"My foot on the ice-berg has lighted,
When hoarse the wild winds veer about;
My eye when the bark is benighted,
Sees the lamp of the light-house go out.
I'm the sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
Lone looker on despair;
The sea-bird, sea-bird, sea-bird,
The only witness there."Brainard.
Two months passed rapidly away in the excitement and novelty of the situation and pursuits of the men. In that time, all was done that the season would allow; the house being considered as complete, and far from uncomfortable. The days had rapidly lessened in length, and the nights increased proportionably, until the sun was visible only for a few hours at a time, and then merely passing low along the northern horizon. The cold increased in proportion, though the weather varied almost as much in that high latitude as it does in our own. It had ceased to thaw much, however; and the mean of the thermometer was not many degrees above zero. Notwithstanding this low range of the mercury, the men found that they were fast getting acclimated, and that they could endure a much greater intensity of cold than they had previously supposed possible. As yet, there had been nothing to surprise natives of New York and New England, there rarely occurring a winter in which weather quite as cold as any they had yet experienced in the antarctic sea, does not set in, and last for some little time. Even while writing this very chapter of our legend, here in the mountains of Otsego, one of these Siberian visits has been paid to our valley. For the last three days the thermometer has ranged, at sunrise, between 17° and 22° below zero; though there is every appearance of a thaw, and we may have the mercury up to 40° above, in the course of the next twenty-four hours. Men accustomed to such transitions, and such extreme cold, are not easily laid up or intimidated.
A great deal of snow fell about this particular portion of the year; more, indeed, than at a later period. This snow produced the greatest inconvenience; for it soon became so deep as to form high banks around the house, and to fill all the customary haunts of the men. Still, there were places that were in a great measure exempt from this white mantle. The terrace immediately below the hut, which has so often been mentioned, was one of these bare spots. It was so placed as to be swept by both the east and the west winds, which generally cleared it of everything like snow, as fast as it fell; and this more effectually than could be done by a thousand brooms. The level of rock usually travelled in going to or from the wreck, was another of these clear places. It was a sort of shelf, too narrow to admit of the snow's banking, and too much raked by the winds that commonly accompanied snow, to suffer the last to lodge to any great depth. Snow there was, with a hard crust, as has already been mentioned; but it was not snow ten or fifteen feet deep, as occurred in many other places. There were several points, however, where banks had formed, even on this ledge, through which the men were compelled to cut their way by the use of shovels: an occupation that gave them exercise, and contributed to keep them in health, if it was of no other service. It was found that the human frame could not endure one-half the toil, in that low state of the mercury, that it could bear in one a few degrees higher.
Daggett had not, by any means, abandoned his craft, as much as he had permitted her to be dismantled. Every day or two he had some new expedient for getting the schooner off in the spring; though all who heard them were perfectly convinced of their impracticableness. This feeling induced him to cause his own men to keep open the communication; and scarce a day passed in which he did not visit the poor unfortunate craft. Nor was the place without an interest of a very peculiar sort. It has been said that the fragments of ice, some of which were more than a hundred feet in diameter, and all of which were eight or ten feet in thickness, had been left on their edges, inclining in a way to form caverns that extended a great distance. Now, it so happened, that just around the wreck the cakes were so distributed as to intercept the first snows which filled the outer passages, got to be hardened, and covered anew by fresh storms, thus interposed an effectual barrier to the admission of any more of the frozen element within the ice. The effect was to form a vast range of natural galleries amid the cakes, that were quite clear of any snow but that which had adhered to their surfaces, and which offered little or no impediment to motion--nay, which rather aided it, by rendering the walking less slippery. As the deck of the schooner had been cleared, leaving an easy access to all its entrances, cabin, hold, and forecastle, this put the Vineyard Lion under cover, while it admitted of all her accommodations being used. A portion of her wood had been left in her, it will be remembered, as well as her camboose. The last was got into the cabin, and Daggett, attended by two or three of his hands, would pass a good deal of his time there. One reason given for this distribution of the forces, was the greater room it allowed those who remained at the hut for motion. The deck of this vessel being quite clear, it offered a very favourable spot for exercise; better, in fact, than the terrace beneath the hut, being quite sheltered from the winds and much warmer than it had been originally, or ever since the heavy fall of snows commenced. Daggett paced his quarter-deck hour after hour, almost deluding himself with the expectation of sailing for home as soon as the return of summer would permit him to depart.
Around the hut the snow early made vast embankments. Every one accustomed to the action of this particular condition of one of the great elements, will understand that a bend in the rocks outward, or a curve inward, must necessarily affect the manner in which these banks were formed. The wind did not, by any means, blow from any one point of the compass; though the south-western cliffs might be almost termed the weather-side of the island, so much more frequently did the gales come from that quarter than from any other. The cape where the cove lay, and where the house had been set up, being at the north-eastern point, and much protected by the high table-land in its rear, it occupied the warmest situation in the whole region. The winds that swept most of the north shore, but which, owing to a curvature in its formation, did not often blow home to the hut, even when they whistled along the terrace only a hundred feet beneath and more salient, were ordinarily from the south-west outside; though they got a more westerly inclination by following the land under the cliffs.
A bank of snow may be either a cause of destruction or a source of comfort. Of course, a certain degree of cold must exist wherever snow is to be found; but, unless in absolute contact with the human body, it does not usually affect the system beyond a certain point. On the other hand, it often breaks the wind, and it has been known to form a covering to flocks, houses, &c., that has contributed essentially to their warmth. We incline to the opinion that if one slept in a cavern formed in the snow, provided he could keep himself dry, and did not come in absolute contact with the element, he would not find his quarters very uncomfortable, so long as he had sufficient clothing to confine the animal warmth near his person. Now, our sealers enjoyed some such advantage as this; though not literally in the same degree. Their house was not covered with snow, though a vast bank was already formed quite near it and a good deal had begun to pile against the tent. Singular as it may seem, on the east end of the building, and on the south front, which looked in towards the cliff next the cove, there was scarcely any snow at all. This was in part owing to the constant use of the shovel and broom, but more so to the currents of air, which usually carried everything of so light a nature as a flake to more quiet spots, before it was suffered to settle on the ground.
Roswell early found, what his experience as an American might have taught him, that the melting of the snow, in consequence of the warmth of the fires, caused much more inconvenience than the snow itself. The latter, when dry, was easily got along with; but, when melted in the day, and converted into icicles at night, it became a most unpleasant and not altogether a safe neighbour; inasmuch as there was really danger from the sort of damp atmosphere it produced.
The greatest ground of Roswell Gardiner's apprehensions, however, was for the supply of fuel. Much of that brought from home had been fairly used in the camboose, and in the stove originally set up in the hut. Large as that stock had been, a very sensible inroad had been made upon it; and, according to a calculation he had made, the wood regularly laid in would not hold out much more than half the time that it would be indispensable to remain on the island. This was a grave circumstance, and one that demanded very serious consideration. Without fuel it would be impossible to survive; no hardening process being sufficient to fortify the human frame to a degree that would resist the influence of an antarctic winter.
From the moment it was probable the party would be obliged to pass the winter at Sealer's Land, therefore, Roswell had kept a vigilant eye on the wood. Stimson had more than once, spoken to him on the subject, and with great prudence.
"Warmth must be kept among us," said the old boat-steerer, "or there will be no hope for the stoutest man in either crew. We've a pretty good stock of coffee, and that is better, any day, than all the rum and whiskey that was ever distilled. Good hot coffee of a morning will put life into us the coldest day that ever come out of either pole; and they do say the south is colder than the north, though I never could understand why it should be so."