1. When compared with the tortures we endured from the thought that we were captives in the ice, little to us seemed the dangers which threatened our existence, though these assumed the appalling form of ice-pressures. Daily almost the ship had to sustain the attacks of our old enemy, and when the ice seemed to repose, threatening indications were not wanting to warn us how short that repose might be. My journal records a long series of commotions in the ice on almost every day of January 1873, and even during the pauses the timbers of the ship continually shook and trembled and creaked. The pressures accompanied by a low grumbling noise were very great on the 3rd, and lasted till the oldest ice was shattered, during which our hatchways were displaced. On the 4th the pressures continued without intermission during the whole day. But on the 22nd they exceeded all we had hitherto experienced. When we awoke in the morning, the crashing of the masses of ice was dreadful. In the messroom we heard a deep, grumbling, rumbling noise—the ship trembled like a steam-vessel under very high pressure. When we hastened on deck we were greeted by the long howls which issued from the ice, and we were soon convinced of the exceedingly formidable character of this special onset! Ten paces astern of the ship, the ice had been heaved up in a moment into mountains. With the greatest difficulty, amid the profound darkness that prevailed, the boats were got on board, and many stores re-shipped, though some of our coals had to be sacrificed. A tent formed of sails was engulfed, and our water-hole utterly displaced by the pressures; it was only after many attempts that we succeeded in finding a thinner ice-table, which we pierced till we found water. January 26, again tremendous pressures roused us from sleep. In half an hour every preparation was made to leave the ship, and I believe that many of us, while waiting the issue amid the fearful din heard from the deck, longed that the ship might be crushed, in order to escape from the torture of continually preparing to depart.
ICE-PRESSURE IN THE POLAR NIGHT.
2. I will not, however, fatigue the reader with the monotonous rehearsal of our ever-recurring daily dangers, but will here insert a few passages from my journal of that date, which will suffice to explain our position:—
“Scarcely asleep after the exhaustion and cares of the day, the timbers of the ship begin to moan and groan close by our ear, and we awake and lie listening to the onset of the ice. We hear the step of the watch on deck crackling on the ice as he paces to and fro; as long as it is measured and steady we know there is nothing to be feared. Again that uncanny creaking in the timbers, and the watch comes to announce to those below that the terrible movement in the ice has begun, and once more we all spring from our beds, put on our fur clothes, seize our ready-filled bags, and amid the darkness stand ready on deck, and listen to the war between the ice and the elements. In autumn, when the ice-fields were not nearly so large as in the winter, their collision was accompanied by a deep dull sound; but now, rendered hard and brittle by the extreme cold, a sound as of a howl of rage[19] was emitted as they crashed together. Ever nearer come the rushing, rattling sounds, as if a thousand heavy waggons were driving over a plain. Close under us the ice begins to tremble, to moan and wail in every key;—as the fury of the conflict increases, the grumbling becomes deeper and deeper, concentric fissures open themselves round the ship, and the shattered portions of the floes are rolled up into heaps. The intermitting howls become fearfully rapid, announcing the acme of the conflict, and anxiously we listen to the sound which we know too well. Then follows a crash and crack, and many dark lines wander over the ice: these are for a moment narrow fissures, the next moment they yawn asunder like abysses. Often with such a crash the force of the pressure seems broken; the piles of ice collapse, like the undermined walls of a fortress, and calm is again restored. But to-day this was but the commencement, and with renewed violence a second assault of the ice begins,—then a third, yea a fourth. Tables of ice broken off from the floes around us rise perpendicularly from the sea; some are bent under the enormous pressure, and their curved shapes attest the elasticity of ice. Like a giant in the conflict, a veteran floe, many winters old, crushes in its rotations its feeble neighbours, and in turn succumbs to the mighty iceberg—the leviathan of all ice-forms, which forces its way through a phalanx of opposing masses, crushing them to pieces as it advances. And in this wild and fearful tumult a ship—squeezed, pressed, all but crushed, by the ice; her crew on deck, ready to leave her at a moment’s notice. Boats and sledges, tents, provisions, arms and ammunition, everything prepared, if the ship should at last be destroyed—but for what?—for an escape? No one really thought this possible, though all were ready for the attempt. But again the conflict ceases, and once more we breathe freely, and can contemplate the wonderful change that has come on everything round us. A few minutes have sufficed to create a maze of mountain chains from a plain of ice. The flat surfaces covered with snow, which we saw yesterday, are gone. Ice ruins are visible on every side. Abysses gape between the shattered masses, and show the dark sea beneath. Gradually a calm has crept over all; equilibrium is reinstated in the desolate realm of ice; new ‘leads’ and ‘ice-holes’ have been opened up, but for the Tegetthoff no liberation.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WANE OF THE LONG POLAR NIGHT.
