22. An advance of four miles a day now sufficed to satisfy us, and we had acquired such precision in our arrangements before starting that three hours sufficed to accomplish them. If the sledges came on obstacles from the ice, the pioneers hurried on with picks and shovels to remove them. Lakes on the ice were made little of; we waded through them with much equanimity, and any one who fell into a “lead” while the day’s labour was going on seemed to take the accident very coolly. On the 17th of July we had passed, in the way I have described, three ice-fields and three small “ice-holes;” but on the following day we made very little progress, because a wind, setting in from the west, packed the ice closely. We were therefore overjoyed to find our latitude to-day 79° 22′, a result which could only be ascribed to the late north winds; but we could not quiet our fears, lest a wind from the south should deprive us of our dearly-bought advance.
23. We now penetrated into a region full of icebergs, many of which were covered with earth and moraine dirt, which made them look at a distance, amid the dazzling uniformity of the ice, like rocky cliffs. In the evening a she-bear was seen close to us, which came full tilt at our dogs; at thirty paces off she was hit, but not mortally, and fell; but getting up again, ran off to an ice-hole, and remained long enough on its surface to be secured by the harpooners. She afforded us as much food as four small seals, and some of our party, with the voracity of beasts of prey, scraping the flesh off the bones for their private use, carried it about with them wrapped in their pocket-handkerchiefs, and ate about a pound of it raw every day at noon, as long as it lasted, after merely washing the carrion in sea-water.
24. On the 19th of July we again passed over several small ice-fields, and on the 20th and 21st one several miles in diameter. We were favoured with a north-west wind, and on the 20th of July our latitude was 79° 11′, our longitude 61° 3′, and our progress was so brilliant on the 22nd (79° 1′ L.), that we were compelled to draw the boats twice only out of the water, and warping through narrow “leads,” came again to larger “ice-holes,” over which we were able to sail. Our spirits were greatly raised, and we went on full of hope that we should soon come into longer water-ways, which would exempt us from the toils of crossing floes with the sledges. On the 23rd sudden squalls from the E.N.E., accompanied with heavy showers of rain, detained us in our covered boats, and our whole business on this day was collecting the rainwater in an empty spirit-cask and drinking it as grog. On the 24th we again made good progress. The rain fell in torrents, and we were wet through and through, and at night we lay down to rest reeking. The rain continued, but good progress was made almost without interruption during the next three days. We bore all the discomforts with joy, because the rain powerfully and rapidly dissolved the ice.[55] Our clothes were constantly wet, but we eagerly snatched every gleam of sunshine to dry our stockings or our saturated boots.
25. The cooks, when they called us in the morning, now constantly drew such pictures of the day’s prospects, that we might have been tempted to believe that during the night all the ice had disappeared; but this pleasing illusion was rudely dispelled whenever we stepped out of the boats into the open air. These good men, having no compass to consult, always flattered themselves with the notion that where water was to be seen, there also lay the south. But, alas! there lay the ice-hummocks, and there, too, lay the boats and sledges to be dragged as before. Klotz went a little further; it was his opinion that we ought always to take to the water without fear, even if it stretched to the north, in order, as he said, to get home round the North Pole.
26. On the 27th we had reached 78° 48′ N. L., but a wind from the south-west set in, and after two days of constant toil, alternately launching and drawing up the boats, we found, on the 29th, that we had been driven back to 78° 50′ N. L. But in many cases the movement of ice is unaccountable, and on the 30th this was verified; for, notwithstanding the prevalence of the south-west wind, we had drifted to 78° 32′ N. L., 61° 3′ E. L. The weather at this time was thicker and duller than usual, and the horizon from our boats extended but a few hundred paces, so that we had considerable difficulty in choosing the most navigable “leads.” The view did not extend above two miles, even when we climbed to the top of one of the hummocks, and mists generally lay on its outskirts. In clear weather we had always steered in the direction of a water-sky which promised open sea, even though we had to make détours to the south-west or south-east. But now such a foggy obscurity lay over every “ice-hole,” however small, that the outline of its edges was hardly discernible at a few paces off, and, under these circumstances, we could only pull the boats round, till we came to the first opening in the enclosing ice.
