Letters From High Latitudes [79]
we did get a chance of making any Northing. But lately it had come on to blow very hard, the cold became quite piercing, and what was worse--in every direction round the whole circuit of the horizon, except along its southern segment,--a blaze of iceblink illuminated the sky. A more discouraging spectacle could not have met our eyes. The iceblink is a luminous appearance, reflected on the heavens from the fields of ice that still lie sunk beneath the horizon; it was, therefore on this occasion an unmistakable indication of the encumbered state of the sea in front of us.
I had turned in for a few hours of rest, and release from the monotonous sense of disappointment, and was already lost in a dream of deep bewildering bays of ice, and gulfs whose shifting shores offered to the eye every possible combination of uncomfortable scenery, without possible issue,--when "a voice in my dreaming ear" shouted "LAND!" and I awoke to its reality. I need not tell you in what double quick time I tumbled up the companion, or with what greediness I feasted my eyes on that longed-for view,--the only sight--as I then thought--we were ever destined to enjoy of the mountains of Spitzbergen!
The whole heaven was overcast with a dark mantle of tempestuous clouds, that stretched down in umbrella-like points towards the horizon, leaving a clear space between their edge and the sea, illuminated by the sinister brilliancy of the iceblink. In an easterly direction, this belt of unclouded atmosphere was etherealized to an indescribable transparency, and up into it there gradually grew--above the dingy line of starboard ice--a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline, one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the spires of fairy-land. The beautiful vision proved only too transient; in one short half hour mist and cloud had blotted it all out, while a fresh barrier of ice compelled us to turn our backs on the very land we were striving to reach.
Although we were certainly upwards of sixty miles distant from the land when the Spitzbergen hills were first observed, the intervening space seemed infinitely less; but in these high latitudes the eye is constantly liable to be deceived in the estimate it forms of distances. Often, from some change suddenly taking place in the state of the atmosphere, the land you approach will appear even to RECEDE; and on one occasion, an honest skipper--one of the most valiant and enterprising mariners of his day--actually turned back, because, after sailing for several hours with a fair wind towards the land, and finding himself no nearer to it than at first, he concluded that some loadstone rock beneath the sea must have attracted the keel of his ship, and kept her stationary.
The next five days were spent in a continual struggle with the ice. On referring to our log, I see nothing but a repetition of the same monotonous observations.
"July 31st.--Wind W. by S.--Courses sundry to clear ice."
"Ice very thick."
"These twenty-four hours picking our way through ice."
"August 1st.--Wind W.--courses variable--foggy--continually among ice these twenty-four hours."
And in Fitz's diary, the discouraging state of the weather is still more pithily expressed:--
"August 2nd.--Head wind--sailing westward--large hummocks of ice ahead, and on port bow, i.e. to the westward--hope we may be able to push through. In evening, ice gets thicker; we still hold on--fog comes on--ice getting thicker--wind freshens--we can get no farther--ice impass- able, no room to tack--struck the ice several times-- obliged to sail S. and W.--things look very shady."
Sometimes we were on the point of despairing altogether, then a plausible opening would show itself as if leading towards the land, and we would be tempted to run down it until we found the field become so closely packed, that it was with great difficulty we could get the vessel round,--and only then at the expense of collisions, which made the little craft shiver from stem to stern. Then
I had turned in for a few hours of rest, and release from the monotonous sense of disappointment, and was already lost in a dream of deep bewildering bays of ice, and gulfs whose shifting shores offered to the eye every possible combination of uncomfortable scenery, without possible issue,--when "a voice in my dreaming ear" shouted "LAND!" and I awoke to its reality. I need not tell you in what double quick time I tumbled up the companion, or with what greediness I feasted my eyes on that longed-for view,--the only sight--as I then thought--we were ever destined to enjoy of the mountains of Spitzbergen!
The whole heaven was overcast with a dark mantle of tempestuous clouds, that stretched down in umbrella-like points towards the horizon, leaving a clear space between their edge and the sea, illuminated by the sinister brilliancy of the iceblink. In an easterly direction, this belt of unclouded atmosphere was etherealized to an indescribable transparency, and up into it there gradually grew--above the dingy line of starboard ice--a forest of thin lilac peaks, so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline, one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the spires of fairy-land. The beautiful vision proved only too transient; in one short half hour mist and cloud had blotted it all out, while a fresh barrier of ice compelled us to turn our backs on the very land we were striving to reach.
Although we were certainly upwards of sixty miles distant from the land when the Spitzbergen hills were first observed, the intervening space seemed infinitely less; but in these high latitudes the eye is constantly liable to be deceived in the estimate it forms of distances. Often, from some change suddenly taking place in the state of the atmosphere, the land you approach will appear even to RECEDE; and on one occasion, an honest skipper--one of the most valiant and enterprising mariners of his day--actually turned back, because, after sailing for several hours with a fair wind towards the land, and finding himself no nearer to it than at first, he concluded that some loadstone rock beneath the sea must have attracted the keel of his ship, and kept her stationary.
The next five days were spent in a continual struggle with the ice. On referring to our log, I see nothing but a repetition of the same monotonous observations.
"July 31st.--Wind W. by S.--Courses sundry to clear ice."
"Ice very thick."
"These twenty-four hours picking our way through ice."
"August 1st.--Wind W.--courses variable--foggy--continually among ice these twenty-four hours."
And in Fitz's diary, the discouraging state of the weather is still more pithily expressed:--
"August 2nd.--Head wind--sailing westward--large hummocks of ice ahead, and on port bow, i.e. to the westward--hope we may be able to push through. In evening, ice gets thicker; we still hold on--fog comes on--ice getting thicker--wind freshens--we can get no farther--ice impass- able, no room to tack--struck the ice several times-- obliged to sail S. and W.--things look very shady."
Sometimes we were on the point of despairing altogether, then a plausible opening would show itself as if leading towards the land, and we would be tempted to run down it until we found the field become so closely packed, that it was with great difficulty we could get the vessel round,--and only then at the expense of collisions, which made the little craft shiver from stem to stern. Then