"_APRIL_ 22. The past week has been one of dismantling,
rubbish-creating, ship-cleaning torment. First, bull's-eyes were
inserted in the deck; and the black felt housing, so comfortable in
the winter darkness, but that now shut out the sunlight like a great
pall, was triced up fore and aft, remaining only amidships. Next, the
_Rescue_, with her new bowsprit in, received her crew and officers.
They slept on board last night for the first time, but still walk over
the ice to their meals.
"When I saw the little brig through the darkness, on the afternoon of
the 13th of January, moving slowly past us and losing herself in the
gloom, while sounds like artillery mingled with the shrieking, howling,
and crashing of the ice, as the great ridges rose and fell--and when
the India-rubber boat was launched, and the men took their knapsacks,
and old Brooks called out to us to get out of the way of the rigging,
believing the brig about to topple over--I did not think there would be
a spring-time for the _Rescue_.
"We are now in the midst of those intestine changes which characterize
the house-cleanings at home. The disgusting lamps have done smoking,
the hatches are allowed to look out at the sun, and the galley, with
its perpetual odors, is banished to the hurricane-house on deck. That
peculiar interspace between the coal and the 'purser's slops,' so dark
and full of head-bumping beams, exults in the full glare of day. What
a wonderful hole we have been existing in! It, the half-deck, as it is
called on board ship, is three feet six inches high, by fourteen feet
long and seventeen broad. On it, forgetful of precedence and rank, our
bedding separated from the loose planking by a canvas cot frame, slept
Murdaugh, Vreeland, Brooks, De Haven, two cooks, and Dr. Kane. The
last-named came on board last, and found, though he is not a very large
man, a sufficiently narrow kennel between the companion-ladder and the
dinner-table. Our clothing, as it now welcomed the sun, was black with
lamp-soot; the beams above fringed, and festooned, and wreathed with
the same. My bed-coverings, frozen over the feet in the winter, are
bathed with inky water. But all this is to be removed to-day; and we go
back to the luxuries of bunks, and daylight, and a long breath.
"The day was bright and sunny. I walked out to the open water. Marks
of commotion, hummock ridges, and chasms. A new feature was the thaw.
Heretofore I could stand upon the brink of the cleanly-separated
fissures, and look down upon the bleak water as securely as from a
quartz rock. To-day every thing around (pshaw! the snow and ice, I
mean; we have no _things_ here) was wet and crumbling. The snow covered
deceitfully some very dangerous cracks: in one of these I sunk neck
deep. My carbine caught across it, and Holmes pulled me out.
"We are very anxious to obtain fresh meat for the invalids. Indeed, our
longing for something fresh is itself a disease. To-day a tantalizing
seal kept me prostrate upon the slushy ice for an hour and a half. In
spite of all my seal craft, the prime secret of which is patience, I
could not draw him into gunshot. With the characteristic curiosity of
his tribe, the poor animal would rise breast high to inspect my fur
cap. Presently a whale spouted, and off he went.
"The decks are clear! the barrels stowed away below, the fore-peak
restored, the old bunks reoccupied, and my mess-mates snoozing away as
in old times, a fire burning in the stove, and lard lamps flaming away
vigorously upon my paper. Daylight still finds its way down the hatch,
although it is eleven o'clock.
"_April_ 24, Thursday. The snow falls in loose, flaky, home feathers.
The decks are wet, and the misty air has the peculiar ground-glass
translucency which I noticed last summer. When I came up before
breakfast to look around, the thermometer gave +32°, the familiar
temperature of old times: to me it was warm and sultry.
"The season of summer, if not now upon us, is close at hand. It seems
but yesterday that we hailed the dawning day and burned our fingers in
the frozen mercury; now we have a summer snow-storm at 32°.
"This little table will show you how stealthily and how rapidly summer
has trampled down winter:
Mean temperature for week ending March 14th,
-23° 94'.
