metres. From this great increase in depth we are still more convinced that we are going to the edge of the pack, and off of the submarine bank over which we have drifted since entering the main body of the ice. In nine days we have drifted about seventeen miles northward, and eastward nearly three degrees. We are going back to the east, and when the veil of darkness rises, we shall perhaps find ourselves near the position where we entered if, in the meantime, we are not forced out of the ice into the open sea. To be compelled to leave the ice at present, much as we should like it, would be quite dangerous. We have almost no daylight; the weather outside of the ice would certainly be stormy and foggy. How could we find our way in the darkness, among the certain dangers of icebergs and unknown rocks, over the storm-swept seas to South America at this time? Since the first the weather has grown colder; the temperature has ranged from -5° to -18° C. We have occasional strips of blue sky, with a cold sunburst, but in general the heavens have been cheerless—still it is an agreeable change from the wet, dirty weather which we had before.
May 10.—There are now constant complaints of the warm weather. A few days ago the temperature rose a half of a degree above zero, and it has remained about one degree under zero for several days. Such weather, in the commencement of winter, when steady cold weather is expected, is positively oppressive. Everybody is in a disgruntled spirit, because everything is wet, and there is a never-ceasing howl of the storm. It may seem unnatural that we should hate warm weather in this wilderness of south polar ice, but it is followed by so much discomfort that we are ever praying for steady frigid temperatures. In this warm weather the ice is becoming more and more broken. Seals and whales are sporting in the open channels, but penguins are rarely seen. There are a few giant and brown petrels about, and great numbers of white petrels. We have killed a few seals, and have removed from them their skins and blubber for future use, but we have left the remainder of the carcasses out on the floes. These have been claimed as prizes by the petrels. For about ten days hundreds of birds have remained near us. They are mostly white petrels, but there are also giant and brown petrels and a few brown sea-gulls.
At noon there was just a slight suggestion of a sunburst, but it is growing feebler and feebler. The beams of light come to us at such an ineffective angle that our noonday is not now brighter than our twilight of a month ago. The sun is constantly veiled by a bank of frozen mist which prevents our seeing its departing splendour, but there is an occasional break which offers us for a few seconds a view of his fading face. It is sad, cold, and expressionless. The accustomed heat is absent, and the light is a despairing gray glow which, on the surface ice, makes long blue shadows. Still, despondent as this seems in comparison to brighter days, it is the only source of direct light and heat which we now have. It is the only show of seeming cheerfulness in this gloomy world of blackness into which we are fast drifting. This feeble burst of lost noonday splendour is the last draft of life which now fans the fading cinders of the soul, while the death-dealing darkness is doing its devilish work of extinguishment.
May 15.—Unless we get a clear sky sometime during the night, we shall not be able to determine the exact commencement of the long night. If our position is approximately where our dead reckoning places us, we should have seen the sun for a few minutes at noon to-day for the last time; but the sky was too hazy to give us this last peep. In the south-east there is a dull, creamy light on the clouds, which suggests the presence of a high country, reflecting an ice-blink. The west and north, in the morning and afternoon, were marked by a dark, purple-blue zone. At noon the light was so feeble that we could not see the outline of the hummock on the pack.
Our floe, the sheet of ice into which the Belgica is frozen, now offers a sad appearance. It is cracked, torn, rasped, ground, and so swept by thawing storms that the picturesque glory of its glowing days has gone. And what is still more disheartening is that, torn and fractured as the field is now, it no longer affords us a safe harbour, free of crushing influences, as it did when all about was one solid mass. The thick bed of soft spotless snow, which softened the sharp edges and cushioned the rough irregularities, has been reduced to a mere film through which the hard blue ice, with its savage roughness and its gloomy skeleton-like projections, is clearly seen. The unique velvety and wavy surface has given way to an ugly water-soaked plane of hard ice. We have watched the field grow by the addition of one floe after another, and we have steadily increased our comfort upon its bosom. Our sense of safety has grown with the augumented breadth and thickness. We have, to some extent, helped to harbour the Belgica by walls of snow; but Nature here has curious moods. With one hand she protects, with the other she destroys,—she aided us by drifting around the ship an enormous amount of snow, but she has injured us by breaking that which sheltered us.