Ten minutes more, and we were the only denizens of that misty sea. I confess I felt excessively sorry to have lost the society of such joyous companions; they had received us always with such merry good nature; the Prince had shown himself so gracious and considerate, and he was surrounded by a staff of such clever, well-informed persons, that it was with the deepest regret I watched the fog close round the magnificent corvette, and bury her—and all whom she contained—within its bosom. Our own situation, too, was not altogether without causing me a little anxiety. We had not seen the sun for two days; it was very thick, with a heavy sea, and dodging about as we had been among the ice, at the heels of the steamer, our dead reckoning was not very much to be depended upon. The best plan I thought would be to stretch away at once clear of the ice, then run up into the latitude of Jan Mayen, and—as soon as we should have reached the parallel of its northern extremity—bear down on the land. If there was any access at all to the island, it was very evident it would be on its northern or eastern side; and now that we were alone, to keep on knocking up through a hundred miles or so of ice in a thick fog, in our fragile schooner, would have been out of the question.
The ship's course, therefore, having been shaped in accordance with this view, I stole back into bed and resumed my violated slumbers. Towards mid-day the weather began to moderate, and by four o'clock we were skimming along on a smooth sea, with all sails set. This state of prosperity continued for the next twenty-four hours; we had made about eighty knots since parting company with the Frenchman, and it was now time to run down West and pick up the land. Luckily the sky was pretty clear, and as we sailed on through open water I really began to think our prospects very brilliant. But about three o'clock on the second day, specks of ice began to flicker here and there on the horizon, then larger bulks came floating by in forms as picturesque as ever—(one, I particularly remember, a human hand thrust up out of the water with outstretched forefinger, as if to warn us against proceeding farther), until at last the whole sea became clouded with hummocks that seemed to gather on our path in magical multiplicity.
Up to this time we had seen nothing of the island, yet I knew we must be within a very few miles of it; and now, to make things quite pleasant, there descended upon us a thicker fog than I should have thought the atmosphere capable of sustaining; it seemed to hang in solid festoons from the masts and spars. To say that you could not see your hand, ceased almost to be any longer figurative; even the ice was hid—except those fragments immediately adjacent, whose ghastly brilliancy the mist itself could not quite extinguish, as they glimmered round the vessel like a circle of luminous phantoms. The perfect stillness of the sea and sky added very much to the solemnity of the scene; almost every breath of wind had fallen, scarcely a ripple tinkled against the copper sheathing, as the solitary little schooner glided along at the rate of half a knot or so an hour, and the only sound we heard was the distant wash of waters, but whether on a great shore, or along a belt of solid ice, it was impossible to say. In such weather, as the original discoverers of Jan Mayen said under similar circumstances,—"it was easier to hear land than to see it." Thus, hour after hour passed by and brought no change. Fitz and Sigurdr—who had begun quite to disbelieve in the existence of the island—went to bed, while I remained pacing up and down the deck, anxiously questioning each quarter of the grey canopy that enveloped us. At last, about four in the morning, I fancied some change was going to take place; the heavy wreaths of vapour seemed to be imperceptibly separating, and in a few minutes more the solid roof of grey suddenly split asunder, and I beheld through the gap—thousands of feet over—head, as if suspended in the crystal sky—a cone of illuminated snow.
[Figure: fig-p121.gif]
You can imagine my delight. It was really that of an anchorite catching a glimpse of the seventh heaven. There at last was the long-sought-for mountain actually tumbling down upon our heads. Columbus could not have been more pleased when, after nights of watching, he saw the first fires of a new hemisphere dance upon the water; nor, indeed, scarcely less disappointed at their sudden disappearance than I was, when, after having gone below to wake Sigurdr, and tell him we had seen bona fide terra-firma, I found, on returning upon deck, that the roof of mist had closed again, and shut out all trace of the transient vision. However, I had got a clutch of the island, and no slight matter should make me let go my hold. In the meantime there was nothing for it but to wait patiently until the curtain lifted; and no child ever stared more eagerly at a green drop-scene in expectation of "the realm of dazzling splendour" promised in the bill, than I did at the motionless grey folds that hung round us. At last the hour of liberation came: a purer light seemed gradually to penetrate the atmosphere, brown turned to grey, and grey to white, and white to transparent blue, until the lost horizon entirely reappeared, except where in one direction an impenetrable veil of haze still hung suspended from the zenith to the sea. Behind that veil I knew must lie Jan Mayen.
