“And what do you propose to do, then, professor, in order to ensure our safety?”
“There are two courses open to us. One is to sink to the bottom of the sea, which is here deep enough to secure us from all danger of being struck by floating bergs. And the other is to ascend into the calm belt, where the night can be passed in a state of absolute safety.”
“Very well, then; let us ascend into the ‘calm belt,’ by all means,” said the baronet. “And, by the way, I should feel extremely obliged if you would kindly explain to us what the ‘calm belt’ is; I for one never heard of it before.”
“I will do so with pleasure,” replied the professor. “You must know, then, in the first place, that there are certain atmospheric currents as regular and precise in their action as those of the ocean, both being created by the same cause—namely, the tendency of a warm fluid to rise and of a colder one to flow into the vacated space. Thus the air on the equator, being heated by the vertical rays of the sun, rises, creating a partial vacuum which the cold air from the poles rushes equator-ward to fill, the warm air moving toward the poles to restore the balance. Thus at a few degrees north of the equator the upper stratum of air will always be found to be travelling northward. And it continues so to do until it reaches the vicinity of the thirtieth parallel of latitude, when, having lost most of its heat by constant exposure to open space, it becomes cold enough to descend, taking the place of the polar current, which meanwhile has been warmed by passing over the temperate zone. The equatorial current, though it has descended to the surface of the earth, still makes its gradual way northward, as well as local circumstances will permit, in order to replace the southward-flying polar current; and by the time that it reaches the Arctic circle, it has again, by contact with the earth, become the warmer of the two currents, when it once more rises into the upper regions of the atmosphere, to descend no more until it reaches the vicinity of the pole, when it sinks, and at the same time turns southward as the polar current. And the same thing happens in the southern hemisphere. Thus in each hemisphere we have two great atmospheric currents—one flowing from the pole to the equator, and the other flowing from the equator to the pole. The lower current, or that which sweeps along the surface of the earth, meets with so many disturbing local influences that it is frequently deflected greatly from its proper course, sometimes so much so that its course becomes completely reversed for a time; but in the upper regions of the atmosphere these disturbing influences are very little if at all felt. Now, if I have succeeded in making this plain to you, you will readily understand that where the top of the lower current and the bottom of the upper current touch each other there will be so much friction that a neutral or ‘calm belt’ will occur in which the air will be motionless. And it is in this calm belt—which occurs between the altitudes of three thousand and twelve thousand feet above the earth’s surface—that I propose we should take refuge to-night.”
The professor’s small audience duly expressed their thanks for the extremely interesting lecture to which they had just been treated, and then the party retreated to the pilot-house; the door was closed to exclude the cold air of the upper regions which they were about to visit; and an ascent was made to an altitude of eight thousand feet, where the night was passed in an atmosphere so completely motionless that, on their descent next morning, Lieutenant Mildmay’s observations showed them to be in the exact spot which they had occupied on the previous evening.
It was decided over the breakfast-table that morning, that the journey northward should be prosecuted, as far as possible, upon the surface of the sea; and the Flying Fish was accordingly put in motion on the required course immediately upon her descent. Their rate of progress was particularly slow, not exceeding, on the average, a speed of six miles per hour, as drift ice was remarkably abundant, mostly in small detached blocks, though they occasionally encountered a floe of several acres in extent; and, far away to the northward, quite a large assemblage of bergs were seen. This slow rate of progress would have been wearisome to a veteran Arctic navigator in possession of such means for the accomplishment of a quick passage as those enjoyed by the inmates of the Flying Fish’s pilot-house; but to them everything was novel and interesting, and, almost before they knew it, they found themselves in the immediate vicinity of the bergs. These varied greatly in size, some of them being no larger than a dwelling-house of moderate dimensions, whilst others fully equalled, if, indeed, they did not exceed, the proportions of the monsters seen on the previous evening. They were grouped so closely together that a passage between them seemed to be not wholly unattended with danger; and the party were in the act of discussing the question which channel it would be most prudent to take, their eyes being meanwhile fixed on the huge towering cliffs of ice before them, when a gigantic overhanging mass was seen to detach itself from its parent berg and plunge, a distance of some two hundred and fifty feet, with a terrific splash into the water and disappear. The deep thunderous roar of its plunge smote the ears of the watchers next moment, and they looked on with breathless interest to see what would follow. The mass, from its enormous size, would weigh, they considered, fully five thousand tons; and they were not surprised to see that the loss of so much weight had seriously disturbed the balance of the berg, which at once began to rock ponderously to and fro, creating a terrific commotion in the water when conjoined with that caused by the plunge into the sea and the reappearance a second or two later of the detached mass. The sea was seen to heap itself up in a long well-defined ridge, similar—though, of course, on a tremendously magnified scale—to that caused by the plunge of a stone into the water. This ridge spread out in a circular form all round the spot where the mass had fallen, and at once began to travel