“TEGETTHOFF” ABANDONED: RETURN TO EUROPE.
CHAPTER I.
LAST DAYS ON THE “TEGETTHOFF.”
1. We could now return with honour. The observations and discoveries we had made could not be wrested from us, and our many anxieties on this ground were at an end, henceforth the greatest evil that could befall us was death on our homeward voyage. The intervening days were given up to the recruiting of our exhausted powers; Klotz called this time the “plundering of the ship.” Not very much time, indeed, was left for this, but the short spell of good living, in which we all shared, transformed the ship into an abode of Epicureans. But withal we redoubled our diligence to secure the results of our toils and labours. Lieutenant Weyprecht deposited our meteorological and magnetical readings, the log-books and the ship’s papers, in a chest lined with tin, and soldered it down, and a few days afterwards I made exact duplicates of the surveys, and of measurements, which I had taken. I took especial care so to prepare these, that another person might be able to construct from them a map of Franz-Josef Land, should I myself perish on the return journey. These sheets also were packed in a chest lined with tin and soldered, and along with them were placed our zoological drawings and about 200 sketches of the country, of the Arctic Sea and our adventures, the flag too of the sledge journeys, and my journals. Of the zoological collection itself, only a small selection of the specimens most easy of transport could be taken with us.
2. The time passed away with unexpected rapidity; the days had scarcely begun before they seemed to have come to an end. Everyone was busy in getting his clothes ready. In the quarters of the crew, sewing went on without intermission, and piles of thread disappeared under their fingers, to appear again in the strangest patterns worked on the old garments. Avalanches of cast-off clothes hung over the hull of the ship. The vessel—no longer trim as before—came to wear the look befitting the catastrophe that awaited her. A great number of bears’ carcases lay on the ice,[52] for only the brain, the tongue, and the prime portions of the flesh found their way to the kitchen, the remaining parts lay about half buried under snow-drifts, given up to the dogs to tear to pieces, who now for the first time found themselves exempted from rations served out according to time and circumstances. A month later, and such a field of carnage would have become a very home of pestilence.
3. Short excursions with the dog-sledge enabled us to finish our observations on the motion of glaciers, which the great depth of the snow had hitherto made a matter of much difficulty. The last of these expeditions took place on May 15th. On the spot on which we had first set our foot, we took farewell of the grave of our departed comrade and of the Land to which we had drifted through the happy caprice of an ice-floe, and the discovery of which rendered a return without humiliation possible. But with this farewell the business of the expedition came to an end, all our thoughts were now occupied with getting back to Europe. Of the issue we dared not form the least conception; but whether it were deliverance or destruction, our lot must at any rate be decided within three months, as for this period only we could drag with us the most indispensable provisions.
4. On our equipment Lieutenant Weyprecht and I bestowed much thought and care, and our measures were carried out with the greatest exactness. All these were based on the excellent apparatus for sledging already described; the additional precautions were confined to the more convenient stowing away of the provisions, and to the diminishing, as much as possible, of the baggage. The rapid decrease of the cold and the consequent rise of the temperature, even above the freezing point, enabled us to reduce our clothing to a minimum without endangering our health; and no more comfortable sleeping-place for Arctic explorers can be conceived than the interior of a dry boat, covered in like a tent and provided with bed-quilts. There was more danger that we should suffer from heat than from cold; the apprehension of insufficient provisions was better founded.