Before. After.
Emile Racovitza.
(We were all reasonably good-looking when we embarked, but we were otherwise when we returned. The long night effected a radical transformation in our physiognomies.)
The seals during the night came upon the ice to examine our tent, our ski, and our sledge; but evidently these were not to their liking, for they went away, and played and gambolled like children on the end of the floe. Whales also spouted all around us, and the wind brought their spray onto our tent in icy globules. About four o’clock in the morning the pan broke within two metres of the tent, and we expected momentarily to see an opening in our floe. Dawn came at last, but the atmosphere was again too obscure to permit a hope of an early advance. We thought we could see more firm ice south of us and made an effort to reach it, but we only mounted the neighbouring pan. From here all further progress was stopped by black bands of open water. We pitched our tent again and prepared some hot food and drink. The mist was so opaque and so much fine snow was drifting that it was impossible to see more than ten or fifteen metres. Occasionally there appeared bright spots in various directions, and in these we thought we could distinguish familiar icebergs, but they always proved to be only small hummocks at a short range.
In the afternoon the wind came out of the south and cleared the air. We now saw the Belgica, and also men coming in our direction. This gave us great pleasure. The ship was not more than a mile from us, and the men soon reached a floe south of us, but they could not gain our floe. Van Mirlo made a desperate effort, but slid into the water and nearly lost his life. We ate a hearty meal, then again crept into our bags. For this night it was not necessary to keep a watch, because the pressure had ceased and the temperature was falling rapidly, protecting our pan by one of new elastic ice; but a knife was kept ready to cut an opening for our escape should the ice suddenly separate under us. The night was one of comparative quietness.
We arose early the next morning,—about 8 A.M.,—prepared breakfast, and at noon were ready for a desperate attempt to get to the vessel. We left the tent and most of the equipment behind, but took on our sledge enough food and our bags, in case it became necessary to make another camp. Using the sledge as a bridge, we succeeded in crossing the many leads and crevasses and reached the Belgica about two o’clock. She seemed now a big ship full of comfort and rest. It was nearly two weeks before the ice was sufficiently formed and packed around this pan to permit a removal of the tent.
The month of August was, on the whole, one of the greatest disappointments of our experience in the antarctic. We expected low temperatures and bright, cheerful weather. With the coming sun we hoped to dispel our anæmia and make ourselves ready for a series of difficult tasks to be undertaken in September and October; but instead we failed more and more in strength, and developed alarming mental symptoms. One man was temporarily insane, and several others were nearing a similar condition. The weather was stormy, the atmosphere was charged with clouds of sand-like drift-snow, and the sun was almost constantly invisible, though it rose higher and higher and swept more and more of the horizon daily. For one month following sunrise, like the month preceding its departure, the conditions were in effect a part of the night. It is true we had a little misty grayness at noon which we called daylight, but this was counterbalanced by the never ceasing tempests which drove such a blast of cutting snow that life outside was impossible. The first glimpses of sunlight had aroused us to new ambitions, and to spasmodic spells of cheerfulness, but this hellish series of storms sent us again into the most abject gloom of the night.
The last week of August and the first two weeks of September was the coldest period of the year. At this time the thermometer ranged steadily from -20° C. to -43° C.; the lowest temperature of the year, -43° C., being recorded at four o’clock in the morning of September eighth. The lowest average for any one continuous month was in July, -12° C. From the minimum on September eighth, the temperature rose rapidly to +1° C. during the week following, which was a point within a half degree of the maximum of the hottest weather of midsummer. We thus had our coldest and our warmest weather in the month of September which, in the cycle of the seasons south, is similar to March of the northern hemisphere. Great quantities of drift-snow were driven over the ice at this time, and the air was so charged with crystals that halos of the sun and moon, and parhelias and paraselenes, were of almost daily occurrence. The ice was now the most continuous of any period of the year. The limit of the field in which the Belgica was held was not visible from the masthead. From the crow’s nest it was always difficult to determine the edges of the fields, because the raised pressure ridges made the cracks and narrow lines of water beyond invisible. We were, however, easily able to locate some wide leads, and the almost constant smoky vapour, which rose over fresh breaks, made it possible to determine even small cracks.
We have made the subject of finding open spaces of water a special study. Such knowledge is part of the acquirement of an antarctic hunter. An inexperienced wanderer will walk over the pack day after day until his eyes are blinded by the dazzling blink of the ice before he finds a trace of life; but an adept will adopt the methods of the penguin or the seal, who, when stranded on a field with the blow-hole closed, will mount a hummock and scan the horizon to find the jets of black vapour which rise from open spaces of water. We have to go a long distance now to secure game to replenish our larder with fresh meat, which is, at present, almost our sole diet. The life at best is very scarce, and to find it we must roam over the ice for several miles. With a revolver in our pockets, and a sheath knife at our sides, we go about daily from crevasse to crevasse, eagerly looking for penguins and seals. As a rule we are fairly successful; at any rate, the table is liberally supplied with fresh steaks.