However, in spite of the inclemency of the season, we made ourselves pretty comfortable. We had lost the greater portion of the three months’ stock of provisions we had taken with us; but still we had enough to last for three or four weeks, and Captain Billings hoped to spin out our store by the aid of the different species of wild fowl which frequented the islands, in addition to the abundant supply of fish that the southern waters contain—that is, until, as we hoped, some passing ship should pick us up and convey our little party to more civilised regions.
But, while the snowstorm lasted, we all suffered more or less from the severity of the weather, many of the men having their feet and hands frostbitten, and poor Mr Macdougall almost losing his nose!
“I say,” said Sails to Pat Doolan, on seeing that worthy shivering while trying to re-light the fire—which an avalanche of snow, descending from a precipitous rise above the site of our tent, had suddenly buried, along with the cook’s pots and pans, just as he was preparing our morning meal, on the fourth day of the storm—“how about that Manilla guernsey o’ yourn now, old flick? Guess it would come in handy, eh!”
“Be jabers, an’ it would that,” replied the Irishman, with much heartiness; “I only wish I had it across me back now, and I was aboard that schooner ag’in; an’ faix, I’d die happy!”
Pat’s fire was soon lighted again; but the fall of snow from above, without any previous warning, might have caused serious injury to some of us if it had come down in the night. It quite broke down our tent, and it took us some hours’ hard work, using broken oar-blades for shovels, to dig away the immense heap of frozen débris that the unexpected slip of the accumulation on the top of the cliff had caused. Really, if the avalanche had fallen when we were all inside and asleep, perhaps not one of us would have escaped alive, as it must have been many tons in weight!
We thought, from the continuation of the snowstorm, that we would have to endure all the miseries of an antarctic winter; but, towards the evening of the fourth day, the south-westerly gale gradually lost its force, shifting round a bit more to the northwards. Strange to say, although the wind now came from what, in our northern latitudes, we esteem a colder quarter, it was ever so much warmer here, on account of its passing over the warm pampas of the Plate before reaching us, the effect of which soon became apparent in the melting of the snow on the ground as rapidly as when a thaw takes place at home. Properly speaking, however, the snow rather may be said to have dried up than melted, for it was absorbed by the air, which was dry and bracing.
The flakes, that had up to now continued coming down without cessation, also ceased to fall—much to our satisfaction, as I need hardly add; for, albeit it is very nice to look out from a warm, well-furnished room at the beautiful winter garb of Nature, and highly enjoyable to go out snowballing, when you can leave it off and go indoors to a jolly fire when you like, it was a very different matter to us now to experience all the discomforts of those dreadful, icy, spongy, little feathery nuisances penetrating beneath every loophole they could find entrance to, in the apology for a tent that we had, and to have our clothing sodden by it, our fire put out, and our blood congealed. Perhaps even the most ardent snow-lover would lose his taste for the soft molecules under such circumstances!
On the fifth day, the sun appeared again, when Captain Billings took advantage of the opportunity for getting an observation as to our position, using Mr Macdougall’s sextant, his own and mine having gone to the bottom when the long-boat was upset. The skipper, I may add, had also to make use of the mate’s watch—the chronometer that had been brought from the ship having shared the fate of the other instruments, standard compass and all having passed into the safe keeping of old Neptune and his Tritons, who, if they cared about the study of meteorology, had a rare haul on this occasion!
The observation he now obtained only confirmed the skipper’s previous impression that we were on Herschel Island, one of the Hermite, or Cape Horn group, the mountainous peaks of which are mainly composed of green stone, in which hornblende and feldspar are more or less conspicuous, and the presence of iron very apparent, some of the rocks being intensely magnetic, causing the needle of a little pocket compass I had to execute all sorts of strange freaks.
When the weather got fine, we took a walk round the island as far as the ridge that bisected it would allow, finding the elevated ground clothed with thickly growing trees, principally a species of spruce fir called the antarctic beech, which runs to a height of some thirty or forty feet, with a girth of five or six feet. It is a magnificent evergreen, and would look well on an English lawn, for it has a splendid spreading head.