Arctic Adventures

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Several days we continued to sail on, sometimes gliding smoothly through the narrow lanes, at others rushing like a battering ram against the floes which impeded our progress. Still, at the end of the time, we appeared to be no nearer the moment of our escape than at first. Masses of ice lay to the southward which closed up directly we began to entertain hopes of reaching them, forming an impenetrable barrier across the course we had to steer.

Again the wind fell. For another day we struggled manfully, sawing and blasting the ice to reach a pool beyond which clear leads were seen. The night came down on us while we were secured to a floe. The next morning the ice had closed round our ship, and we were once more in its vice-like grasp. Observations were taken, and it was found that, instead of being nearer the south after all our exertions, we, with the whole mass of ice in which we were locked up, were drifting to the northward. All hopes of escaping were abandoned. The broken and rugged state of the ice prevented the possibility of our traversing it with sleighs or dragging boats over it, either to the southward or to the coast of Greenland. Between us and the far-distant shore we should probably find an open space of water which, without the boats, it would be impossible to cross.

We had now to make up our minds to spend the winter in the ice, and wait for the summer to get free, should the ship in the meantime escape being crushed, a fate we knew full well might at any moment overtake her. We were fast to a level floe of great thickness, almost smooth enough in some places for skating, had we possessed skates to amuse ourselves. The inevitable being known, our spirits rose; we formed plans for passing our time and preparing the ship to enable us to endure the cold of an Arctic winter; we even joked on our condition. Ewen suggested that if we were to drift at the rate we were now going we might become discoverers of the North Pole.

So solid was the ice everywhere around it appeared to us that no further damage could happen to the ship, and that all we had to do was to wait patiently until she was liberated during the next summer.

Cold as were the nights, the sun during the day made the air pleasant when the weather was calm, if not almost too hot for exercise in our Arctic clothing. As before, excursions were undertaken in search of walruses and seals, with a slight hope of meeting with a whale, which might come up to breathe in a pool.

Sandy, Ewen, and I, with two other men, started from the ship; Ewen and I carrying our guns, Sandy his trusty harpoon and line, the men additional harpoons and spears, with a small sledge for dragging back any large game we might kill. It was of the greatest importance to obtain fresh meat to keep away that dreadful complaint, scurvy.

We had crossed our floe, as we called the mass to which we were attached, and were making our way westward in the direction of the land, hoping that from the top of some hummock we might chance to see it. Should the worst come to the worst, we must contrive to get there, and look out for some of the people, who we had heard say are good natured enough, though rather too fond of blubber to make them pleasant messmates in a small hut.

Ewen and I had dropped some way behind our companions, when we saw them turn to the northward towards an ice-hole, which we had shortly before discovered from the top of a hummock. We were about to follow, when Ewen declared that he saw a bear in an opposite direction stealing along amid the broken ice.

We hurried on in the direction he had seen the animal, hoping soon again to catch sight of it. An extensive hummock was before us: I agreed to go round one side, while he took the other. I had parted from him scarcely five minutes when I heard him utter a loud cry for help. I hurried back, expecting to find that he had been attacked by the bear. What was my dismay then to see neither him nor the bear, but I distinguished a black spot just above the ice near where I had left him. I rushed on, when I saw Ewen’s head projecting out of a water-hole while his hands were holding on to the ice.