SUNRISE OF 1874.
1. An unbroken sleep for the whole winter would, undoubtedly, be a
blessing to the Arctic navigator, and the most energetic among us
resigned himself to slumber for a few hours in the afternoon—the profane
time of the day for all zones of the earth—especially after the coming
in of the New Year, when the long unbroken night is intensely felt. The
darkness diminished very gradually, and as the weather was frequently
cloudy and dull, it was little lessened by the full moon, which we had at
the beginning of January and February. December 26, we were able to read
only the title of _New Free Press_, at the distance of a few inches, but
not a word of Vogt’s _Geology_. January 11, the word Geology on the title
of that book was discernible in clear weather, but only when the book was
held up to the light of the midday twilight. On the following day it was
as dark at nine o’clock in the morning as at noon on December 1st. The
moon returned again on the 24th of January, and after it was four days
old we could distinguish the common print of the “Press” by its light,
and for the first time read off the degrees of the thermometer without
artificial means. During the whole of the month we had alternations
of high temperatures and snow-drifting, and at the end of it the wind
dropped and the cold became exceedingly great, causing the ice to break
up to the south of our position. It would be difficult to give in an
illustration any notion of the wonderful forms produced by the twilight,
and its glowing colour-effects, and quite impossible to describe the
blaze of the meridian heavens, while deep shadows still lay over the
ice-plains and a dark ridge fringed and closed the horizon.
2. At noon on the 23rd of February the rolling mists glowed with a red
light, announcing the reappearance of the sun. The next day the sun
himself, raised and distorted into an oval shape, appeared above the
horizon about 10 A.M. Again there was spread over the snow that magical
rosy hue, those bright azure shadows, which impart a poetical character
even to the landscape of the frozen north. The return of the sun was
this year the deliverance from our long night of 125 days.[25] Anxiously
had we waited his return, and joyously we greeted it, but not with the
frenzied feelings of the previous year. Then the reappearance of the sun
was tantamount almost to a deliverance from hell itself; but now the sun
was nothing to us but as a means to an end: would it enable us to begin
our sledge-journeys to explore the Kaiser Franz-Josef Land? The mere
thought of the possibility of making new discoveries threw us into a
feverish impatience, and our fears became intense lest the ship with its
floe should drift away and frustrate the execution of our plans just as
they seemed feasible.
3. On that same day Lieutenant Weyprecht and I resolved to abandon the
ship after the termination of our projected sledge-journeys of discovery,
and to attempt to return to Europe by means of the boats and sledges. No
arguments were needed to convince every one of the ship’s company of the
absolute necessity of this resolution. Our ship lay on its icy elevation,
beyond the power of man to liberate her, and the provisions would not
be sufficient to sustain us for another year. But fear lest the state
of our health should greatly deteriorate in a third winter spoke more
forcibly than anything else in favour of our decision. When we looked at
our medical stores, once so ample, now so reduced, at the few bottles of
lemon-juice we could count on, all saw the impossibility of our remaining
longer in these latitudes. The melancholy issue of Franklin’s expedition
forced itself on our mind as an instructive example and warning. In all
likelihood that ill-fated expedition had delayed its return a year longer
than it should have done, and began it in so weakened a condition, that
it was next to an impossibility that they should have succeeded in their
purpose. We began to be pinched also in many of our stores, in spite
of the greatest economy in their use. To add to our perils, the doctor
drew a sad picture of the sanitary condition of our crew. Of nineteen
men, several had fallen sick: Krisch still suffered from scurvy and
consumption; Marola from the first scorbutic symptoms; Fallesich from
its consequences; Vecerina from the utter inability to move his lower
extremities produced by the same malady; Palmich from a constant tendency
to it and the contraction of his lower extremities; Pospischill from lung
disease; and Haller from a rheumatic affection of his extremities which
almost incapacitated him for any exertion.