outward in the form of an immense breaker some six or seven feet in height. Onward it rolled, its smooth glassy front capped with a foaming crest presenting a singular and somewhat alarming spectacle. The fears of the beholders, however, if they had any, were groundless, for, though the threatening wave swept forward with a velocity of some twelve knots per hour, it swept harmlessly enough over and along the cylindrical sides of the Flying Fish, hissing and roaring most ominously, but failing to throw so much as a single drop of spray on her deck. This wave was quickly followed by several others, each of which, however, was less formidable than the preceding one. Meanwhile, the drama, it appeared, had only begun. The oscillation of the parent berg, though it was probably quite unaffected by the portion of the circular wave which dashed furiously against its sides, became momentarily more and more violent, accompanied by a rapidly increasing agitation of the sea in its neighbourhood, an agitation so great that the surface of the ocean soon assumed the appearance of a boiling cauldron, the foaming surges leaping wildly hither and thither with a continuous roar like that of the surf beating on a rocky shore, and soon assuming such dimensions that they even broke over the deck of the Flying Fish, and dashed themselves into a cloud of spray against the strong walls of the pilot-house. Other fragments now began to detach themselves with dull heavy roaring crashes from the rocking berg; and, as though the action were contagious—or more probably, in consequence of the jarring vibration of the air from such a strong volume of sound—one after the other, the remaining bergs began to go to pieces. Then, indeed, the sight and the accompanying sounds became truly awe-inspiring. The air resounded with the continuous roar of the dismembering bergs; the eye grew dizzy and bewildered as it watched their swaying forms; and the surface of the ocean was momentarily stirred into a wilder frenzy as the surges swept madly hither and thither, and, meeting in mid-career, shattered each other into a wild tempest of leaping foam, in the midst of which huge masses of ice were seen every now and then to be tossed high into the air as though they had been fragments of cork. So mad was the commotion, and so furiously were even the larger masses of ice dashed to and fro, that it was deemed prudent to remove the Flying Fish out of harm’s way; and she was accordingly raised a few fathoms above the surface of the raging commotion which leaped and roared around her. Scarcely had this been accomplished—the whole of the drama occupying not one-tenth part of the time which it takes to describe it—when the largest of the bergs was seen to roll completely over, raising in the act so awful a surge that it visibly affected even the immense masses of the other bergs, which, in their turn, rolled slowly over one after the other, to the accompaniment of one long loud echoing roar of rending ice as their dismemberment thus became accelerated. The resulting ocean disturbance was, as may easily be imagined, appallingly grand and utterly indescribable; and it no doubt contributed in no inconsiderable degree to the total destruction of the bergs, which, once started, continued to roll over and over, every lurch causing a further dismemberment until the fragments became so small as to be incapable of further division. Then ensued comparative silence, the only sounds being those of the hoarse roar of the angry surges and the grinding crash of ice-blocks dashed violently together. Gradually these too subsided; and, in half an hour from the commencement of the spectacle, the ice-strewn waters were again rippling crisply under the influence of a moderate breeze, and no sign remained to tell a new arrival upon the scene—had there been one—what an awful tempest of destruction had raged there so short a time before.
Pushing northward, the travellers sighted the coast of Greenland about noon; the land made being a lofty snow-covered mountain, the conical summit of which gleamed like silver in the brilliant sunshine. As they neared the coast the water became more open; and at length they emerged into a broad channel completely free of ice, up which the Flying Fish was urged at a trifle less than half-speed, or at the rate of about sixty miles per hour. At eight o’clock that night they crossed, according to their “dead reckoning,” the Arctic circle; and midnight found them abreast of Disko Island, gazing with delighted eyes upon the glorious spectacle of the midnight sun, the lower edge of his ruddy disc just skimming the northern horizon.
At this point the channel between the Greenland coast and the pack-ice narrowed very considerably; and their rate of progress northward next day was reduced to a speed of between two and three miles per hour; the engines needing to be just started, and then stopped again for a few minutes in order to keep the speed down to this very low limit. But they were all as yet so new to Arctic scenery—everything was so entirely novel to them—that even this snail’s pace failed to prove wearisome, especially as the weather continued gloriously fine.
Strange to say, up to this time they had not set eyes on a single Arctic animal; but now, as they were busily threading their way through a narrow channel in the ice, a white bear was seen about half a mile ahead rapidly making his way across the pack toward them, whilst, a quarter of a mile nearer, an animal which they at once took for a seal was seen basking in the sun on the ice close to the water. It speedily became evident that the bear was after the seal, which, seemingly all unconscious of the proximity of its enemy, raised its head now and then as though in keen enjoyment of the warm glow. The colonel hurried below for rifles, as eager as a schoolboy, to obtain a shot at one or both of the animals; and when he returned to the pilot-house with the weapons both the seal and the bear were within range. He raised one of the rifles to his shoulder, and was covering the seal with it, when Sir Reginald, who was watching the animals through a telescope, said:
“Do not fire, Lethbridge; there is something very curious about this; that seal is armed with a bow.”