AN ISLAND OF ICE.
I had to approach the coast within two miles before I could satisfy my
mind of its nature, and then all doubt left me.
It was _ice!_ a mighty crescent of it--as was now in a measure
gatherable, floating upon the dark blue waters like the new moon upon
the field of the sky.
For a great while I had struggled with my misgivings, so tyrannically
will hope lord it even over conviction itself, until it was impossible
for me to any longer mistake. And then, when I knew it to be ice, I
asked myself what other thing I expected it should prove, seeing that
this ocean had been plentifully navigated since Cook's time and no land
discovered where I was; and I called myself a fool and cursed the hope
that had cheated me, and, in short, gave way to a violent outburst of
passion, and was indeed so wild with grief and rage that, had my ecstasy
been but a very little greater, I must have jumped overboard, so great
was my loathing of life then, and the horror the sight of the ice filled
me with.
Indeed, you cannot conceive how shocking to me was the appearance of
that great gleaming length of white desolation. On the deck of a stout
ship sailing safely past it I should have found the scene magnificent, I
doubt not; for the sun, being low with westering, shone redly, and the
range of ice stood in a kind of gold atmosphere which gave an
extraordinary richness to the shadowings of its rocks and peaks, and a
particular fullness of mellow whiteness to its lustrous parts, softening
the dazzle into an airy tenderness of brightness, so that the whole mass
shone out with the blandness visible in a glorious star. But its main
beauty lay in those features by which I knew it to be ice--I mean in a
vast surprising variety of forms, such as steeples, towers, columns,
pyramids, ruins as it might be of temples, grotesque shapes as of mighty
statues, left unfinished by the hands of Titans, domes as of cathedrals,
castellated heights, fragments of ramparts, and the like. These features
lay in groups, as if veritably the line of coast were dotted with
gatherings of royal mansions and remains of imperial magnificence, all
of white marble, yet with a glassy tincture as though the material owned
something of a Parian quality.
I had to come within two miles, as I have said, before these elegancies
broke upon me, so deceptively did their delicacy of outlines mingle with
the dark blue softness beyond. In places the coast ran up to a height of
two or three hundred feet, in others it sloped down to twenty feet. For
some miles it was like the face of a cliff, a sheer abrupt, with scarce
a scar upon its front, staring with a wild bald look over the frosty
beautiful blue of that afternoon sea. Here and there it projected a
forefoot, some white and massive rock, upon which the swell of the ocean
burst in thunder, and flew to almost the height of the cliff in a very
great and glorious fury of foam. In other parts, where I suspected a
sort of beach, there was the silver tremble of surf; but in the main,
the heave coming out of the north-east, the folds swept the base of the
ice without froth.
I say again, beheld in the red sunshine, that line of ice, resembling a
coast of marble defining the liquid junction of the swelling folds of
sapphire below and the moist violet of the eastern sky beyond and over
it, crowned at points with delicate imitations of princely habitations,
would have offered a noble and magnificent spectacle to a mind at ease;
but to my eyes its enchantments were killed by the horror I felt. It was
a lonely, hideous waste, rendered the more shocking by the consideration
that the whole vast range was formed of blocks of frozen water which
warmth would dissolve; that it was a country as solid as rock and as
unsubstantial as a cloud, to be shunned by the mariner as though it was
Death's own pavilion, the estate and mansion of the grisly spectre, and
creating round about it as supreme a desolation and loneliness of ocean
as that which reigned in its own white stillness.
Though I held the boat's head for it I was at a loss--in so much
confusion of mind that I knew not what to do. I did not doubt by the
character of the swell that its limits in the north-east extended only
to the sensible horizon; in other words, that its extremity there would
not be above five miles distant, though to what latitude its southern
arm did curve was not to be conjectured.
Should I steer north and seek to go clear of it? Somehow, the presence
of this similitude of land made the sea appear as enormous as space
itself. Whilst it was all clear horizon the immensity of the deep was in
a measure limited to the vision by its cincture. But this ice-line gave
the eye something to measure with, and when I looked at those leagues of
frozen shore my spirits sank into deepest dejection at the thought of
the vastness of the waters in whose heart I floated in my little boat.
However, I resolved at last to land if landing was possible. I could
stretch my limbs, recruit myself by exercise, and might even make shift
to obtain a night's rest. I stood in desperate need of sleep, but there
was no repose to be had in the boat. I durst not lie down in her; if
nature overcame me and I fell asleep in a sitting posture, I might wake
to find the boat capsized and myself drowning. This consideration
resolved me, and by this time being within half a mile of the coast, I
ran my eye carefully along it to observe a safe nook for my boat to
enter and myself to land in.
