June 3.—The men forward are kept busy with the usual work of the ship, cleaning, restowing, repairing sails, ropes, and woodwork, etc. One man is constantly occupied in keeping the fires going. Another man keeps up the supply of snow, which is melted for water. The work of sounding, taking deep sea temperatures, and fishing, keeps many busy. For much of the time it is also necessary to employ several men to keep the vessel well banked with snow, and the observatories need a similar attention. Thus the sailors are evenly occupied in easy work which keeps them from feeling the melancholy of our isolation from the world, and also helps them to forget the prolonged darkness of this dayless night.
Our floe has again grown to encouraging dimensions. From the mere fragment, which remained after the last severe disturbance, it has gradually taken unto itself pan after pan, until now we can no longer see its end. On the sky we observe mouse-coloured bands at noon, which tell us that there are a few fissures where a heavy mist rises from the open water. This is the usual water-sky in miniature. From the shape of these dark streaks we know the size and outline of the open water under it. The bergs change position a little, new ones occasionally crowd over our horizon and remain visible a short time, then return to their old positions; old ones turn about somewhat, thus presenting a new face to us. Some are raised by a mirage, and all are buried under the gloomy veil of blackness which is so rapidly spreading over the once white splendour.
We have had much snow within a fortnight, which by the aid of the varying winds has drifted over the icy hummocks and ridges, raised by pressure, and made for us a substitute for Mother Earth once more. On ski and snowshoes we can again travel about for miles on the newly-assembled old floe. But the position marking the old leads and lakes is still difficult for pleasurable journeys. These places resemble in their contour a bird’s-eye view of a large city. To cross them is as if we tried to cross a city over the roofs of the houses. Still, it is possible to travel in this wilderness of ice if one is fortunate enough to have polar patience, and a body which can be tossed about like a football. Our floe, with all its roughness, with all its faults, is nevertheless a providential protection to the good little Belgica and a godsend to its occupants.
We are all eating appreciably less now than during the bright season—and either there is a constant inclination to sleep or persistent insomnia. We eat an amount of fat, however, that would surprise most people; fat pork, fatty meats, the pure oil of bacon, and tremendous quantities of oleomargarine, are consumed with apparent relish. This is to me particularly surprising because during three arctic voyages I never noticed any particular craving for fat; but this I ascribe to the fact that we always ate liberally of fresh meats north, and these we have not here. We eat a little penguin with a show of pleasure, but most of us are quite tired of its marine flavour and fish-oil smoothness. If we had sufficient ham it would afford immense gastric delight. There is much indigestion now—fermentation, gastric inertia, intestinal and gastric pain, imperfect hepatic action, and a general suppression of all the digestive secretions. The heart is unsteady, easily disturbed, and mitral murmurs, which I have not heard before, are audible. Temperatures, almost without exception, are subnormal. The breathing is often difficult, the blood retreats from the skin, but the larger veins are abnormally full. Piles, hemorrhoids, headache, neuralgia, rheumatism, are the systemic complaints; but while we all have our little disorders, no one is really disabled.
Saennagras
A Swedish grass which was used in the boots to protect the feet.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SOUTH POLAR NIGHT (CONTINUED)—THE DEATH OF DANCO
The weather is unendurable, the temperature is -30° C. and an easterly gale is burying us in a huge drift of snow. With a high wind, an air thick with flying snow, and a temperature such as we have had for the past three days, ranging from -28° to -30°, it is utterly impossible to exist outside in the open blast. In calm weather such a temperature causes delight, but in a storm it gives rise to despair. I think it is Conan Doyle who says, “What companion is there like the great restless, throbbing polar sea? What human mood is there which it does not match and sympathise with?” I should like Mr. Doyle to spend one month with us on this great, restless, throbbing sea, under this dense, restless, throbbing blackness of the antarctic night. I am sure he would find conditions to drive his pen, but where is the companionship of a sea which with every heave brings a block of ice against your berth making your only hope of life, the bark, tremble from end to end. Where is the human being who will find sympathy in the howling winds under the polar night?
For several days our beloved companion Danco has been failing. From nearly the very first day of his sickness I saw that, coming upon him as it had done in the dusk, it must prove fatal during the long antarctic night. To pass through a polar night, with its prolonged and awful cold, and remain well is a very difficult matter even for a man with sound organs. One who has not these, and perfect health, always fares badly in these sunless and lifeless polar days. Danco has had, unconsciously, for years a serious heart defect. For a time the heart walls increased in strength and thus a safe equilibrium was established; but to keep an even or compensatory balance, mild exercise was necessary in the open air with an abundance of sunlight. The sun has now been entirely absent for more than a fortnight, and for forty days its light has been of no physiological service. The atmosphere has been so constantly filled with snow and ice-crystals that, at best, the sun shone with less brilliancy than the moon, and that only for a few moments at midday. During all of this time Danco has not felt well; his manly courage, however, is such that he will not complain. But as the darkness becomes blacker, and the frigid night advances he has been compelled to surrender himself a candidate to the sick list.