Part 11 (1/2)

”Very well; how's the wind?”

”Dead ahead, my Lord--DEAD!”

”How many points is she off her course?”

”Four points, my Lord--full four points!” (Four points being as much as she could be.)

”Is it pretty clear? eh! Wilson?”

”--Can't see your hand, my Lord!--can't see your hand!”

”Much ice in sight?”

”--Ice all round, my Lord--ice a-all ro-ound!”--and so exit, sighing deeply over my trousers.

Yet it was immediately after one of these unpromising announcements, that for the first time matters began to look a little brighter. The preceding four-and-twenty hours we had remained enveloped in a cold and dismal fog.

But on coming on deck, I found the sky had already begun to clear; and although there was ice as far as the eye could see on either side of us, in front a narrow pa.s.sage showed itself across a patch of loose ice into what seemed a freer sea beyond. The only consideration was--whether we could be certain of finding our way out again, should it turn out that the open water we saw was only a basin without any exit in any other direction. The chance was too tempting to throw away; so the little schooner gallantly pushed her way through the intervening neck of ice where the floes seemed to be least huddled up together, and in half an hour afterwards found herself running up along the edge of the starboard ice, almost in a due northerly direction. And here I must take occasion to say that, during the whole of this rather anxious time, my master--Mr. Wyse--conducted himself in a most admirable manner. Vigilant, cool, and attentive, he handled the vessel most skilfully, and never seemed to lose his presence of mind in any emergency. It is true the silk tartan still coruscated on Sabbaths, but its brilliant hues were quite a relief to the colourless scenes which surrounded us, and the dangling chain now only served to remind me of what firm dependence I could place upon its wearer.

Soon after, the sun came out, the mist entirely disappeared, and again on the starboard hand shone a vision of the land; this time not in the sharp peaks and spires we had first seen, but in a chain of pale blue egg-shaped islands, floating in the air a long way above the horizon. This peculiar appearance was the result of extreme refraction, for, later in the day, we had an opportunity of watching the oval cloud-like forms gradually harden into the same pink tapering spikes which originally caused the island to be called Spitzbergen: nay, so clear did it become, that even the shadows on the hills became quite distinct, and we could easily trace the outlines of the enormous glaciers--sometimes ten or fifteen miles broad--that fill up every valley along the sh.o.r.e. Towards evening the line of coast again vanished into the distance, and our rising hopes received an almost intolerable disappointment by the appearance of a long line of ice right ahead, running to the westward, apparently, as far as the eye could reach. To add to our disgust, the wind flew right round into the North, and increasing to a gale, brought down upon us--not one of the usual thick arctic mists to which we were accustomed, but a dark, yellowish brown fog, that rolled along the surface of the water in twisted columns, and irregular ma.s.ses of vapour, as dense as coal smoke. We had now almost reached the eightieth parallel of north lat.i.tude, and still an impenetrable sheet of ice, extending fifty or sixty miles westward from the sh.o.r.e, rendered all hopes of reaching the land out of the question. Our expectation of finding the north-west extremity of the island disengaged from ice by the action of the currents was--at all events for this season--evidently doomed to disappointment. We were already almost in the lat.i.tude of Amsterdam Island--which is actually its north-west point--and the coast seemed more enc.u.mbered than ever. No whaler had ever succeeded in getting more than about 120 miles further north than we ourselves had already come; and to entangle ourselves any further in the ice--unless it were with the certainty of reaching land--would be sheer folly. The only thing to be done was to turn back. Accordingly, to this course I determined at last to resign myself, if, after standing on for twelve hours longer, nothing should turn up to improve the present aspect of affairs. It was now eleven o'clock; P. M. Fitz and Sigurdr went to bed, while I remained on deck to see what the night might bring forth.

It blew great guns, and the cold was perfectly intolerable; billow upon billow of black fog came sweeping down between the sea and sky, as if it were going to swallow up the whole universe; while the midnight sun--now completely blotted out--now faintly struggling through the ragged breaches of the mist--threw down from time to time an unearthly red-brown glare on the waste of roaring waters.

For the whole of that night did we continue beating up along the edge of the ice, in the teeth of a whole gale of wind; at last, about nine o'clock in the morning,--but two short hours before the moment at which it had been agreed we should bear up, and abandon the attempt,--we came up with a long low point of ice, that had stretched further to the Westward than any we had yet doubled; and there, beyond, lay an open sea!--open not only to the Northward and Westward, but also to the Eastward! You can imagine my excitement.” Turn the hands up, Mr. Wyse!”

