CHAPTER II.
ON THE FROZEN OCEAN.
1. Unfavourable winds had hindered our progress for some days; we now encountered heavy seas. On July 23 a sudden fall of the temperature and dirty rainy weather told us that we were close to the ice, which we expected to find later and much more to the northward, and on the evening of July 25, lat. 74° 0′ 15″ N., we actually sighted it, the thermometer marking 32·5° F., and 34·5° F. in the sea. The northerly winds, which had prevailed for some time had broken up the ice, and it lay before us in long loose lines. Its outer boundary was consequently the very opposite of those solid walls of ice which we met with in Greenland in 1869, and two years afterwards on the east of Spitzbergen. Though surprised at finding the ice so far to the south, we never imagined that this was anything but a collection of floes, which had drifted out perhaps from the Sea of Kara through the Straits of Matotschkin. But only too soon the conviction was forced upon us that we were already within the Frozen Ocean, and that navigation in the year 1872 was to differ widely from that of the preceding year. Lieutenant Weyprecht had the day before fastened “the crow’s nest” to the mainmast of the Tegetthoff, and henceforth it became the abode of the officer of the watch. On July 26, while steering in a north-easterly direction, the ice became closer, though it was still navigable; but we nowhere saw the heavy fields which had astonished us on the east coast of Greenland, and which Lütke found to be so dangerous to navigation. The temperature of the air and the sea fell rapidly, and during the two following weeks it remained below the freezing point almost uniformly, and without any essential difference between day and night.
STILL LIFE IN THE FROZEN OCEAN.
2. The frozen sea of Novaya Zemlya is characterized by that inconstancy of weather which in our lower latitudes we attribute to the month of April; the same variability is met with, though in lesser degree, in the Greenland seas during the summer months. Snowstorms now alternated with the most glorious blue skies. The black-bulbed thermometer showed 113° F. in the sun, with 39° F. in the shade. The hunting season began, and the kitchen was well provided with auks and seals. Our Dalmatians soon learnt to like the dark flesh of the latter.
3. The ice gradually became closer; July 29 (74° 44′ N. Lat., 52° 8′ E. Long.) we were able to continue our course only under steam, and heavy shocks were henceforward inevitable; in many cases the vessel could not force a passage except by charging the ice. In the night a vast, apparently impenetrable barrier stopped our progress; but the tactics of charging under steam again cleared a passage, and we penetrated into a larger “ice-hole.” We now glided along over the shining surface of its waters, as if we were navigating an inland lake, save that no copsewood clothed the shores, but pale blocks of ice, which the mist, that now fell and enveloped us, transformed into the most fantastic shapes, and at last into mere shapelessness itself. In all that surrounded us neither form nor colour was discernible; faint shadows floated within the veil of mist, and our path seemed to lead no whither. A few hours before the glowing fire of the noonday sun had lain on the mountain wastes of Novaya Zemlya, while refraction raised its long coast high above the icy horizon. Nowhere does a sudden change in Nature exercise so immediate an effect on the mind as in the Frozen Ocean, where, too, all that brings delight proceeds from the sun.
4. For some days we had entered into a world utterly strange to most of us on board the Tegetthoff. Dense mists frequently enveloped us, and from out of the mantle of snow of the distant land the rocks, like decayed battlements, frowned on us inhospitably. There is no more melancholy sound than that which accompanies the decay and waste of the ice, as it is constantly acted on by the sea and thaw, and no picture more sad and solemn than the continuous procession of icebergs floating like huge white biers towards the south. Ever and anon there rises the noise of the ocean swell breaking amongst the excavations of the ice-floes, while the water oozing out from their icy walls falls with monotonous sound into the sea; or perhaps a mass of snow, deprived of its support, drops into the waves, to disappear in them with a hissing sound as of a flame. Never for a moment ceases the crackling and snapping sound produced by the bursting of the external portions of the ice. Magnificent cascades of thaw-water precipitate themselves down the sides of the icebergs, which sometimes rend with a noise as of thunder as the beams of the sun play on them. The fall of the titanic mass raises huge volumes of foam, and the sea-birds, which had rested on its summit in peaceful confidence, rise with terrified screams, soon to gather again on another ice-colossus.