A few minutes more, and slowly, silently, in a manner you could take no count of, its dusky hem first deepened to a violet tinge, then gradually lifting, displayed a long line of coast—in reality but the roots of Beerenberg—dyed of the darkest purple; while, obedient to a common impulse, the clouds that wrapped its summit gently disengaged themselves, and left the mountain standing in all the magnificence of his 6,870 feet, girdled by a single zone of pearly vapour, from underneath whose floating folds seven enormous glaciers rolled down into the sea! Nature seemed to have turned scene-shifter, so artfully were the phases of this glorious spectacle successively developed.
Although—by reason of our having hit upon its side instead of its narrow end—the outline of Mount Beerenberg appeared to us more like a sugar-loaf than a spire—broader at the base and rounder at the top than I had imagined,— in size, colour, and effect, it far surpassed anything I had anticipated. The glaciers were quite an unexpected element of beauty. Imagine a mighty river of as great a volume as the Thames—started down the side of a mountain,— bursting over every impediment,—whirled into a thousand eddies,—tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering cataracts of foam,—then suddenly struck rigid by a power so instantaneous in its action, that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened into the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of the contrast between the actual tranquillity of these silent crystal rivers and the violent descending energy impressed upon their exterior. You must remember, too, all this is upon a scale of such prodigious magnitude, that when we succeeded subsequently in approaching the spot—where with a leap like that of Niagara one of these glaciers plunges down into the sea—the eye, no longer able to take in its fluvial character, was content to rest in simple astonishment at what then appeared a lucent precipice of grey-green ice, rising to the height of several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel.
As soon as we had got a little over our first feelings of astonishment at the panorama thus suddenly revealed to us by the lifting of the fog, I began to consider what would be the best way of getting to the anchorage on the west—or Greenland side of the island. We were still seven or eight miles from the shore, and the northern extremity of the island, round which we should have to pass, lay about five leagues off, bearing West by North, while between us and the land stretched a continuous breadth of floating ice. The hummocks, however, seemed to be pretty loose with openings here and there, so that with careful sailing I thought we might pass through, and perhaps on the farther side of the island come into a freer sea. Alas! after having with some difficulty wound along until we were almost abreast of the cape, we were stopped dead short by a solid rampart of fixed ice, which in one direction leant upon the land, and in the other ran away as far as the eye could reach into the dusky North. Thus hopelessly cut off from all access to the western and better anchorage, it only remained to put about, and—running down along the land—attempt to reach a kind of open roadstead on the eastern side, a little to the south of the volcano described by Dr. Scoresby but in this endeavour also we were doomed to be disappointed; for after sailing some considerable distance through a field of ice, which kept getting more closely packed as we pushed further into it, we came upon another barrier equally impenetrable, that stretched away from the island toward the Southward and Eastward. Under these circumstances, the only thing to be done was to get back to where the ice was looser, and attempt a landing wherever a favourable opening presented itself. But even to extricate ourselves from our present position, was now no longer of such easy performance. Within the last hour the wind had shifted into the North-West; that is to say, it was now blowing right down the path along which we had picked our way; in order to return, therefore, it would be necessary to work the ship to windward through a sea as thickly crammed with ice as a lady's boudoir is with furniture. Moreover, it had become evident, from the obvious closing of the open spaces, that some considerable pressure was acting upon the outside of the field; but whether originating in a current or the change of wind, or another field being driven down upon it, I could not tell: Be that as it might, out we must get,—unless we wanted to be cracked like a walnut-shell between the drifting ice and trio solid belt to leeward; so sending a steady hand to the helm,—for