OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION OF THE BAD NEWS--THE ENTERPRISE ABANDONED--A
VOYAGE TO OKHOTSK--THE AURORA OF THE SEA
On the 15th of July, the Company's bark _Onward_ (which should have
been named _Backward_) arrived at Gizhiga with orders to sell all of
our stores that were salable; use the proceeds in the payment of our
debts; discharge our native labourers; gather up our men, and return
to the United States. The Atlantic cable had proved to be a complete
success, and our Company, after sinking about $3,000,000 in the
attempt to build an overland line from America to Europe, had finally
decided to put up with its loss and abandon the undertaking. Letters
from the directors to Major Abaza, stated that they would be willing
to go on with the work, in spite of the success of the Atlantic cable,
if the Russian Government would agree to complete the line on the
Siberian side of Bering Strait; but they did not think they should be
required, under the circumstances, to do all the work on the American
side and half of that on the Russian.
Major Abaza, hoping that he could prevail upon the Russian Minister of
Ways and Communications to take the Asiatic Division off the hands of
the American Company, and thus prevent the complete abandonment of
the enterprise, decided at once to go to St. Petersburg overland. He
therefore sailed in the _Onward_ with me for Okhotsk, intending to
disembark there, start for Yakutsk on horseback, and send me back in
the ship to pick up our working parties along the coast.
The last of July found us becalmed, about fifty miles off the harbour
and river of Okhotsk. I had been playing chess all the evening in the
cabin, and it was almost eleven o'clock when the second mate called to
me down the companionway to come on deck. Wondering if we had taken a
favourable slant of wind, I went up.
It was one of those warm, still, almost tropical nights, so rarely
seen on northern waters, when a profound calm reigns in the moonless
heavens, and the hush of absolute repose rests upon the tired,
storm-vexed sea. There was not the faintest breath of air to stir even
the reef-points of the motionless sails, or roughen the dark, polished
mirror of water around the ship. A soft, almost imperceptible haze
concealed the line of the far horizon, and blended sky and water into
one great hollow sphere of twinkling stars. Earth and sea seemed to
have passed away, and our motionless ship floated, spell-bound, in
vacancy--the only earthly object in an encircling universe of stars
and planets. The great luminous band of the Milky Way seemed to sweep
around beneath us in a complete circle of white, misty light, and far
down under our keel gleamed the three bright stars in the belt of
Orion. Only when a fish sprang with a little splash out of one of
these submarine constellations and shattered it into trembling
fragments of broken light could we realise that it was nothing but a
mirrored reflection of the heavens above.
Absorbed in the beauty of the scene, I had forgotten to ask the mate
why he had called me on deck, and started with surprise as he touched
me on the shoulder and said: "Curious thing, ain't it?"
"Yes," I replied, supposing that he referred to the reflection of the
heavens in the water, "it's the most wonderful night I ever saw at
sea. I can hardly make myself believe that we _are_ at sea--the ship
seems to be hanging in space with a great universe of stars above and
below."
"What do you suppose makes it?" he inquired.
"Makes what--the reflection?"
"No, that light. Don't you see it?"
Following the direction of his outstretched arm, I noticed, for the
first time, a bank of pale, diffused radiance, five or six degrees in
height, stretching along the northern horizon from about N.N.W. to
E.N.E. and resembling very closely the radiance of a faint aurora. The
horizon line could not be distinguished; but the luminous appearance
seemed to rise in the haze that hid it from sight.
"Have you ever seen anything like it before?" I inquired.
"Never," the mate replied; "but it looks like the northern lights on
the water."
Wondering what could be the nature of this mysterious light, I climbed
into the shrouds, in order to get a better view. As I watched it, it
suddenly began to lengthen out at both ends, like a rapidly spreading
fire, and drew a long curtain of luminous mist around the whole
northern horizon. Another similar light then appeared in the
south-east, and although it was not yet connected with the first, it
also seemed to be extending itself laterally, and in a moment the two
luminous curtains united, forming a great semicircular band of pale,
bluish-white radiance around the heavens, like a celestial equator
belting a vast universe of stars. I could form, as yet, no conjecture
as to the cause or nature of this strange phenomenon which looked and
behaved like an aurora, but which seemed to rise out of the water.
After watching it five or ten minutes, I went below to call the
captain.
Hardly had I reached the foot of the companionway when the mate
shouted again; "O Kennan! Come on deck quick!" and rushing hastily
up I saw for the first time, in all its glorious splendour, the
phosphorescence of the sea. With almost incredible swiftness, a mantle
of bluish-white fire had covered nearly all the dark water north of
us, and its clearly defined edge wavered and trembled for an instant,
like the arch of an aurora, within half a mile of the ship. Another
lightning-like flash brought it all around us, and we floated,
literally, in a sea of liquid radiance. Not a single square foot of
dark water could be seen, in any direction, from the maintop, and all
the rigging of the ship, to the royal yards, was lighted up with a
faint, unearthly, blue glare. The ocean looked like a vast plain of
snow, illuminated by blue fire and overhung by heavens of almost inky
blackness. The Milky Way disappeared completely in the blaze of light
from the sea, and stars of the first magnitude twinkled dimly, as if
half hidden by fog.