27. Winds from the south continued during the following week, and heavy rains again fell, and we had much laborious dragging through the fog on the 31st of July and the 1st of August. Our stock of bread, which had been reduced to powder by the constant lading and unlading, was meanwhile so thoroughly soaked that on the 2nd of August we stopped for half a day on a floe (78° 28′ N. L., 61° 49′ E. L.) to dry it in the sun, which, after a long absence, gladdened us by showing himself. We took the opportunity also to dry our clothes and our stockings. On such a day as this the scene around us entirely lost its gloomy sepulchral character; the heavens were brilliantly blue, the ice lay around us in dazzling light, and the deep ultramarine of the sea-water peeped forth from the “leads.” Henceforward we had less occasion to cross large floes. Our route gradually changed its character; “leads” and “ice-holes” occurred far more frequently, and the channels between them, winding through drifting islands of ice, were sometimes three or four miles in extent. Along these we glided under sail and oars, and when we came to a temporary halt, Weyprecht, with his compass, mounted one of the ice-hummocks to examine the water-ways and determine which we should follow. Our rate of progress was much increased, an acceleration due to the change in the ice, effected slowly but surely by sunshine and rain. The enormous masses of snow were wasting away; the thaw-water, gathering in countless streams, spread as lakes on the hollows of the floes, and oozed through fissures in the ice into the sea. The edges of the floes, undermined by the action of the waves, fell in, or were worn away by the pressure, and a single warm day or shower of rain sufficed to dissolve what remained of them. Hence, if the difficulty of drawing boats on to the ice was lessened, the danger of breaking through it in the process was greater, and we ran the risk of seeing all the cases containing our provisions sink in the sea before our eyes. As the ice-fields diminished in size and thickness, the number and breadth of the “leads” increased. The alternation of heavy south-east winds and calms helped on the destruction of the ice, and our progress was great in proportion. From the 3rd to the 7th of August each day we accomplished greater distances. The ice gradually changed from pack-ice to drift-ice, impenetrable only where it lay in thicker masses. When fogs came on, we generally decided, after wandering about for a little, to wait on or near a floe for finer weather. We no longer restricted our labours to certain times of the day. In the highest spirits, we toiled incessantly at rowing or dragging the boats, or shoving the floes asunder with our long poles.
28. On the 7th our progress might be estimated at twelve miles. It was the first day we had got on without dragging the sledges and crossing floes, and when we halted at noon amid some loose ice, we saw, to the south, a fluctuation in the sea level, and the ice alternately rising and falling. “The swell of the ocean!” exclaimed all with joy: “we are close to the open sea”—the open sea, being to us at that moment deliverance. Our amazement at finding it at such a latitude, 78° N. L., was so great that, notwithstanding that indisputable sign, we could scarcely believe our eyes, and we were filled with indescribable excitement. For a moment only that excitement was diverted to other and very different objects—two bears suddenly appeared on the scene, swimming about 100 paces from us. Two boats were at once manned, and the chase began. But the bears swam faster than the boats could be pulled by the four men in each boat; sometimes they raised themselves high out of the water as they turned to look at their pursuers. Suddenly one of them disappeared, while the other made for a floe and climbed on to it. As he stood and impudently stared at us, a shot was fired at him, and he immediately decamped, swimming with great rapidity to another distant floe. But as no trace of blood was to be seen on the ice, and our companions drinking their mid-day tea were scarcely to be distinguished, we considered it unsafe to pursue him further. In the evening we stopped again before a dense group of small floes, which like the rest of the ice had become rotten; the one whereon we were preparing to encamp for the night broke into several pieces just as we were raising our boat on to it. We were, however, fortunate enough to save our provisions.
BEARS IN THE WATER.
29. Though we had been accustomed so long to oscillate between extremes, we now felt that the hour had come, when we might count with certainty on being liberated from the fetters of the ice, and all our hopes gained new life. Yet once more they seemed doomed to be disappointed. On the 7th, before we turned into sleep, the prevailing north wind had gathered so much ice around us that we were fairly shut in. Next day (August 8), after the efforts of many hours to force through the multitude of small floes by which we were jammed in, we discovered that we should be unable to move, unless the wind changed to the south-west. Our exertions on the 9th were equally unsuccessful. It was not dense masses of ice, under whose walls we had so often felt ourselves imprisoned, that now held us captive, but miserable flat floes. Their diameter was from fifty to sixty paces, and though they hardly appeared above water, they were not the less impenetrable hindrances. The movement in the sea, that had so elevated us, was scarcely perceptible, and our faith in the nearness of the ocean was consequently much shaken.