“We shall have a full ship!” cried the captain, rubbing his hands as we lay in the pool with a whale on each side, which had been killed within an hour after we reached the open water. Others were spouting in all directions, and two boats being away, it was hoped that we should have a couple of fish ready to take the place of the others, the moment the flensing was finished. But as I had already seen the rapid way in which the ice changes its position in those regions, I was not too sanguine. Scarcely had the blubber from the two whales been stored below, than the ice was seen to be moving, and as the boats were towing up a third whale, it began to close in on us, the large pool becoming a broad lane, while other channels disappeared altogether. Notwithstanding this the whale was brought alongside, and every effort was made to flense it rapidly. Still the ice was coming closer and closer. A favourable breeze just then sprang up, and a narrow lead which ran towards an expansive pool opened out before us. By remaining where we were we might get crushed before we could flense the whale, and with great reluctance the captain ordered it to be cast off and sail made.
We had not got a quarter of a mile, when, looking astern, we saw that the spot where we had floated was one sheet of ice.
“Better luck, next time,” said our skipper, who was always anxious to encourage the men.
That luck however was not for us. The lead as we advanced became blocked up with floating masses, some of them monster icebergs, amid which we forced our way until the wind dropped.
The boats were now sent ahead, some to tow, others to shove away with long poles the ice which impeded our progress. At length we reached an ice-hole, when the boats being hoisted on board, we made sail, hoping to find a lead on the opposite side, but we were to be disappointed—no opening could be discovered.
We, as usual, made fast to a floe, and the captain after a visit to the crow’s nest, expressed his intention of returning southward.
The announcement was received with a cheer by the crew, but there was no wind, and we had to wait for a breeze to carry us back the way we had come. That way was, however, no longer open: the pools were lessening in size, and in a few hours not a single spot of clear water could be seen.
Again and again the crow’s nest was visited, but each time the same report was brought. It was very evident that we were closely beset. Still our brave captain did not despair, and promised that, should the ice open again, it would not be his fault if the ship failed to make her way through it.
The object of the voyage, for the time, was entirely forgotten, all we thought of was to effect our escape. Never for a minute night or day was the crow’s nest empty, some one being always on the look-out to report the state of the ice. I frequently went aloft. Ice alone was visible in whichever way I looked: here piled into immense masses, huge fragments of glaciers detached from the neighbouring shores either of Greenland or Spitzbergen; there broken hummocky slabs resting against each other in every variety of form; or else vast level plains, over which it appeared that a sleigh might travel for miles without impediment; but water there was none, and I could scarcely hope that that frozen expanse would ever again break up sufficiently to allow us to force our way through. We knew that at all events we should have to encounter, to the southward, the numberless icebergs and the dense floes through which we had before passed. Had we found my brother David I fancied that I should have been happy, but his fate was still shrouded in mystery, and even if we escaped we should have to return without him.
The sun now remained between two and three hours below the horizon, but, short as was the night, the holes we had bored to obtain water were frozen over in the morning. Still we hoped that an equinoctial storm might break up the ice-fields and set us free. Before, however, we had been many days in this position, a dark streak was seen to the southward.