Only a moment before, the dark, still water had reflected vividly a
whole hemisphere of spangled constellations, and the outlines of the
ship's spars were projected as dusky shadows against the Milky Way.
Now, the sea was ablaze with opaline light, and the yards and sails
were painted in faint tints of blue on a background of ebony. The
metamorphosis was sudden and wonderful beyond description! The polar
aurora seemed to have left its home in the higher regions of the
atmosphere and descended in a sheet of vivid electrical fire upon the
ocean. As we stood, silent with amazement, upon the quarter-deck, this
sheet of bluish flame suddenly vanished, over at least ten square
miles of water, causing, by its almost instantaneous disappearance, a
sensation of total blindness, and leaving the sea, for a moment, an
abyss of blackness. As the pupils of our eyes, however, gradually
dilated, we saw, as before, the dark shining mirror of water around
the ship, while far away on the horizon rose the faint luminous
appearance which had first attracted our attention, and which
was evidently due to the lighting up of the haze by areas of
phosphorescent water below the horizon line.
In a moment the mate shouted excitedly: "Here it comes again!" and
again the great tide of fire came sweeping up around the vessel, and
we floated in a sea of radiance that extended in every direction
beyond the limits of vision.
As soon as I had recovered a little from the bewildered amazement into
which I was thrown by the first phosphorescent flash, I observed, as
closely and carefully as possible, the nature and conditions of the
extraordinary phenomenon. In the first place, I satisfied myself
beyond question, that the radiance was phosphorescent and not
electrical, although it simulated the light of the aurora in the
rapidity of its movements of translation from one area to another.
When it flashed around the ship the second time, I got down close to
the luminous surface and discovered that what seemed, from the deck,
to be a mantle of bluish fire was, in reality, a layer of water
closely packed with fine bright spangles. It looked like water in
which luminous sand was constantly being stirred or churned up. The
points of light were so numerous that, at a distance of ten or twelve
feet, the eye failed to notice that there was any dark water in
the interspaces, and received merely an impression of diffused and
unbroken radiance.
In the second place, I became convinced that the myriads of
microscopic organisms which pervaded the water did not light up
their tiny lamps in response to a mechanical shock, such as would be
produced by agitation of the medium in which they floated. There was
no breeze, at any time, nor was there the faintest indication of
a ripple on the glassy surface of the sea. Between the flashes of
phosphorescence, the polished mirror of dark water was not blurred by
so much as a breath. The sudden lighting up of myriads of infusorial
lamps over vast areas of unruffled water was not due, therefore, to
mechanical agitation, and must have had some other and more subtle
cause. What the nature was of the impulse that stimulated whole square
miles of floating protoplasm into luminous activity so suddenly as
to produce the visual impression of an electric flash, I could not
conjecture. The officers of the U. S. revenue cutter _McCulloch_
observed and recorded in Bering Sea, in August, 1898, a display of
phosphorescence which was almost as remarkable as the one I am trying
to describe [Footnote: _N.Y. Sun_, Nov. 11 1899.]; but in that case
the sea was rough; there were no sudden flashes of appearance and
disappearance; and the excitation of the light-bearing organisms may
have been due--and probably was due--to mechanical shock.
In the third place, I observed that in the intervals between the
flashes, when the water was dark, all objects immersed in that water
were luminous. The ship's copper was so bright that I could count
every tack and seam; the rudder was lighted to its lowest pintle; and
medusae, or jelly-fish, drifting past, with slow pulsations, at a
depth of ten or twelve feet, looked like submerged moons. It thus
appeared that protozoa floating freely in the water lighted their
lamps only in response to excitation, of some sort, which affected,
almost instantaneously, areas many square miles in extent; while those
that were attached to, or in contact with, solid matter kept their
lamps lighted all the time.
During one of the periods of illumination, which lasted several
minutes, I hauled up a bucketful of the phosphorescent liquid and took
it into the cabin. Nothing whatever could be seen in it by artificial
light, but when the light had been removed, the inside of the bucket
glowed, although the water itself remained dark.
The sea in the vicinity of the ship became phosphorescent three or
four times; the sheet of fire in every case, sweeping down upon us
from the north at a rate of speed that seemed to be about equal to the
speed of sound-waves in air. The duration of the phosphorescence, at
each separate appearance, was from a minute and a half to three or
four minutes, and it vanished every time with a flash-like movement of
translation to another and remoter area. The whole display, so far as
we were concerned, was over in about twenty minutes; but long after
the sheet of phosphorescence disappeared from the neighbourhood of the
ship, we could see it lighting up the overhanging haze as it moved
swiftly from place to place beyond the horizon line. At one time,
there were three or four such areas of bright water north of us, but
as they were below the curve of the earth's convexity we could not
see them, and traced them only by the shifting belts or patches of
irradiated mist.
[Illustration: Reindeer Bridle Snow Shovel]