[Illustration: TOPOGRAPHY OF THE FLOE, MAY 31.
A. Advance. B B. Shorter diameter, 314 miles. R. Rescue. CC. Longer
diameter, 51/2 miles. Distance between the vessels, 500 yards.]
"_JUNE_ 1. June opens on us warm. Our mean temperature to-day has been
above the freezing point, 34°; our lowest only 29°; and at 11 this
morning it rose to 40°. The snow-birds increase in numbers and in
confidence. It is delightful to hear their sweet jargon. They alight
on the decks, and come unhesitatingly to our very feet. These dear
little Fringillides have evidently never visited Christian lands.
"_June_ 3. The day misty and obscure: no land in sight from aloft; and
no change apparent in the floe. But we notice a distinct undulation in
the ice trenches alongside, caused probably by some propagated swell.
"I walked out at night between 9 and 11 o'clock in search of open
water. We had the full light of day, but without its oppressive glare.
The thawed condition of the marginal ice made the walk difficult, and
forced us at last to give it up. But, climbing to the top of a hummock,
we could see the bay rolling its almost summer waves close under our
view. It was a grand sight, but more saddening than grand. It seems
like our cup of Tantalus; we are never to reach it. And while we are
floating close upon it, the season is advancing; and if we are ever to
aid our brothers in the search, we should even now be hurrying back.
"_June_ 4. Yesterday over again. But the water is coming nearer us.
As we stand on deck, we can see the black and open channel-way on
every side of us, except off our port quarter: it is useless to talk
of points of the compass; our floe rotates so constantly from right
to left, as to make them useless in description. To port, the extent
of ice baffles the eye, even from aloft; it must, however, be a mere
isthmus.
"_June_ 5, Thursday. We notice again this morning the movement in the
trench alongside. The floating scum of rubbish advances and recedes
with a regularity that can only be due to some equable undulation from
without to the north. We continue perched up, just as we were after our
great lift of last December. A more careful measurement than we had
made before, gave us yesterday, between our height aft and depression
forward, a difference of level of 6 feet 4 inches. This inclination
tells in a length of 83 feet--about one in thirteen.
"P.M. The break-up at last! a little after five this afternoon, Mr.
Griffin left us for the _Rescue_, after making a short visit. He had
hardly gone before I heard a hail and its answer, both of them in a
tone of more excitement than we had been used to for some time past;
and the next moment, the cry, 'Ice cracking ahead!'
"Murdaugh and myself reached the deck just in time to see De Haven
crossing our gangway. We followed. Imagine our feelings when, midway
between the two vessels, we saw Griffin with the ice separating before
him, and at the same instant found a crack tracing its way between us,
and the water spinning up to the surface. 'Stick by the floe. Good-by!
What news for home?' said he. One jump across the chasm, a hearty
God-bless-you shake of the hand, a long jump back, and a little river
divided our party.
"Griffin made his way along one fissure and over another. We followed
a lead that was open to our starboard beam, each man for himself. In
half a minute or less came the outcry, 'She's breaking out: all hands
aboard!' and within ten minutes from Griffin's first hail, while we
were yet scrambling into our little Ark of Refuge, the whole area about
us was divided by irregular chasms in every direction.
[Illustration: BIRD'S-EYE view of floe, JUNE 5.
A. Advance. D. Floe adhering to the Advance. R. Rescue. C. Path between
brigs before break-up. H H. Hummocks.]
"All this was at half past five. At six I took a bird's-eye sketch from
aloft. Many of the fissures were already some twenty paces across.
Conflicting forces were at work every where; one round-house moving
here, another in an opposite direction, the two vessels parting
company. Since the night of our Lancaster Sound commotion, months
ago, the _Rescue_ had not changed her bearing: she was already on our
port-beam. Every thing was changed.
"Our brig, however, had not yet found an even keel. The enormous masses
of ice, thrust under her stern by the action of repeated pressures, had
glued themselves together so completely, that we remained cradled in a
mass of ice exceeding twenty-five feet in solid depth. Many of these
tables were liberated by the swell, and rose majestically from their
recesses, striking the ship, and then escaping above the surface for a
moment, with a sudden vault.
"To add to the novelty of our situation, two cracks coming together
obliquely, met a few yards astern of us, cleaving through the heavy
ice, and leaving us attached to a triangular fragment of 14 by 22
paces. This berg-like fragment, reduced as it was, continued its close
adhesion. Its buoyancy was so great, that it acted like a camel,
retaining the brig's stern high in the air, her bows thrown down
toward the water. We are so at this moment, 10 P.M."
