MY journal for the closing days of March and the early one of April is
full of varying drifts and alternating temperatures. Still, it seemed
as if, by some gradual though scarcely explicable process, the work
of our extrication was going on. Sometimes the wind would come to us
from the southeast--the breaking-up wind as we called it, because as
it subsided the reaction of the floes developed itself in fissures;
but more frequently from the north, expediting our course to a more
genial latitude. The floes themselves were, however, much more massive
and gnarled than any we had seen before: every party that left the
vessel for an ice-tramp came back with exaggerated impressions of the
mighty energies that had hurled them together. We felt that it would
have been impossible for any organized structure of wood and metal to
resist such Maelstroms of solid ice as had left these memorials around
us, and looked forward with scarcely pleasurable anticipations to the
equivalent forces that might be required to obliterate them. Some
extracts from my journal may show how far other causes were in the mean
time operating our release.
"_April_ 7, Monday. For the last fortnight the ice has been perceptibly
moist at the surface. The open crack near our brig to the south has
now been closed for nearly a fortnight; yet the snow which covers it
is quite slushy. The trodden paths around our ship are in muddy pulp,
adhering to the boots. All this can hardly be the direct influence of
the sun upon the surface; for the thermometer seldom exceeds +16°,
and is more generally below +10° at noonday. Yet this temperature
has an evident influence upon the status of the ice, increasing its
permeability, and permitting some changes analogous to thawing, but
which I can not explain. May it be that the crystalline structure
of the ice is undergoing some modification, that increases its
capillarity, or develops an action like the endosmose and exosmose!
"It is a mere puzzle, of course, for we have not data enough to make it
a question. Yet there is another like it that I can not help setting
down. Can it be that our thermometers, so notorious in this Polar
region for their imperfect coincidence with 'sensations of cold,' are
equally fallacious as measures of absolute increments or decrements
of sensible caloric? It will not do, I suppose, to admit such a
supposition; yet the marvels which come constantly before me may almost
justify it. You know that I am no heat-maker. Well, my winter trials,
as you may imagine, have not increased my vital energies. Suppose me,
then, as you knew me when I left New York. For the past week I have
almost lived in the open air--genial, soft, bland, and to sensation
just cool enough to be pleasantly tonic. I walk moderately, and am in
comfortable, glowing warmth. I walk over the hummocks or ice floes, and
am oppressed with perspiration and lassitude. This at a temperature of
zero in the shade, and +11° in the sun! I can not realize it. To-day
the thermometer gave +10° in the shade of the ship, obviously affected
not a little by radiation, +34° in the sun over the ship's painted
side, +13° by my own observation of an instrument suspended at a
distance from the ship, and under the same circumstances in the shade,
_zero_! Yet the day seemed spring-like and delicious. The early breezes
(8 A.M.) from the southeast came with a sensation of reviving coolness,
although to their warmth we perhaps owed our sensations of pleasant
heat. While I am writing, the skaters come in to say that 'it is too
warm to skate:' yet the sun is low, and my shade thermometer gives some
ten degrees below the point of freezing.
"I have often alluded to this discrepancy between our feelings and
the recorded temperature. I have read of the same thing in the Arctic
voyages, with a reference to contrast for the explanation. But I
never until to-day realized so fully that we were warmed from within
by a mysterious, and, I must believe, unknown system of functional
compensation. I wish Liebig could make a Polar voyage! As you feel
open-windowed at the first breaking-in day of spring, with your
thermometers at vernal 60°, so feel I with the thermometer at zero!
"_April_ 10, Thursday, 2 P.M. The south-easter blows on with steady
endurance. It is now east by south; a snow-storm reminding me of home,
so soft and flaky, drifting every where; and the thermometer rising
steadily to +32° at noonday. Once more at the freezing point! it seems
hard to realize. The decks are wet, the housing dripping, the snow
adhesive and slushy.
"9 P.M. The gale continues. Our thermometer outside at a maximum of
+33°. Every thing wet, warm, and summer-like.
