The Devil’s Thumb is an island—at least, without actually sailing round it in my boat (being prevented by the ice), there were such indications as to make it certain that, if not an island, it is connected with the main-land only by a very low and narrow isthmus. It lies at the head of a deep bay, and it is from five to eight miles long, by from three to five wide. The Thumb itself is on the farther side from the sea, and is about six hundred feet high above its base, rising like a church spire, and as abruptly. Down into the bay, to the north and east from the island, come two great glaciers, one about twelve miles wide, the other about three. These glaciers climbed up steadily, or descended, I should rather say, between the coast mountains in steady streams, which, joining together, and with others to the north and south of them, form a long level line against the sky; and this is the summit of the great icy sea—the mer de glace —which covers the whole length of the Greenland continent, and which, from its exhaustless bed, sends down through every valley opening to Baffin’s Bay such streams as these. And these streams send off into the sea the icebergs, which are but trifling fragments of the glacier itself.
The icebergs coming from these two glaciers about the Devil’s Thumb were altogether countless. They filled up the whole north side of the bay, and extended out to the sea for miles. The time of my visit was near midnight, and with a clear, bright sun illuminating the scene, scattering everywhere its splendors, I could but wish for something better than a simple note-book and the use of words to embody an idea of the view before me. An artist alone, with his pallette and his pencil, could convey any proper effect of it. My powers of sketching were quite inadequate. “Blob” might have done better, but no amount of persuasion could induce him to climb a hill marked in the devil’s name. Of all the situations of the cruise, this view was the finest beyond comparison, and to see it was enough to repay one for all the trouble and vexation and hazard of a dozen such voyages. We missed a photograph of it for the same reason we missed “Blob’s” sketch—a fearful superstition. Had it been called “The Pillar of the Church” instead of “The Devil’s Thumb,” the whole cabin mess would have climbed it willingly.
CHAPTER V.
AMONG THE ICE-FIELDS OF MELVILLE BAY.
I was much disappointed that we could not prolong our stay in the vicinity of the Devil’s Thumb. But our situation there was indeed a hazardous one. The ice was crowding about us all the time, and, driven by a three-knot current that whirled it round in the wildest manner, it was not surprising that the captain should declare the Thumb to be no proper place for the Panther. Accordingly, after doing the best we could hydrographically, topographically, and artistically, we crawled out while the chance was good and steamed northward into the pack.
To describe our adventures of the next few days would be to repeat much of what I have said before about the pursuit of bears and encounters with ice-fields. Neither ice-navigation nor bear-hunting can present much of variety. Even to ourselves both became monotonous in the end; and we even received the cry of “bears” without excitement, and were knocked off our legs by the thumping of the Panther against the ice without emotion.
Besides the bears and an occasional seal (none of which were we lucky enough, however, to shoot), we saw no living thing except an occasional flock of little auks, or rotche, as they are called by the whalers. These are the cunningest little divers imaginable. They are family relations of the lumme already described; and, although only about one-third the size, are like them in color. The water is alive with shrimps about a quarter of an inch in length; and these little birds, whose flight is very rapid, come from the distant land to feed. Myriads of them whizzed over us, affording a fine opportunity for the sportsman. Sometimes large flocks of them would alight upon the water and, after satisfying their appetites, would crawl out upon the ice, and, sitting along the margin of it, dry themselves in the warm sun.
Our hunts after seals were most tantalizing. Great numbers of them came up out of the water, and stretching themselves on the ice in the blazing sunshine, went to sleep there. But they were all too shy for us. We approached them with steamer and with boat, but it was of no avail. If they did not sleep with one eye open, they certainly never slept with both ears shut; and long before they had come within effective range of our rifles, they were off the ice and into the water, and although they might bob up and down in the sea, looking at us within a distance of fifty yards or so, they were always careful not to expose themselves long enough to allow of our drawing a sight on them.
The weather was superb; for the most part the air was entirely calm, and in the perpetual sunshine our enjoyment was uninterrupted. Sometimes we were beset among the ice-fields, once or twice drifted upon an iceberg while we were helplessly involved among heavy floes, and there was therefore enough of danger to deprive the days of absolute stupidity. This ice-navigation, is never wholly free from hazard, and nothing can be more treacherous than the movements of the pack. Great skill and caution are always necessary on the part of the officers of the ship, and, since we were out of sight of land much of the time for several days, the mate had no temptation to indulge his favorite pastime of sounding with the Panther’s keel. He would, indeed, be at all times a capital sailor but for his weakness for running the ship ashore.
I have, unhappily, none of those harrowing adventures to record which usually make up the accounts of Melville Bay voyagers. Once only did we encounter a real “nip.” The Panther was then pretty badly squeezed, and we had a lively exhibition of the power of the closing ice-field. Strong though the Panther was, we could readily see that she would be as an egg-shell in the hand if caught where the ice was in rapid movement. Fortunately it was only a revolving floe which beset us, and not the moving pack that was passing down bodily.