”'Bout s.h.i.+p!” ”Down with the helm!” ”Helm a-lee!” Up comes the schooner's head to the wind, the sails flapping with the noise of thunder--blocks rattling against the deck, as if they wanted to knock their brains out--ropes dancing about in galvanised coils, like mad serpents--and everything to an inexperienced eye in inextricable confusion; till gradually she pays off on the other tack--the sails stiffen into deal-boards--the staysail sheet is let go--and heeling over on the opposite side.

Again she darts forward over the sea like an arrow from the bow. ”Stand by to make sail!” ”Out all reefs!” I could have carried sail to sink a man-of-war!--and away the little s.h.i.+p went, playing leapfrog over the heavy seas, and staggering under her canvas, as if giddy with the same joyful excitement which made my own heart thump so loudly.

In another hour the sun came out, the fog cleared away, and about noon--up again, above the horizon, grow the pale lilac peaks, warming into a rosier tint as we approach. Ice still stretches toward the land on the starboard side; but we don't care for it now--the schooner's head is pointing E. and by S. At one o'clock we sight Amsterdam Island, about thirty miles on the port bow; then came the ”seven ice-hills”--as seven enormous glaciers are called--that roll into the sea between lofty ridges of gneiss and mica slate, a little to the northward of Prince Charles's Foreland. Clearer and more defined grows the outline of the mountains, some coming forward while others recede; their rosy tints appear less even, fading here and there into pale yellows and greys; veins of shadow score the steep sides of the hills; the articulations of the rocks become visible; and now, at last, we glide under the limestone peaks of Mitre Cape, past the marble arches of King's Bay on the one side, and the pinnacle of the Vogel Hook on the other, into the quiet channel that separates the Foreland from the main.

[Figure: fig-p170.gif]

It was at one o'clock in the morning of the 6th of August, 1856, that after having been eleven days at sea, we came to an anchor in the silent haven of English Bay, Spitzbergen.

And now, how shall I give you an idea of the wonderful panorama in the midst of which we found ourselves? I think, perhaps, its most striking feature was the stillness, and deadness, and impa.s.sibility of this new world: ice, and rock, and water surrounded us; not a sound of any kind interrupted the silence; the sea did not break upon the sh.o.r.e; no bird or any living thing was visible; the midnight sun, by this time m.u.f.fled in a transparent mist, shed an awful, mysterious l.u.s.tre on glacier and mountain; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth's vitality: an universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I suppose in scarcely any other part of the world is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. On the stillest summer day in England, there is always perceptible an under-tone of life thrilling through the atmosphere; and though no breeze should stir a single leaf, yet--in default of motion--there is always a sense of growth; but here not so much as a blade of gra.s.s was to be seen on the sides of the bald excoriated hills. Primeval rocks and eternal ice const.i.tute the landscape.

The anchorage where we had brought up is the best to be found, with the exception perhaps of Magdalena Bay, along the whole west coast of Spitzbergen; indeed it is almost the only one where you are not liable to have the ice set in upon you at a moment's notice. Ice Sound, Bell Sound, Horn Sound--the other harbours along the west coast--are all liable to be beset by drift-ice during the course of a single night, even though no vestige of it may have been in sight four-and-twenty hours before; and many a good s.h.i.+p has been inextricably imprisoned in the very harbour to which she had fled for refuge. This bay is completely landlocked, being protected on its open side by Prince Charles's Foreland, a long island lying parallel with the mainland. Down towards either horn run two ranges of schistose rocks, about 1,500 feet high, their sides almost precipitous, and the topmost ridge as sharp as a knife, and jagged as a saw; the intervening s.p.a.ce is entirely filled up by an enormous glacier, which,--descending with one continuous incline from the head of a valley on the right, and sweeping like a torrent round the roots of an isolated clump of hills in the centre--rolls at last into the sea. The length of the glacial river from the spot where it apparently first originated, could not have been less than thirty, or thirty-five miles, or its greatest breadth less than nine or ten; but so completely did it fill up the higher end of the valley, that it was as much as you could do to distinguish the further mountains peeping up above its surface. The height of the precipice where it fell into the sea, I should judge to have been about 120 feet.

On the left a still more extraordinary sight presented itself. A kind of baby glacier actually hung suspended half way on the hill side, like a tear in the act of rolling down the furrowed cheek of the mountain.