"I have a story to tell--a foolish adventure; but I was ennuied past
all bearing. Walking the deck, beast-like, in our damp cage, it
occurred to me that I would climb the rigging. Climb the rigging I did;
and, by a glimpse between the long wreaths of drift, saw Water! The
temptation was a sore one: I yielded to it, came down from my perch,
donned my seal-skin, shouldered my carbine, and walked off with my face
toward the wonder. None of the crew would accompany me: my mess-mates
did not volunteer: so I was alone.
"It was a walk to be remembered. Snow up to the neck; drift moist and
blinding; and a gale, luckily not a cold one, in my face. But after a
mile of such promenading as no other region can boast of, I reached
the water at last. Water it was; dark, surging water; no pellicles
of glazing ice; no sludgy streams of pancake; but the liquid element
itself, such as we saw last summer, and you see every day, stretching
out as broad as the Delaware, and in contrast with the snow at its
margin as black as Styx.
"I took a good look at it, and turned to come back. The wind had wiped
out my footsteps: all within the horizon was a waste of sleet. I had
neither compass nor signal pole to show me the way; but I kept the
gale behind me, and waded onward. I do not know how far I might have
traveled before reaching the vessel; but I had buffeted the elements
quite long enough to content me, when I heard Captain Griffin hailing
me through the drift. He had been uneasy at my stay, and was out in
search of me. We took a new departure together, were blown over a few
times, and tumbled over, no matter how often; but we hit the ships to a
notch.
"This crack is the old transverse one from northeast to southwest, off
the _Rescue's_ port beam. The gale, with such a temperature, must be
achieving much upon the ice to the southward. It can hardly reach men
so imbedded as we are; but it may so break up the southern edge of the
pack as to give us a ready drift, should we have a favoring wind. As it
is, we are undoubtedly flicking it to the north again.
"_April_ 15. The sun perceptibly warmer, and the indications of thaw
unequivocal. To guard as far as we can against the chance of the two
vessels being separated among the floes when the general break-up
comes, we began a trench to-day from one to the other. It goes down
through the snow to the solid ice; and we are going to strew rock-salt
in it, remembering that even a slight scratch on the surface will
determine the line of fracture. We will try it at any rate, even across
the entire floe to the present seat of hummocking at the open water,
though it is a distance of nearly or quite two miles. We are looking
to our approaching disruption with absorbing interest; and whether our
theories are good or bad, they give us something to think and talk
about. Our ice-cutting machine belongs to the same family. We finished
it to-day, and it will be tested to-morrow.
"The ice in the neighborhood of the fire-hole is wet and overflowed.
It seems to be depressed below the water-level. The snow has piled up
some seven or eight feet high on the vessel's side, and this, with the
radiating heat, may possibly explain this depression. But I am strongly
inclined to believe in endosmotic actions in the ice.
"_April_ 16. To-day the salting continues. The men call it our
spring-seed sowing. On board the _Rescue_, a party are at work
preparing for the return to her. The ice-cutting machine proves a
failure.
"This afternoon a solitary snow-bunting was seen flitting around our
vessel. The last time we saw this little animal was at Griffith's
Island, in the midst of the terrible storm which we were sharing
with our English brethren. Goodsir saw the same bird on the 13th, in
latitude 54°; but he was not at Winter Island till the 27th. Since
then, the little family have made their migratory journey, and are
now on their way again to these Polar seas. They breed seldom or
never south of 62°, and linger late among the Northern snows. This
poor little wanderer was an estray from his fellows. He paused at the
treasures which surrounded our ship, refreshed himself from our dirt
pile, and then flew away again on his weary journey.
"_April_ 17. A memorable day. We put out our cabin lamps, and are
henceforward content with daylight, like the rest of the world. Our
latitude is 69° 52'; our longitude, 63° 03'.
