7. Our stock of clothes consisted of two woollen shirts, one pair of woollen drawers, three pairs of stockings, leather water-boots, a cap, and of a fur-coat to sleep in. Clean woollen under-garments were much in request, and many a manœuvre was practised to get possession of them. Each of the party carried besides a large knife, a spoon, and a pair of snow-spectacles. Of luxuries none were permitted to us but a tobacco-pouch to each man; but filled with such art that it was like a stone in weight. We were not allowed to line our coats with tobacco.
8. Our plan was simple—to reach the depôt of provisions on the Barentz Islands, which lay in an almost directly southerly direction. After replenishing our stores there, we proposed to follow the coast of Novaya Zemlya with the hope of reaching one of those ships which the salmon fishery in the rivers of that country detains there to the beginning of harvest. It was also not impossible that we might be discovered before this, on the more northern coast of Novaya Zemlya, by a Norwegian seal-hunter. The boats were to keep together if possible; but in case they should be separated, the Wilhelm Islands were fixed on as the place of rendezvous up to the middle of August. At first, night was chosen for the march, and day was devoted to sleep; the observance, however, of this regulation was constantly prevented by special circumstances. The success of the expedition depended on our crossing the ice-covered sea by the end of August. The greatest difficulties were to be apprehended from the melting of the snow, for although the thermometer at the beginning of May fell 14° and even 17° below zero, and sharp north-east winds somewhat retarded the thaw, the mean temperature during the day approximated to zero, and on May 16 it actually rose above it. Two of our men, Stiglich and Vecerina, were unfit for duty, and had often to be dragged in the sledge. The rest of the men were healthy, and the swelling of the feet, from which the sledge-party had suffered, had disappeared.
CHAPTER II.
ON THE FROZEN SEA.
1. The momentous day came at last—the 20th of May, the very day in 1855 on which Kane abandoned his ship;[53] and we hailed with joy the advent of the hour which was to terminate our life of inaction. Yet we could not see without emotion the flags nailed to the masts of the Tegetthoff, and the final preparations to leave the ship, which had been our home for two weary years, and in which we had confronted the perils of the frozen sea, its ice-pressures, its storms, and its cold. These recollections crowded upon us as the moment came to abandon her. Now too we had to part with our Zoological, Botanical, and Geological collections, the result of so much labour; the ample collection of instruments, the books which had helped us over many a weary hour, and the sixty-seven bear-skins which we had so carefully prepared—all these had also to be abandoned. The photographs of friends and acquaintances we hung on the rocky walls ashore, preferring to leave them there rather than in the ship, which must some time or other be driven ashore and go to pieces. A document stating the grounds of our decision was laid on the table of the mess-room.
THE FIRST ABANDONMENT OF THE “TEGETTHOFF.”
To face p. 348.
2. We slept during this day, and in the evening sat down to the last meal we were to enjoy on board the ship. About nine o’clock, P.M., we assembled round the boats, ready for the start. Dark masses of clouds obscured the sun, and our route southwards led us into the gloomy monotonous region of ice-hummocks covered with snow—our world for the next three months. The first day’s work for twenty-three men, harnessed to boat or sledge, was the advance of one mile; and even this rate of progress, small as it was, was not constant. Many days it did not amount to half a mile; the sledge-sail was of little avail, for the deep snow retarded our progress; the sledges sank deep into it, those on which the boats were placed actually sticking fast. We had to pass three times heavily laden, and twice empty, over every bit of the road, and half our number were scarcely able to move a sledge or a boat. Such labours and exertions in deep snow were truly distracting. Almost at every step we sank knee-deep. Sometimes some unhappy fellows went in deeper still; of Scarpa, it was asserted that scarcely anything but his head was visible while he dragged. Constantly we had either to unload the sledge, or, harnessing ourselves all together for a moment, drag it out of the deep snow-drift. For one-half of the march we might get on without special impediment, the other half was spent in vain efforts to push the load on, amid “Aussingen,”[54] to time the strong pull and the pull all together. The perspiration often streamed down our faces, for the sky was overcast, and the air exceedingly sultry. After the exertion of some days, raw wounds appeared on the shoulders of several. After a bit of our track had been passed over three times in the way described, it was like a path in the snow hollowed out by the shovel, so that we had spent our strength in levelling it, but hardly in satisfactory progress. To add to our trials, we suffered intensely from thirst, and those among us who were unaccustomed to the fatigues of sledge-travelling, sank down in the snow at every halt and greedily ate of it. If such were to be the course of our journey, would escape be possible? Not a man among us imagined that we could be saved, except by some extraordinary and happy turn of fortune, small signs of which were at present to be seen. To escape from this depressing fear, we deliberately avoided every allusion to the future.