All day we go under steam through the ice-floes, on each quarter a different effect—north-east there is dark cloud, with an ice-blink, a light streak on the clouds telling of a field of pack ice—ahead there is darker lilac sky, telling of open water, to our left and the south-west there is white ice and white sky, blending in a blur of soft light, so we know there is endless ice there. All of us, from the cabin boy on his first trip, enjoy the colouring, these exquisite blues and greens of the ice-tongues under water, and of the blues of the under-cut ice, reflected on lavender-tinted ripples. I eagerly make notes in colour, for my recollection of Antarctic ice tints is fading. Yes, blue paper would be the thing to paint on. Is it increase of years that makes me fail to see quite such great beauty here as in the South? I incline to think the colouring here is not quite so varied, possibly owing to the lesser variety of ice-forms. One might compare the simpler, flatter forms of the ice here and the fantastic shapes of the Antarctic, as the lowlands appear in contrast to the rocks and hills of the Highlands.
My first impression of Antarctic ice in the Weddell Sea was of bergs bigger than St Peter’s, miles in length, a hundred and fifty feet high, with lofty blue caves into which you could sail a ship, the sea bursting up their green depths from a huge glassy swell, around them small ice like ruined Greek temples, floating lightly as feathers, such marvellous forms! Here the ice is pretty, very pretty indeed, but there is nothing awesome or staggeringly wonderful in its design.
We steamed north-westerly all forenoon; a thin haze came down in the afternoon and the sun through the haze on the ice-floes gives quite a fairylike appearance, even to our somewhat rugged figures, when we scatter over the ice-floe, which we did, and enjoyed the feeling of land, as it were.—Bump! That would have upset an ink-bottle; now we lie still, up against a floe with the Fonix’s nose against the dazzling blue under-cut edge, and we throw the ice-anchor and wire-cable over the bows and hammer it into the ice. Later we towed her stern round and lay broadside to the floe and put out planks for a gangway, and filled up our water-tanks from a pale cobalt pond of fresh water. We broke a bottle of champagne at this point of our proceedings—and we all agreed it tasted rather better in the snow than down South, and we shot at the empty bottle, and practised lasso-throwing, getting our eye in against a rencontre with seal or bear. Our little white ship that seemed so insignificant down in Trömso now seems to rather dominate the ice and seascape—twenty people inside the little vessel, engines, harpoons, rifles, coals, heat and food, quite a concentrated little cosmos of life and human contrivances—our all, in this wide, empty Arctic world.
Later we pushed on and the mist obscured our path again, so we tied up against another floe, with shallow lakes of pale Reckitt’s blue on it. Far in towards its centre two seals lay on the snow, mere black dots, which I was about to go after, when, observing a smile on the face of Larsen, a typical blue-eyed hirsute Viking, I consulted with him and gathered it was “no use.” “Hole in de ice,” he said, “dey go intil!” Stupid beasts! I thought, there are points in favour of the great tame creatures of the Antarctic which one could approach and pat on the head before turning them into produce for patent leather, margarine, and olive oil.[15]
We had a pull of about a mile in the evening in our whale-boat—three double sculls—and attempted to approach four seals on the floe edge, but they dived into the water. A young member of the party came up and had a look at us, and Archie put a very pretty shot from the moving boat into its head at about ninety yards and we pulled it aboard before it had time to sink.
On the 9th July the air and mist were still southerly, and there was nothing doing except painting ice studies, firing at marks with our various rifles and pistols, shifting from one floe to another and drifting southerly at about twenty miles per day on the cold current, that brings the polar ice and water down past East Greenland to keep the people in the British Isles from becoming too slack. Our Spanish friends are brisk as can be in the cold and damp, busy all day stripping rifles, and pistols, and cameras, and putting them up again with great deftness and neatness of hand and clever nests of tools.
At aften-mad a tiny seal (Vitulina) put its innocent little face up astern, and Don Luis boldly seized Gisbert’s mannlicher and snapped a bullet into it; the telescope was sighted for a thousand yards at the time, but he got it all right.
Gisbert and the skipper in the afternoon overhauled plans for the Spanish Polar Expedition. I read some of the endless literature on the subject, and pray inwardly that I may not have to endure any more of either Arctic or Antarctic winter weather, it is the summer and the long daylight of either end of the world that I like. Heaven knows why the night was invented. The comfort of awakening at midnight to find the sun shining and no need for candles or matches is to me beyond words.
This day, the 10th July, has been more exciting—as I write we are circling round a great polar bear that has taken to the sea—we keep closing in between it and the ice-floes and it goes snorting along, horribly disgusted at being out-manœuvred. It is our third to-day! The mist lifted a little in the afternoon—it was charming colour as it lifted and faint blue appeared overhead, and the pools in the ice were most delicate yellow set in snow of faintest pink, each pool edged with emerald. Why the snow takes the delicate tints in northern high latitudes, may someone else explain. My devoir was to attempt its colour in paints, a much more difficult thing than circumventing this poor old yellow bear that I hear snuffing and puffing over the side. My companion, Don Luis V., writes his notes beside me, and runs out occasionally to see the bear that is waiting till the gun of the watch (Don José) comes off the floe; it is his turn to shoot. Don Luis got his first bear this afternoon. We were plodding along beside a fairly big and rugged floe, say a mile in length, with a seal or two on it, when someone spotted the pale yellow object far away on the violet-tinted snow, and as it was his watch, he and Gisbert and their men set out over the floe to stalk it.
The pale yellow coat of a beast on a white floe is less easily distinguished than, say, a man in a black coat, and top hat and umbrella. But unless one is colour-blind one cannot accept its colouring as protective. I must argue this out with my friend Dr Bruce when I return to town, for I see that in his charming and instructive book, “Polar Research” (which everyone should read who is the least interested in either Arctic or Antarctic regions), he thinks the tint of some piece of ice, coloured yellow by algæ, is so like the colour of a bear that seals may be misguided enough to mistake him for yellow ice. No, no. Bruin’s black nose and eyes you can see for miles, and so too you can distinguish his lemon-yellow coat, almost green in the shadow with the snow’s reflection.