Mean temperature for week ending March 21st,
-9° 07'; gain, 14° 87'.
Mean temperature for week ending March 28th,
-16° 90'; loss, 7° 83'.
Mean temperature for week ending April 4th,
-4° 31'; gain, 12° 39'.
Mean temperature for week ending April 11th,
+8° 59'; gain, 12° 90'.
Mean temperature for week ending April 18th,
+9° 55'; gain, 0° 55'.
Mean temperature for five days ending April 23d,
+14° 56'; gain, 5° 01'.
"Changes show themselves in the configuration of the snow surfaces.
The hummocks seem already to have diminished by evaporation. They are
less angular, and blend in rounder hues with the snow drifts. Night has
gone. I see still at midnight the circumpolar stars, and Jupiter, in
his splendor, on the eastern sky; but I can read at midnight.
"_April_ 25, Friday. Walked to open water to the northeast. The snow
is melted through the crust. I sink up to my knees. Saw the tracks of
a fox, very recent. The little fellow had come from the direction of
the poor wounded bear, now cut off from us by the broken ice, swimming
the lead at its narrowest crossing, some fifteen paces. So long as his
patron could have supplied him with food, the little parasite would not
have left him. It may be that the bear has perished from inability to
hunt for both.
"Saw a right whale! Saw also a large flock of geese at 9 A.M., winging
their way to the northward, and flying very low. They were so irregular
in their order of flight, that I would have taken them for ducks--the
_Somateria_; but my mess-mates say geese.
"_April_ 26, Saturday. One of the changes which we must expect has
brought back to us comparative winter. Yesterday gave us a noonday
and morning temperature of +28°. It is now (10 P.M.) -9°. It was -7°
at noonday, with a bright, clear sunshine. The change is due to a
northerly wind. It has blown steadily throughout the day from northwest
by north. We hope much from it in the way of drift. Our latitude was
69° 40' 42" N.; our longitude, 63° 08' 46" W.
"The wind change has given us no new ruptures. Indeed, it seems to have
shut up the environing 'leads' around us. This may be a good preface to
a squeeze; for I can see no water from the mast-head.
"The stars at midnight remind me of our Lancaster Sound noondays. The
peculiar zone of fairly blended light, stretching over an amplitude of
some seventy degrees--the colors red, Indian red, Italian pink, with
the yellows; and then a light cobalt, gradually deepening into intense
indigo as it reaches the northern horizon.
"_April_ 27, Sunday. The cold increases, and our northwest wind
continues. The day's observation gives us 69° 35' 50", so that we still
go south encouragingly, though slowly. This big floe is so solid, that
some of us are beginning to fear it may resist the pressure, and not
break up in the bay; leaving us to the thaws of summer and the stormy
winds of September before our imprisonment ceases. The apprehension has
no mirth in it.
"Walked to the open water to the northward, nearly ahead of us. The
leads were so frozen over as to bear me. Looking across the level,
letting my eyes wander from tussock to tussock of entangled floe-ice,
as they had grouped themselves in freezing, I heard the blowing of a
narwhal, followed by the peculiar swash of squeezing ice. A short walk
showed me some six or eight conical elevations, forced upward upon the
recently-formed ice, evidently by a force protruding from beneath.
While looking at these, the sounds, though seemingly further off,
increased to such a degree that I was convinced the ice was in action,
and started off to double a cape of hummocks and see the commotion. Our
steward, Morton, a shrewd, observant fellow, who was with me, suddenly
called out, 'Look here, sir--here!'
"Each of these little cones was steaming like the salices or
mud-volcanoes of Mexico, the broken ice on top vibrating, and every now
and then tumbling, as if by some pulsatory movement below. Presently,
in one concerted diapason, a group of narwhals, imprisoned by the
congelation of the opening,[I] spouted their release, scattering spray
and snow in every direction. I was not more than three yards from the
nearest cone; yet I could see nothing of the animal except this jet.