Though for a great distance, as I have said, the front of the cliff, and
where it was highest too, was a sheer fall, coming like the side of a
house to the water, that part of the island towards which my boat's head
was pointed sloped down and continued in a low shore, with hummocks of
ice upon it at irregular intervals, to where it died out in the
north-east. I now saw that this part had a broken appearance as if it
had been violently rent from a mainland of ice; also, to my approach,
many ledges projecting into the sea stole into view. There were ravines
and gorges, and almost on a line with the boat's head was an assemblage
of those delicate glass-like counterfeits of spires, towers, and the
like, of which I have spoken, standing just beyond a brow whose
declivity fell very easily to the water.
To make you see the picture as I have it in my mind would be beyond my
art; it is not in the pen--not in the brush either, I should think--to
convey even a tolerable portraiture of the ruggedness, the fairy
grouping, the shelves, hollows, crags, terraces, precipices, and beach
of this kingdom of ice, where its frontal line broke away from the
smooth face of the tall reaches, and ran with a ploughed, scarred, and
serrated countenance northwards.
Very happily I had insensibly steered for perhaps the safest spot that I
could have lighted on; this was formed of a large projection of rock,
standing aslant, so that the swell rolled past it without breaking. The
rock made a sort of cove, towards which I sailed in full confidence that
the water there would be smooth. Nor was I deceived, for I saw that the
rock acted as a breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a good way
beyond it. I thereupon steered for the starboard of this rock, and when
I was within it found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarce
perceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my sail, and, standing to
the oar, sculled the boat to a low lump of ice, on to which I stepped.
My first business was to secure the boat; this I did by inserting the
mast into a deep, thin crevice in the ice and making the painter fast to
it as to a pole. The sun was now very low, and would soon be gone. The
cold was extreme, yet I did not suffer from it as in the boat. There is
a quality in snow which it would be ridiculous to speak of as _warmth_;
yet, as you may observe after a heavy fall ashore on top of a black
frost, it seems to have a power of blunting the sharp edge of the cold,
and the snow on this shore of ice being very abundant, though frozen as
hard as the ice itself, appeared to mitigate the intolerable rigour I
had languished under upon the water, in the brig and afterwards. This
might also be owing to the dryness of the cold.
Having secured the boat I beat my hands heartily upon my breast, and
fell to pacing a little level of ice whilst I considered what I should
do. The coast--I cannot but speak of this frozen territory as land--went
in a gentle slope behind me to the height of about thirty feet; the
ground was greatly broken with rocks and boulders and sharp points,
whence I suspected many fissures in which the snow might not be so hard
but that I might sink deep enough to be smothered. I saw no cave nor
hollow that I could make a bedroom of, and the improved circulation of
my blood giving me spirits enough to resolve quickly, I made up my mind
to use my boat as a bed.
So I went to work. I took the oar and jammed it into such another
crevice as the mast stood in, and to it I secured the boat by another
line. This moored her very safely. There was as good promise of a fair
quiet night as I might count upon in these treacherous latitudes; the
haven in which the boat lay was sheltered and the water almost still,
and this I reckoned would hold whilst the breeze hung northerly and the
swell rolled from the north-east. I spread the sail over the seats,
which served as beams for the support of this little ceiling of canvas,
and enough of it remained to supply me with a pillow and to cover my
legs. I fell to this work whilst there was light, and when I had
prepared my habitation, I took a bottle of ale and a handful of victuals
ashore and made my supper, walking briskly whilst I ate and drank.
I caught myself sometimes looking yearningly towards the brow of the
slope, as though from that eminence I should gain an extensive prospect
of the sea and perhaps behold a ship; but I wanted the courage to climb,
chiefly because I was afraid of tumbling into a hole and miserably
perishing, and likewise because I shrank from the idea of being
overtaken up there by the darkness. There was a kind of companionship in
the boat, the support of which I should lose if I left her.
The going of the sun was attended by so much glory that the whole weight
of my situation and the pressure of my solitude did not come upon me
until his light was gone. The swell ran athwart his mirroring in lines
of molten gold; the sky was a sheet of scarlet fire where he was, paling
zenithwards into an ardent orange. The splendour tipped the frozen coast
with points of ruby flame which sparkled and throbbed like sentinel
beacons along the white and silent range. The low thunder of far-off
hills of water bursting against the projections rolled sulkily down upon
the weak wind. Just beyond the edge of the slope, about a third of a
mile to the north of my little haven, stood an assemblage of exquisitely
airy outlines--configurations such as I have described; their
crystalline nature stole out to the lustrous colouring of the glowing
west, and they had the appearance of tinted glass of several dyes of
red, the delicate fibres being deep of hue, the stouter ones pale; and
never did the highest moon of human invention reach to anything more
glorious and dainty, more sweetly simulative of the arts of a fairy-like
imagination than yonder cluster of icy fabrics, fashioned, as it entered
my head to conceive, as pavilions by the hands of the spirits of the
frozen world, and gilt and painted by the beams of the setting sun.