these unusual phenomena had begun to make some of my people lose their heads a little, no one on board having ever seen a bit of ice before,—I stationed myself in the bows, while Mr. Wyse conned the vessel from the square yard. Then there began one of the prettiest and most exciting pieces of nautical manoeuvring that can be imagined. Every single soul on board was summoned upon deck; to all, their several stations and duties were assigned—always excepting the cook, who was merely directed to make himself generally useful. As soon as everybody was ready, down went the helm,—about came the ship,—and the critical part of the business commenced. Of course, in order to wind and twist the schooner in and out among the devious channels left between the hummocks, it was necessary she should have considerable way on her; at the same time so narrow were some of the passages, and so sharp their turnings, that unless she had been the most handy vessel in the world, she would have had a very narrow squeak for it. I never saw anything so beautiful as her behaviour. Had she been a living creature, she could not have dodged, and wound, and doubled, with more conscious cunning and dexterity; and it was quite amusing to hear the endearing way in which the people spoke to her, each time the nimble creature contrived to elude some more than usually threatening tongue of ice. Once or twice, in spite of all our exertions, it was impossible to save her from a collision; all that remained to be done, as soon as it became evident she could not clear some particular floe, or go about in time to avoid it, was to haul the staysail sheet a-weather in order to deaden her way as much as possible, and—putting the helm down—let her go right at it, so that she should receive the blow on her stem, and not on the bluff of the bow; while all hands, armed with spars and fenders, rushed forward to ease off the shock. And here I feel it just to pay a tribute of admiration to the cook, who on these occasions never failed to exhibit an immense amount of misdirected energy, breaking—I remember—at the same moment, both the cabin sky-light, and an oar, in single combat with a large berg that was doing no particular harm to us, but against which he seemed suddenly to have conceived a violent spite. Luckily a considerable quantity of snow overlaid the ice, which, acting as a buffer, in some measure mitigated the violence of the concussion; while the very fragility of her build diminishing the momentum, proved in the end the little schooner's greatest security. Nevertheless, I must confess that more than once, while leaning forward in expectation of the scrunch I knew must come, I have caught myself half murmuring to the fair face that seemed to gaze so serenely at the cold white mass we were approaching: "O Lady, is it not now fit thou shouldest befriend the good ship of which thou art the pride?"
At last, after having received two or three pretty severe bumps,—though the loss of a little copper was the only damage they entailed,—we made our way back to the northern end of the island, where the pack was looser, and we had at all events a little more breathing room.
It had become very cold—so cold, indeed, that Mr. Wyse —no longer able to keep a clutch of the rigging—had a severe tumble from the yard on which he was standing. The wind was freshening, and the ice was evidently still in motion; but although very anxious to get back again into open water, we thought it would not do to go away without landing, even if it were only for an hour. So having laid the schooner right under the cliff, and putting into the gig our own discarded figure-head, a white ensign, a flag-staff; and a tin biscuit-box, containing a paper on which I had hastily written the schooner's name, the date of her arrival, and the names of all those who sailed on board,—we pulled ashore. A ribbon of beach not more than fifteen yards wide, composed of iron-sand, augite, and pyroxene, running along under the basaltic precipice—upwards of a thousand feet high—which serves as a kind of plinth to the mountain, was the only standing room this part of the coast afforded. With considerable difficulty, and after a good hour's climb, we succeeded in dragging the figure-head we had brought ashore with us, up a sloping patch of snow, which lay in a crevice of the cliff, and thence a little higher, to a natural pedestal formed by a broken shaft of rock; where—after having tied the tin box round her neck, and duly planted the white ensign of St. George beside her,—we left the superseded damsel, somewhat grimly smiling across the frozen ocean at her feet, until some Bacchus of a bear should come to relieve the loneliness of my wooden Ariadne.