It is difficult to imagine the great speed with which hurricanes arise in the arctic seas. The vapors which rise under the equator are condensed above the great glaciers of the North, and large masses of air are needed to take their place. This can explain the severity of arctic storms.
At the first shock of the wind the captain and his friends awoke from their sleep, ready to manage the launch. The waves were high and steep. The launch tossed helplessly about, now plunged into deep abysses, now oscillated on the pointed crest of a wave, inclining often at an angle of more than forty-five degrees. Hatteras took firm hold of the tiller, which was noisily sliding from one side to the other. Every now and then some strong wave would strike it and nearly throw him over. Johnson and Bell were busily occupied in bailing out the water which the launch would occasionally ship.
| "The launch tossed helplessly about." |
"This is a storm we hardly expected," said Altamont, holding fast to his bench.
"We ought to expect anything here," answered the doctor.
These remarks were made amid the roar of the tempest and the hissing of the waves, which the violence of the wind reduced to a fine spray. It was nearly impossible for one to hear his neighbor. It was hard to keep the boat's head to the north; the clouds hid everything a few fathoms from the boat, and they had no mark to sail by. This sudden tempest, just as they were about attaining their object, seemed full of warning; to their excited minds it came like an order to go no farther. Did Nature forbid approach to the Pole? Was this point of the globe surrounded by hurricanes and tempests which rendered access impossible? But any one who had caught sight of those men could have seen that they did not flinch before wind or wave, and that they would push on to the end. So they struggled on all day, braving death at every instant, and making no progress northward, but also losing no ground; they were wet through by the rain and waves; above the din of the storm they could hear the hoarse cries of the birds.
But at six o'clock in the evening, while the waves were rising, there came a sudden calm. The wind stopped as if by a miracle. The sea was smooth, as if it had not felt a puff of wind for twelve hours. The hurricane seemed to have respected this part of the Polar Ocean. What was the reason? It was an extraordinary phenomenon, which Captain Sabine had witnessed in his voyages in Greenland seas. The fog, without lifting, was very bright. The launch drifted along in a zone of electric light, an immense St. Elmo fire, brilliant but without heat. The mast, sail, and rigging stood out black against the phosphorescent air; the men seemed to have plunged into a bath of transparent rays, and their faces were all lit up. The sudden calm of this portion of the ocean came, without doubt, from the ascending motion of the columns of air, while the tempest, which was a cyclone, turned rapidly about this peaceful centre. But this atmosphere on fire suggested a thought to Hatteras.