But all this wild and unreal beauty melted away to the oncoming of the
dusk; and when the sun was gone and the twilight had put a new quality
of bleakness into the air, when the sea rolled in a welter of dark
shadows, one sombre fold shouldering another--a very swarming of
restless giant phantoms--when the shining of the stars low down in the
unfathomable obscurity of the north and south quarters gave to the ocean
in those directions a frightful immensity of surface, making you feel as
though you viewed the scene from the centre of the firmament, and were
gazing down the spangled slopes of infinity--oh, _then_ it was that the
full spirit of the solitude of this pale and silent seat of ice took
possession of me. I found a meaning I had not before caught in the
complaining murmur of the night breeze blowing in small gusts along the
rocky shore, and in the deep organ-like tremulous _hum_ of the swell
thundering miles distant on the northward-pointing cliffs. This was a
note I had missed whilst the sun shone. Perhaps my senses were sharpened
by the darkness. It mingled with the booming of the bursts of water on
this side the range, and gave me to know that the northward extremity of
the island did not extend so far as I had supposed from my view of it in
the boat. Yet I could also suppose that the beat of the swell formed a
mighty cannonading capable of making itself heard afar, and the ice,
being resonant, with many smooth if not polished tracts upon it, readily
transmitted the sound, yes, though the cause of it lay as far off as the
horizon.
I will not say that my loneliness frightened me, but it subdued my
heart with a weight as if it were something sensible, and filled me with
a sort of consternation that was full of awe. The moon was up, but the
rocks hid the side of the sea she rode over, and her face was not to be
viewed from where I was until she had marched two-thirds of her path to
the meridian. The coast ran away on either hand in cold motionless
blocks of pallor, which further on fell (by deception of the sheen of
the stars) into a kind of twisting and snaking glimmer, and you followed
it into an extraordinarily elusive faintness that was neither light nor
colour in the liquid gloom, long after the sight had outrun the
visibility of the range. At intervals I was startled by sounds,
sometimes sullen, like a muffled subterranean explosion, sometimes
sharp, like a quick splintering of an iron-hard substance. These noises,
I presently gathered, were made by the ice stretching and cracking in
fifty different directions. The mass was so vast and substantial you
could not but think of it as a country with its foot resting upon the
bed of the sea. 'Twas a folly of my nerves no doubt, yet it added to my
consternation to reflect that this solid territory, reverberating the
repelled blows of the ocean swell, was as much afloat as my boat, and so
much less actual than my boat that, could it be towed a few degrees
further north, it would melt into pouring waters and vanish as utterly
with its little cities of columns, steeples, and minarets as a wreath of
steam upon the air.
This gave a spirit-like character to it in my dismayed inquiring eyes
which was greatly increased by the vagueness it took from the dusk. It
was such a scene, methought, as the souls of seamen drowned in these
seas might flock to and haunt. The white and icy spell upon it wrought
in familiar things. The stars looking down upon me over the edge of the
cliffs were like the eyes of shapes (easy to fashion out of the
darkness) kneeling up there and peering at the human intruder who was
pacing his narrow floor of ice for warmth. The deceit of the shadows
proportioned the blanched ruggedness of the cliff's face on the north
side into heads and bodies of monsters. I beheld a giant, from his waist
up, leaning his cheek upon his arm; a great cross with a burlesque
figure, as of a friar, kneeling near it; a mighty helmet with a white
plume curled; the shadowy conformation of a huge couchant beast, with a
hundred other such unsubstantial prodigies. Had the moon shone in the
west I dare say I should have witnessed a score more such things, for
the snow was like white paper, on which the clear black shadows of the
ice-rocks could not but have cast the likeness of many startling
phantasies.
I sought to calm my mind by considering my position, and to divert my
thoughts from the star-wrought apparitions of the broken slopes I asked
myself what should be my plans, what my chance for delivering myself
from this unparalleled situation. At this distance of time I cannot
precisely tell how long the provisions I had brought from the foundered
brig were calculated to last me, but I am sure I had not a week's
supply. This, then, made it plain that my business was not to linger
here, but to push into the ocean afresh as speedily as possible, for to
my mind nothing in life was clearer than that my only chance lay in my
falling in with a ship. Yet how did my heart sink when I reflected upon
the mighty breast of sea in which I was forlornly to seek for succour!
My eyes went to the squab black outline of the boat, and the littleness
of her sent a shudder through me. It is true she had nobly carried me
through some fierce weather, yet at the expense of many leagues of
southing, of a deeper penetration into the solitary wilds of the polar
waters.
However, I was sensible that I was depressed, melancholy, and under a
continued consternation, something of which the morning sun might
dissipate, so that I should be able to take a heartier view of my woful
plight. So after a good look seawards and at the heavens to satisfy
myself on the subject of the weather, and after a careful inspection of
the moorings of the boat, I entered her, feeling very sure that, if a
sea set in from the west or south and tumbled her, the motion would
quickly arouse me; and getting under the roof of sail, with my legs
along the bottom and my back against the stem, which I had bolstered
with the slack of the canvas, I commended myself to God, folded my arms,
and went to sleep.