14. On the 7th there was no change. The day passed away in moving from one floe with rotten edges to another somewhat more firm. We only shoved our boats a few hundred yards through the lakes of thaw water which had formed themselves on the ice. Our latitude was 79° 43′.
15. On the 8th we got away in a narrow “lead” a few hundred paces southward, but after getting so far we were stopped by thickly-packed ice, and again we had to draw our boats out of the water and recommence our life of painful expectancy—watching for the ice to open. No one of the party suffered so much from this depressing state of things as Carlsen. For more than twenty years the old and tried “ice-master” had lived amid floes and ice-blinks, manfully and successfully fighting against the hardships of the Arctic Seas, and now that frailties had increased on him, he saw himself compelled to such toils and privations as would have taxed his strength even in his prime. The old polar navigator bore his burthens without murmur or complaint, though it was painful to others to see the signs of exhaustion in his appearance. He no longer spoke of the polar bears and walruses, which he had entranced by a glance of his eye or bewitched with one of his words of magic. Even the puritanical zeal with which he once rebuked and lectured the Slavonians for playing cards on “God’s holy day” had grown somewhat cold, and his fears lest the conversations of the lively Southerners should end in blows became even more intense.
CARLSEN.
16. It was a strange life this abode for weeks of summer in boats covered over with a low tent roof. Oars by way of furniture, and three pairs of stockings for each man’s mattress and pillow. My journal describes these days: “Four boats are lying on the ice, crammed with sleeping men: and so great is the heat in them, that no one needs his fur coat, and snow placed in any vessel becomes water in a few hours. If Torossy has not ushered in the day by barking, the cooks do it when they bring the bowls of soup to the boats with the cry ‘Quanta!’ Then ensues a short scene of confusion: spoons and tin-pots have to be searched for and found, till at length quiet is again restored, after a little ransacking, and each man has his pot full of hot soup in his hand, consisting of meal, pemmican, pease-sausage, bread-dust, boiled beef, seal, and bears’ flesh; when the soup is flavoured with seal-blubber it is called ‘Gulyas.’ The soup is consumed amid perfect silence—not a word is spoken; what indeed was there to be said, which was not already known, or which had not been said a hundred times before? Each one knows the other’s history from his cradle downwards. A stillness like death reigns over all the surrounding forms of ice, and the frozen ocean stretches out beneath a vast shroud. A sunless leaden sky spreads over all, not a breath of air stirs, it is neither warm nor cold, slowly melts the snow, and this pale realm of ice forms a world of danger and difficulty, against which are matched the strength and sagacity of three-and-twenty men!
“Again all have taken their places in the boats to bale out the thaw water, the great enemy of their health—and of their solitary pair of boots. He whose turn it is to hunt the seal squats at the edge of a floe before a fissure, which admits a few square feet of water, in which no seal will show himself, because he has scarcely room to turn in it.
“To the others, their abode in the boats is a time of manifest weariness and ennui. Happy the man who has any tobacco, happy he who, after smoking his pipe, does not fall into a faint; happy too the man who finds a fragment of a newspaper in some corner or other, even if there should be nothing contained in it but the money-market intelligence, or perhaps directions to be followed in the preparation of pease-sausage. Enviable is he who discovers a hole in his fur coat which he can mend; but happiest of all are those who can sleep day and night. Of these latter some have stowed themselves away under the rowing seats, and above them reposes a second layer of sleepers, but nothing is visible of either party but the soles of their feet. No paradise of bliss! Noon comes: a little tea is made over the train-oil fire, each gets one cup of it and a handful of hard bread-crumbs—a kind of dog’s food which the impartial ‘committee of provisions’ measures out with Argus-eyes. The fourth part of the skin of a seal is thrown into each of the four boats, and the blubber on it is eagerly devoured. Some, for the sake of the fins, the ribs, or the head, become guests of the dogs. Flocks of gulls settle impudently near us, screaming and fighting for every morsel they can reach. Some of us try to catch them with nets, but no sooner are the nets up than the gulls disappear.
“The formality of dinner is over, and we have come to such a pass that even the tea excites the nerves of the community, and some Troubadour will then raise his voice with a bravura such as might have been heard on San Marco. The end of the Franklin expedition, and the history of the two skeletons which were found in the boat, is told again for the twentieth time—a story which never fails to produce a harrowing effect, and to rouse the firm and resolute to yet greater efforts and self-command.
“The most animated conversation, however, or rather a constant chattering, is going on meantime in the soot-begrimed tent of the cook. A difference of opinion arises about the precise time when the kettle was to be scraped out, or about the curtailing of the allowance in the last distribution of salt, or as to the delinquent who made a wood-fire on a cask of spirit, or who, instead of untying, cut the string of the sledge packing; many flourishes of speech are bandied to and fro, which at any rate speak well for the oratorical gifts of the disputants.
“There is still, however, one solace left us, the solace of smoking. Some indeed have already exhausted their whole stock of tobacco. He who has half a pouch of it at his disposal is the object of general respect, and the man who can invite his neighbour to a pipe of tobacco and a pot of water is considered to do an act of profuse liberality. Tobacco becomes a medium of exchange among us, and provisions are bought and paid for with it, its value rising every day. There is no difference between day and night, and Sundays are only distinguished by dressing the boats with flags.”