We were twenty days out from Boston, and had made throughout an average run of a hundred miles a day. The schooner had proved herself an excellent sea-boat. The coast of Greenland was about ten leagues away, obscured by a cloud; we had Cape Walsingham on the port beam, and the lofty Suckertoppen would have been visible over the starboard quarter had the air been clear. We had not yet, however, sighted the land, but we had made our first iceberg, we had seen the "midnight sun," and we had come into the endless day. When the hour-hand of the Yankee clock which ticked above my head pointed to XII., the sunlight still flooded the cabin. Accustomed to this strange life in former years, the change had to me little of novelty; but the officers complained of sleeplessness, and were lounging about as if waiting for the old-fashioned darkness which suggests bed-time.
THE FIRST ICEBERG.
The first iceberg was made the day before we passed the Arctic Circle. The dead white mass broke upon us out of a dense fog, and was mistaken by the lookout for land when he first caught the sound of breakers beating upon it. It was floating directly in our course, but we had time enough to clear it. Its form was that of an irregular pyramid, about three hundred feet at its base, and perhaps half as high. Its summit was at first obscured, but at length the mist broke away, disclosing the peak of a glittering spire, around which the white clouds were curling and dancing in the sunlight. There was something very impressive in the stern indifference with which it received the lashings of the sea. The waves threw their liquid arms about it caressingly, but it deigned not even a nod of recognition, and sent them reeling backward, moaning and lamenting.
We had some rough handling in Davis' Strait. Once I thought we had surely come ingloriously to grief. We were running before the wind and fighting a wretched cross-sea under reefed fore and mainsail and jib, when the fore fife-rail was carried away;—down came every thing to the deck, and there was left not a stitch of canvas on the schooner but the lumbering mainsail. It was a miracle that we did not broach to and go to the bottom. Nothing saved us but a steady hand at the helm.
The following entry in my journal, made at this period, will exhibit our condition and the temper of the crew:—
"Notwithstanding all this knocking about, every body seems to take it for granted that this sort of thing is very natural and proper, and a part of the engagement for the cruise. It is at least gratifying to see that they take kindly to discomfort, and receive every freak of fortune with manly good nature. I really believe that were affairs otherwise ordered they would be sadly disappointed. They are 'the small band of brave and spirited men' they read about in the newspapers, and they mean to show it. The sailors are sometimes literally drowned out of the forecastle. The cabin is flooded at least a dozen times a day. The skylight has been knocked to pieces by the head of a sea, and the table, standing directly under it, has been more than once cleared of crockery and eatables without the aid of the steward. My own cabin gets washed out at irregular intervals, and my books are half of them spoiled by tumbling from their shelves in spite of all I can do to the contrary. Once I caught the whole library tacking about the deck after an unusually ambitious dive of the schooner, and the advent of a more than ordinarily heavy rush of water through the 'companion-way.'"
It had been my intention to stop at Egedesmindie, or some other of the lower Danish stations, on the Greenland coast, to obtain a stock of furs, and at the upper settlements to procure the needful supply of dogs for sledge travelling; but, the wind being fair, I resolved to hold on and trust to obtaining every thing required at Pröven and Upernavik.
A LAND-FALL.
We made our first land-fall on the 31st. It proved to be the southern extremity of Disco Island. The lofty mountains broke suddenly through the thick mist, and exposed their hoary heads, not a little to our astonishment; but they vanished again as quickly as they had appeared. But we had got a clutch upon the land, and found that, befogged though we were, we had calculated our position to a nicety. From this moment the interest of our cruise was doubled.
The next day we were abreast the Nord Fiord of Disco, in latitude 70°, and, gliding on with a light wind, the Waigat and Oominak Fiord were soon behind us; and on the evening of August 2d we were approaching the bold promontory of Svarte Huk, which is only forty miles from Pröven, whither we were bound.