CHAPTER I.
ACROSS THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.
When we came to cross the Arctic Circle, instead of having the midnight sun, we had no sun at all; for one of those villainous fogs, so prevalent during the summer in the Arctic regions, set upon us and hung about us, hiding every thing for several days.
It rolled over us like a great wave, submerging us in damp and darkness. The wind was southerly, and the air was charged with moisture, which was precipitated by the cold water and icebergs over which it passed. I verily believe there never was such another fog. A thin layer of mist rested on the sea, above which one could climb and sit upon the royal yard and be in sunshine, and from that delightful elevation overlook the great waste of rolling vapor, and watch the glittering icebergs now and then protruding through it into the light; and in the distance trace the great white mountain peaks, and illimitable glaciers of Greenland. This was the sublime aspect of it; but down on deck there was nothing to be seen at all. Three ship’s lengths away the atmosphere was as impenetrable to vision as a stone wall. From the quarter-deck we could scarcely see the look-out on the forecastle. The fog trailed about the rigging, sometimes in great streaks like festoons of white “illusion,” and down upon the deck came dripping a perfect shower of the condensed vapor. In five minutes every thing was as wet as if the clouds had been dropping rain. The Panther was bewildered. Her compasses, never reliable at the best of times, were here, in the far North, utterly worthless. Every compass seemed to have an idea of its own as to where North was, and only changed its mind on being vigorously joggled; and no two of them agreeing after they were joggled. The situation was rather embarrassing; but for all the captain would not heave to. He would keep going somewhere, at any rate. The danger was that he might hit an iceberg. The sea was dotted all over with them. “All right,” said the captain; “I don’t think we’ll hurt it much!”
That we should have a chance of proving it seemed the most likely thing in the world; for we sometimes heard from them as the billows broke against their sides or rolled within their wave-worn caverns, and their smothered voices were often painfully near; yet we did not see any of the bergs themselves, until suddenly there came a thrilling cry from the look-out, “Ice close aboard—dead ahead!” This warning went through the ship as if it had been “breakers”—the worst of all sounds to hear. The captain said never a word, but rang his bell, “Stop her”—“Back astern”—“Full speed!”
The cabin was cleared in a twinkling, and the people rushed on deck in a violent state of alarm, to see before them a huge mass of whiteness looming through the fog. It seemed impossible that we should escape it. Notwithstanding the reversal of the screw, we were yet forging ahead. The moments were like that terrible interval on a railway train, between the first thump of the car off the track and on the ties, and the crash which follows, scattering death and destruction. It was one of those short periods of one’s life when the memory is apt to be remarkably fresh respecting misspent time. Happily, this was the worst of it. The ship slewed to starboard, which saved her jib-boom, and by that time the headway was stopped, and we began to go astern. But we were then in the very vortex of the breaking waves—in the hissing foam of the angry sea.
A few moments more, and the iceberg that had caused us such a fright was swallowed up in the gloom; and, giving it a wide berth this time, we steamed on more cautiously at “dead slow,” groping through the worse than darkness of the night.
We had no further adventures of that description; but the uncertain currents of the sea, and the unreliable state of our compasses, caused us to become bewildered in our course. We did not once get even a glimpse of the sun for three days, and of course were running wholly by dead reckoning. The fog had become so deep that we could no longer climb above it and sit in the sun on the royal yard. “I’d give my old gun,” said the captain, weary with watching, and disgusted with uncertainty—“I’d give my old gun (a rare instrument) to know where we are.”
Now the captain had just come into the little cabin, which for the cruise we had “shoved up” on the main-deck amidships. The window overlooked the bulwarks, and the noises of the deck and of the machinery were kept away—a lucky circumstance, for at the very instant of the captain’s speech my ear caught an ominous sound. I listened again to make quite sure, and then told the captain that if he kept on three minutes longer at the present rate of speed I would claim the gun. “Where would we be, then?” inquired the captain, somewhat incredulously. “On the rocks?”
The sound was unmistakable. The low murmur that comes from the shore is very different from the loud roar from the waves breaking on the iceberg in the deep sea, and the practised ear can quickly distinguish the one from the other. The headway of the ship was arrested as soon as possible, and the fog lifting a little, we could faintly see the fatal line of surf. But we had still twenty fathoms water under us, and had plenty of room to wheel round, and crawl back upon our old track until we were beyond soundings, when we returned to our old trade of groping for another day, at the end of which, to our great joy and relief, and with the sudden bound of a mouse popping from its dark hole, we slid from under the oppressive canopy of vapor into the bright sunshine. Indeed, the limit of the fog was almost like a wall—sharp and well-defined; and while the quarter-deck was still in shadow, the forecastle was brightly illuminated. Fearful now that the fog might roll over us again, the Panther was made to do her best, and we steamed on into a scene of a very different description—still, however, among the icebergs—but now in a bright, instead of a cloudy atmosphere.
It was fortunate that the fog terminated when it did, for otherwise we would have been in great jeopardy. The icebergs were, in fact, so numerous, that the horizon was for a time quite obliterated. We turned and twisted among them to right and left, as one would follow the zig-zags of the Boston streets, from Brattle Square to—well, any other place you choose to mention.