On the beach I found a mass of spermacetti weighing over two hundred pounds that had been cast up by the sea. I also gathered many pumice fragments, worn by abrasion into balls and egg-shaped masses. The character of this pumice shows that it came from the great eruption of Askja, Bowl, one hundred and twenty-five miles away. It was probably blown into the eastern Jökullsá, Ice-Mountain-River, floated out to sea and was then driven north by wind and current to this shore. Among all the flotsam on this stormy shore the strangest was a find of tropical plants that had drifted with the Gulf Stream past the north of Norway, thence eastward to Nova Zembla, then north and west towards Franz Josef Land and then west towards Spitzbergen where it was liberated and came down with the Polar drift from the Siberian forests as above mentioned. Here the Tropics and the Arctic meet on the Arctic Circle.
We shot many birds on the shore for museum specimens and enough for an ample feast for our entire party. We came on board again after several hours of tramping in the driving rain and in a temperature close to the freezing point. It was a fine experience and we ran no risk save in beaching and launching of our little boat. When we had changed our clothing and had partaken of a hot meal we felt amply repaid for the exertion as the examination of the drift material on the shore was well worth while.
I quote from my journal of 1911.
“It is midnight. The wind is blowing a full gale which is periodically accented by gusts of higher velocity. The Matador is straining at her cable in an alarming manner. The rigging creaks and groans as the boat rolls in the blast. The sea is running high, the rain descends in torrents and the spray from the crests of the waves is driving over us in sheets and slashes against the windows of the tiny deck cabin. On the shore, where we landed this noon the breakers are rolling heavily and we can hear the rumble and grinding of the rocks as the water rushes back into the sea. If our cable parts we must be driven onto the shore. The Baron[7] has come on deck to bid me good night.
“It is rough outside the Ness tonight, judging by what we are getting in here,” I remarked.
“We may be thankful that we are snug here and not being driven before the gale out there,” he replied. “Many a ship has gone down to Davy Jones’ Locker off that point in just such weather as this. Do you know that the Fridtjof lies at the bottom of the Ness?”
“What of the Fridtjof, Baron?”
“She was the vessel in which I went to the Antarctic in 1903 to rescue Nordenskiöld. He had been rescued by the Argentine Frigate, Urugua, a few days before our arrival and we got back to Stockholm in April 1904. The Fridtjof took us through the Antarctic ice pack and brought us safely home and now she lies out there on those submarine lava crags. In spite of the roughness of our present position, we may well be thankful that the Matador has her anchor well gripped to the bottom of this little shelter. Good night.”
On our first visit to the east coast of Iceland we left Vopnafjörðr early in the morning, with beautiful weather and a placid sea. The water was unrippled save where the guillemots and puffins dived as the steamer approached. It was so warm that we lounged on the deck under an awning and thoroughly enjoyed the novelty of the first crossing of the Arctic Circle. There was nothing to suggest the severity of the north in this warm sunshine with no wind and certainly no ice. Langaness loomed high on our port and over the black bluffs countless birds were hovering in a querulous mood. How different was this experience from that of a year later in the same locality when the Matador was struggling to reach Jan Mayen!