"This afternoon, while walking deck, this endless deck, with Murdaugh,
we discovered a bear walking tranquilly alongside, nearly within
gunshot. We have lost so many opportunities by the bustle and ignorance
of a universal chase, that I crawled out to attack him alone. To my
sorrow, the brute, who had been gazing at the ship dog-fashion and
curious, turned tail. He was out of range for my carbine, but I gave
him the ball as he ran in his right hind-quarter. He fell at once, and
I thought him secure; but rising instantly, he turned upon his wounded
haunch, and, very much as a dog does at a bee-sting, bit spasmodically
at the wound. For a little while he spun round, biting the bloody spot
with a short, probing nip; and then, before I could reload my piece,
started off at a limping but rapid gait. I mention this movement on
account of the very curious fact which follows. The animal had found
the ball, seized it between the incisors, and _extracted it_. The
bullet is now in my possession, distinctly marked by his teeth.
"After a very tedious and harassing pursuit, I came up to him at the
young ice. He stood upon the brink of the lead. I was within long shot,
and about to make preparations for a more deliberate and certain aim,
when he took to the water, and then to the opposite young ice, bleeding
and dropping every few yards.
"Joined by Daly, a bold, bull-headed Irishman, I crossed by a
circuitous channel, and then took to the young ice myself, and tried to
run him down. It was very exciting; and I fear I was not as prudent as
I ought to have been; for a dense fog had gathered around us, and the
young floe, level as the sea which it covered, was but two nights old.
The bear fell several times; and at last, poor fellow, dragged himself
by his fore feet, trailing his hind quarters over the incrusted snow,
so as to leave a long black imprint stained by blood.
"The fog was getting more and more dense, and the frail ice--we were
now walking, as it were, over the sea itself--bent under us so much,
that I, like a prudent man, ordered a return. This chase cost us at
least ten miles of journey, part of it at an Indian trot. We dripped
like men in a steam bath.
"_April_ 20, Sunday. Daly started with a company of sailors after the
wounded bear. They walked, by their own account, six miles before
they found him. He was unable to retreat--stood at bay; and the fools
were so scared at his 'growlings' and his 'bloody tongue,' that they
returned without daring to attack him.
"_April_ 21, Monday. I have more than common cause for thankfulness. A
mere accident kept me from starting last night to secure our bear. Had
I done so, I would probably have spared you reading more of my journal.
The ice over which we traveled so carelessly on Saturday has become, by
a sudden movement, a mass of floating rubbish. An open river, broader
than the Delaware, is now between the old ice and the nearest part of
the new, over which I walked on the 19th more than three miles.
"In the walk of this morning, which startled me with the change, I saw
for the first time a seal upon the ice. This looks very summer-like.
He was not accessible to our guns. To-day, for the first time too, the
gulls were flying over the renovated water. Coming back we saw fresh
bear tracks. How wonderful is the adaptation which enables a quadruped,
to us associated inseparably with a land existence, thus to inhabit
an ice-covered ocean. We are at least eighty miles from the nearest
land, Cape Kater; and channels innumerable must intervene between us
and terra firma. Yet this majestic animal, dependent upon his own
predatory resources alone, and, defying cold as well as hunger, guided
by a superb instinct, confides himself to these solitary, unstable
ice-fields.
"Parry, in his adventurous Polar effort, found these animals at
the most northern limit of recorded observation. Wrangell had them
as companions on his first Asiatic journey over the Polar ocean.
Navigators have found them also floating upon berg and floe far out in
open sea; and here we have them in a region some seventy miles from
the nearest stable ice. They have seldom, or, as far as my readings
go, never--if we except Parry's Spitzbergen experience--been seen so
far from land. In the great majority of cases, they seem to have been
accidentally caught and carried adrift on disengaged ice-floes. In
this way they travel to Iceland; and it may have been so perhaps with
the Spitzbergen instances. Others have been reported thirty miles
from shore in this bay. I myself noticed them fifty miles from the
Greenland coast last July.
"There is something very grand about this tawny savage; never leaving
this utter destitution, this frigid inhospitableness--coupling in
May, and bringing forth in Christmas time--a gestation carried on all
of it below zero, more than half of it in Arctic darkness--living
in perpetual snow, and dependent for life upon a never-ending
activity--using the frozen water as a raft to traverse the open seas,
that the water _unfrozen_ may yield him the means of life. No time for
hibernation has this Polar tiger: his life is one great winter."