Drifting, not with the current, but in the direction of the prevailing wind, the land of Nova Zembla receded until it faded out of sight and only a desert of ice surrounded them. The frightful ice convulsions which frequently threatened their destruction, determined the men to build a house on the main floe, where supplies of coal, fuel, and provisions were stored. Lieutenant Payer comments on the terrible conditions under which they existed.
“One of us, to-day, remarked very truly, that he saw perfectly well how one might lose his reason with the continuance of these sudden and incessant assaults. It is not dangers that we fear, but worse far; we are kept in a constant state of readiness to meet destruction, and know not whether it will come to-day or to-morrow, or in a year. Every night we are startled out of sleep, and, like hunted animals, up we spring to await amid an awful darkness, the end of an enterprise from which all hope of success has departed. It becomes at last a mere mechanical process to seize our rifles and our bag of necessaries and rush on deck. In the daytime, leaning over the bulwarks of the ship, which trembles, yea, almost quivers the while, we look out on a continual work of destruction going on, and at night, as we listen to the loud and ever-increasing noises of the ice, we gather that the forces of our enemy are increasing.”
The hours of these dark and disheartening days were passed in taking observations, exercise, and occasional bear and sledge journeys. In spite of this the time crept away with indescribable monotony. During February the ship drifted first northwest and then north, the greatest longitude attained being 71° E., in 79° N.; and the summer of 1873 advanced without any signs of freeing them.
A. E. Nordenskjöld
From “The Voyage of the Vega,” Macmillan & Co., Ltd., London
With sad resignation the officers and crew looked forward to passing another winter in the ice, although plenty of birds, seal, and bears insured them fresh meat, so essential for the preservation of health in high latitudes.
DISCOVERY OF FRANZ JOSEF LAND
“A memorable day,” writes Payer, “was the 31st of August, 1873, in 79° 43´ Lat., and 59° 33´ E. Long. That day brought a surprise, such as only the awakening to a new life can produce. About midday, as we were leaning on the bulwarks of the ship and scanning the gliding mists, through which the rays of the sun broke ever and anon, a wall of mist, lifting itself up suddenly, revealed to us, afar off in the northwest, the outlines of bold rocks, which in a few minutes seemed to grow into a radiant Alpine land! At first we all stood transfixed and hardly believing what we saw. Then, carried away by the reality of our good fortune, we burst forth into shouts of joy—‘Land, land, land at last!’ There was now not a sick man on board the Tegetthoff. The news of the discovery spread in an instant. Every one rushed on deck, to convince himself with his own eyes, that the expedition was not after all a failure,—there before us lay the prize that could not be snatched from us. Yet not by our own action, but through the happy caprice of our floe and as in a dream had we won it, but when we thought of the floe, drifting without intermission, we felt with redoubled pain, that we were at the mercy of its movements. As yet we had secured no winter harbour, from which the exploration of the strange land could be successfully undertaken. For the present, too, it was not within the verge of possibility to reach and visit it. If we had left our floe, we should have been cut off and lost. It was only under the influence of the first excitement that we made a rush over our ice-field, although we knew that numberless fissures made it impossible to reach the land. But, difficulties notwithstanding, when we ran to the edge of our floe, we beheld from a ridge of ice the mountains and glaciers of the mysterious land. Its valleys seemed to our fond imagination clothed with green pastures, over which herds of reindeer roamed in undisturbed enjoyment of their liberty, and far from all floes.