1. Although the sun was mounting higher, there was no essential change in the gloom and darkness which surrounded us. In fact we were drifting during the whole of January towards the north, and were wintering nearer the Pole than any who had ever preceded us.[20] On gloomy days, noon was not distinguishable. We were now four hundred miles within the Frozen Ocean, and had been for five months the sport and play of winds and currents, and nothing indicated any change in our situation. Yet, in spite of our desperate position, the first, ever so faint, indications of the return of light filled us with joy. With a clear atmosphere, January 10, we observed for the first time at noon a decided brightness, and on the 19th a brilliant carmine was seen in the sky, an hour before noon on the southern horizon. After a long obscuration from cloudy weather, the morning twilight increased gradually, and by the end of the month it was discernible in the forenoon. As the light increased, the signs of the convulsions were more distinctly seen. Round us there rose piles of craggy ice, which, hurled up, as from a crater, by the ice-pressure of the 22nd, kept us in a state of constant fear, lest the ice-walls would break up and fall in upon us. At a little distance off, nothing was to be seen of the ship but the tops of its masts: the rest of it was hidden behind a lofty wall of ice. The ship itself, raised seven feet above the level of the sea, rested on a protuberance of ice, and, removed from its natural element, looked a truly miserable object. This ice protuberance had been formed from a floe which had been often rent asunder and frozen again, and had been rounded in a singular manner from the under-driving of the ice and the lateral pressure in its recent movements. In other respects, also, our environment had been completely changed. Before the movement in the ice on the 22nd, a narrow strip of level ice wound like a river through a maze of hummocks, and throughout the winter this had been diligently used for exercising the dogs. Of this nothing was now to be seen: walls of ice rose, where a fortnight before our coal-house had stood: fissures gaped on every side. In every respect the weather during this month was capricious and unaccountable. In the first two weeks, the temperature fell several times below -35° F., and on January 8, 13 and 14, quicksilver, exposed to the cold, froze to a solid mass; gin also froze, and alcohol only maintained its fluid state. Yet, notwithstanding this low temperature, the snow was always soft; and it continued to be so, amid all the variations of temperature and the high winds of this month. January 22 and 23, the temperature rose for a short time to 26° F.; everything in the ship then began to thaw, and a disagreeable moisture penetrated both our clothes and our quarters. The mean temperature of this month, in consequence of these abnormal variations, did not exceed -8° F., and was therefore about ten degrees higher than might have been expected.
2. The bears had in these last weeks kept at a regrettable distance from us. On the 12th, however, a very large fellow ventured to come within ten paces of the rope-ladder on the starboard side. We fired at him with explosive balls and he fell; but his strength was so great, that even after these terrible wounds he was able to get up and run. Explosive bullets, however, are to be recommended for encounters with bears, though their flight is rather uncertain. A bear-hunt, on the 29th and 30th, had a somewhat tragical result. About ten o’clock at night, when it was quite dark, a bear approached the ship, and with the agility of a tiger fell on Sumbu, who got away very cleverly, and by his loud barking summoned Krisch, who was then on watch, to his aid. When he was not more than ten feet from the deck Krisch fired at him and wounded him. The noise brought some of us at once, and though it was exceedingly dark and the snow very deep, a useless chase, in which I joined, forthwith began. The pursuit through the midst of driving snow became weaker; until at last I found myself alone with Palmich. We could see nothing; and heard only an occasional howl of pain. We hastened our steps through the whirling snow, till we saw, by the dim light of our lantern, Matoschkin lying howling on the ground, and the bear a few steps from him, vigorously assailed by Sumbu, who seized him by the foot whenever he began to retreat. As Matoschkin incautiously approached too near, the bear turned, seized him, and carried him off. To fire with effect was impossible; we were too far off to take aim with our rifles. The bear continued to drag the dog along, and at last a puff of wind put out our lantern, and we soon discovered our inability to keep up with our enemy. Bitterly as we lamented the fate of the poor dog, whose howls were brought to our ears by the wind, we had nothing for it but to return to the ship. About noon next day when it was sufficiently clear, Brosch, the two Tyrolese, and I set out to ascertain the fate of the dog. The snow was drifting heavily, and we constantly sank into it as we advanced. After a toilsome walk we came on traces of blood, which Sumbu followed up, while Gillis timidly stuck to us. At last, after we had gone on for the third of a mile, Sumbu came back in a great state of excitement, and then ran on before us till he stopped at an ice-hummock, where he renewed his angry barks. We advanced with quickened steps and with our rifles cocked, and when we were about twenty paces from it the bear came out from behind, apparently in great astonishment. After several shots the bear fell, but again gathering himself up he dragged himself along like a walrus, in spite of his broken spine, with extraordinary activity towards an “ice-hole” covered with young ice. Two other shots with explosive bullets terminated his career, and Matoschkin, whose body we afterwards found behind the ice-hillock, was avenged.