[I] I found afterward from the Danes that they assemble in this way
when extensive areas are frozen. Mr. Moldrup, of Godhaven, mentions
fifty being killed at one of these congregations.
"The noise was so great that I could hardly make the steward hear
me. It had, moreover, more of voice mingled with its sibilant 'blow'
than I had ever heard--a distinct and somewhat metallic tone, thrown
out impulsively, and yet with the crescendo and diminuendo of an
expiration. According to the views of some systematic naturalists,
the cetacea have, strictly speaking, no voice. This opinion admits of
much modification. The white whale in Wellington Sound whistled while
submerged and swimming under our brig; and, in the present singular
case, the ejaculatory character of the tone sounded like a gigantic
bark.[J]
[J] On this occasion, I heard the white whale singing under water--a
peculiar note between the whistle and the Tyrolean yodel. Our men
compared it to the Jew's-harp. Once, off Cape James, it was so loud
that we heard it in the cabin, as if proceeding from the cable-tier.
I have often, in my walks over the ice-openings, been startled by the
resemblance between the sudden spout of a near narwhal and the bark of
an animal.
"_May_ 1, Thursday. A little before ten this morning, the sun showed
almost half its disk above the snow horizon, with his usual appanage of
pearly opals and mellowed fire displayed about the southern heavens.
At noon I walked out in the full glare, twenty-five degrees above the
freezing-point on my face, and about as many below it on my back--a
May-day frolic in the snow! The crisp covering, over which I used to
skim along a few weeks ago, broke through with me at every step. It
was just strong enough to tantalize and deceive. Never, in the warmest
days of summer harvest-time, have I felt the heat so much as on this
Arctic May-day; and yet no life, no organization carried me back to
the spring-time of reviving nature. Even the tinnitus of the idle
ear, that inner droning that sings to you in the silent sunshine at
home, was wanting. In fact, the silentness was so complete, and the
reflection from the snow so excessive, though I had a green rag over my
face, that when I got far away, and out of sight of every thing but the
interminable ice, it made me feel as if the world I left you in and the
world about me were not exactly parts of the same planet.
"And so I traveled back to my sick men. God bless us! here are old
Blinn, and Carter, and Wilson, all on my list for fainting spells: the
same scurvy syncope our officers complain of. Captain Griffin fainted
dead away, and Lovell complains of strange feelings. We need fresh food
sorely. I hardly think any organized expedition to these regions was
ever so completely deprived of anti-scorbutic diet as we are at this
time.
"Midnight. My old scurvy symptoms, it may be, that keep me from
sleeping. But I write by the light of the sun; and it really seems to
me that there is a something about this persistent day antagonistic to
sleep. The idea thrust itself upon me last summer. Thinking the fact
over afterward, I referred it to habit, acting unphilosophically, as
it is apt to do; and concluded that my sleeplessness was not connected
directly with the augmented or continued light. But this is not so. I
neither get to sleep so easily nor sleep as long, nor, indeed, do I
seem to need the same quantity of sleep as when we had the alternation
of light and darkness. On the other hand, I think our long Arctic night
solicited a more than common ration of the same restorative blessing,
though my journal has shown you that our waking energies during that
period were not so heavily taxed as to require more than their usual
intermission."
The day after this entry superadded the visitation of snow blindness to
our trials. Four of the party were attacked severely, myself among the
rest; so severely, indeed, as to make it impossible for me to write,
and, what was much more important in the estimation of our scurvy
patients, impossible for me to hunt. The brief notes which were made in
my journal by the kindness of a brother officer speak of our sensible
approach toward a final disengagement from the ice-field. Though the
winds were generally from the southwest, our drift tended very plainly
to the south: in one day, we reduced our latitude eighteen miles,
passing at the same time nearly a degree of longitude, twenty-two miles
to the east. The ice, too, was becoming more infiltrated, and the heavy
snow-banks that surrounded our vessel were saturated with water. Spring
was doing its office.