All hands were in the mean time actively at work. The floe had been to
us terra firma so long that we had applied it to all the purposes of
land. Clothes and clothes' lines, sledges, preserved meats, kindling
wood and planking, were now all bundled on board. The artificial
horizon, which had stood for eight months upon a little ice-pedestal,
was barely saved; and I had to work hard to get one of my few remaining
thermometers from a neighboring hummock.
The cause of this sudden disruption--I mean the immediate cause, for
the summer influences had prepared the floe for disintegration--was
evidently the sea-swell setting from the southeast. This swell had
given us minor manifestations of its existence as far back as the
1st of June. Whether it was increased without, or our floe made more
accessible to it by the drifting away of other and protecting floes,
I can not say. This, however, was clear, that the great undulations
propagated by wave action caused our disruption. The proof of this I
shall not forget.
Standing on our little deck, and looking out on the floe, we had the
strange spectacle of an undulating solidity, a propagated wave borne in
swell-like ridges, as if our ice was a carpet shaken by Titans. I can
not convey the effect of this sublime spectacle. The ice, broken into
polyhedric masses, gave at a few hundred yards no indications to the
eye of the lines of separation; besides which, the infiltration of salt
water had no doubt increased the plasticity of the material. Imagine,
then, this apparently solid surface, by long association as unyielding
to us as the shore, taking suddenly upon itself the functions of
fluidity, another condition of matter. It absolutely produced something
like the nausea of sea-sickness to see the swell of the ice, rising,
and falling, and bending, transmitting with pliant facility the
advancing wave.
A hummock hill, about midway between us and the _Rescue_, gave me an
opportunity of measuring rudely the height of the swell. It rose till
it covered her quarter boat; sinking again till I could see the side
of the brig down to her water-line, an interval of five feet at least.
"As we walk along the edge of the open fissures, we see a wonderful
variety in the thickness of the ice. Our apparently level surface
is, in fact, a mosaic work of ices, frozen at separate periods,
and tesselated by the several changes or disruptions which we have
undergone. Thus I can see the tables under our stern extending down at
least twenty-five feet: adjoining this is ice of four feet; next comes
a field of six feet; and then hummock ridges, with tables choked below,
so as to give an apparent depth of twenty.
"The 'calves' also, of which a great many have now risen to the
surface, are worthy of note. These singular masses are evidently
fragments of tables, of every degree of thickness, which have been
forced down by pressure, and afterward, by some change in the
temperature of the water, or by wave and tidal actions, have been
liberated again from the floe, and find their way upward wherever an
opening permits. We saw them honeycombed and cellular, water-sodden
and in rounded bowlders, rising from the depths of the sea. Their
density, so near that of the liquid in which they were submerged, made
this rise slow and impressive. We could see them many fathoms below,
voyaging again to the upper world. Once between the gaping edges of the
lead, they effectually prevent the closing. They are about us in every
direction, interposed between the fields.
"The appendage which sustains our brig has a good deal of this
character. I will try to make an exact drawing of it as a curiosity,
if it hangs on to us much longer. Its buoyancy indicates great
submerged mass. A strong cable and ice anchor have been carried to
a floe on our starboard bow, and the swell drives it upon us like a
great battering-ram. This ingenious method of pounding us out of our
tenacious cradle subjects us to a regular succession of heavy shocks,
which would startle a man not used to ice navigation. At the time I
write, 11 P.M., we have been nearly three hours subjected to this
banging without any apparent impression. To-morrow we will, if not
liberated, apply the saw; and then again to the warps!
"11:20 P.M. In the midst of fragments, few more than a hundred yards in
length, nearly all much smaller. Between them are zigzag leads of open
water. Astern of us is an expansion of some fifty yards across; ahead,
a winding creek, wider than our brig. Thus closes the day.
"One thing more: a thought of gratitude before I turn in. This journal
shows that I have been in the daily habit of taking long, solitary
walks upon the ice, miles from the ship. Suppose this rupture to have
come entirely without forewarning! I had greased my boots for a walk a
few hours before the change, and only postponed it because I happened
to get absorbed in a book."
[Illustration: TOPOGRAPHY OF FLOE, JUNE 5.]