I have tried to convey to you a notion of the falling impetus impressed on the surface of the Jan Mayen ice rivers; but in this case so unaccountable did it seem that the over-hanging ma.s.s of ice should not continue to thunder down upon its course, that one's natural impulse was to shrink from crossing the path along which a breath--a sound--might precipitate the suspended avalanche into the valley. Though, perhaps, pretty exact in outline and general effect, the sketch I have made of this wonderful scene, will never convey to you a correct notion of the enormous scale of the distances, and size of its various features. These glaciers are the princ.i.p.al characteristic of the scenery in Spitzbergen; the bottom of every valley in every part of the island, is occupied and generally completely filled by them, enabling one in some measure to realize the look of England during her glacial period, when Snowdon was still being slowly lifted towards the clouds, and every valley in Wales was brimful of ice. But the glaciers in English Bay are by no means the largest in the island. We ourselves got a view--though a very distant one--of ice rivers which must have been more extensive; and Dr. Scoresby mentions several which actually measured forty or fifty miles in length, and nine or ten in breadth; while the precipice formed by their fall into the sea, was sometimes upwards of 400 or 500 feet high. Nothing is more dangerous than to approach these cliffs of ice. Every now and then huge ma.s.ses detach themselves from the face of the crystal steep, and topple over into the water; and woe be to the unfortunate s.h.i.+p which might happen to be pa.s.sing below. Scoresby himself actually witnessed a ma.s.s of ice, the size of a cathedral, thunder down into the sea from a height of 400 feet; frequently during our stay at Spitzbergen we ourselves observed specimens of these ice avalanches; and scarcely an hour pa.s.sed without the solemn silence of the bay being disturbed by the thunderous boom resulting from similar catastrophes occurring in adjacent valleys.

As soon as we had thoroughly taken in the strange features of the scene around us, we all turned in for a night's rest. I was dog tired, as much with anxiety as want of sleep; for in continuing to push on to the northward in spite of the ice, I naturally could not help feeling that if any accident occurred, the responsibility would rest with me; and although I do not believe that we were at any time in any real danger, yet from our inexperience in the peculiarities of arctic navigation, I think the coolest judgment would have been liable to occasional misgivings as to what might arise from possible contingencies. Now, however, all was right; the result had justified our antic.i.p.ations; we had reached the so longed-for goal; and as I stowed myself snugly away in the hollow of my cot, I could not help heartily congratulating myself that--for that night at all events-- there was no danger of the s.h.i.+p knocking a hole in her bottom against some hummock which the lookout had been too sleepy to observe; and that Wilson could not come in the next morning and announce ”ice all round, a-all ro-ound!” In a quarter of an hour afterwards, all was still on board the ”Foam;” and the lonely little s.h.i.+p lay floating on the gla.s.sy bosom of the sea, apparently as inanimate as the landscape.

My feelings on awakening next morning were very pleasant; something like what one used to feel the first morning after one's return from school, on seeing pink curtains glistening round one's head, instead of the dirty-white boards of a turned-up bedstead. When Wilson came in with my hot water, I could not help triumphantly remarking to him,--”Well, Wilson, you see we've got to Spitzbergen, after all!” But Wilson was not a man to be driven from his convictions by facts; he only smiled grimly, with a look which meant--”Would we were safe back again!” Poor Wilson! he would have gone only half way with Bacon in his famous Apothegm; he would willingly ”commit the Beginnings of all actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the Ends”--to Centipede, with his hundred legs.

”First to watch, and then to speed”--away! would have been his pithy emendation.

Immediately after breakfast we pulled to the sh.o.r.e, carrying in the gig with us the photographic apparatus, tents, guns, ammunition, and the goat. Poor old thing!

she had suffered dreadfully from sea-sickness, and I thought a run ash.o.r.e might do her good. On the left-hand side of the bay, between the foot of the mountain and the sea, there ran a low flat belt of black moss, about half a mile broad; and as this appeared the only point in the neighbourhood likely to offer any attraction to reindeer, it was on this side that I determined to land.

My chief reason for having run into English Bay rather than Magdalena Bay was because we had been told at Hammerfest that it was the more likely place of the two for deer; and as we were sadly in want of fresh meat this advantage quite decided us in our choice. As soon, therefore, as we had superintended the erection of the tent, and set Wilson hard at work cleaning the gla.s.ses for the photographs, we slung our rifles on our backs, and set off in search of deer. But in vain did I peer through my telescope across the dingy flat in front; not a vestige of a horn was to be seen, although in several places we came upon impressions of their track. At last our confidence in the reports of their great plenty became considerably diminished. Still the walk was very refres.h.i.+ng after our confinement on board; and although the thermometer was below freezing, the cold only made the exercise more pleasant. A little to the northward I observed, lying on the sea-sh.o.r.e, innumerable logs of driftwood. This wood is floated all the way from America by the Gulf Stream, and as I walked from one huge bole to another, I could not help wondering in what primeval forest each had grown, what chance had originally cast them on the waters, and piloted them to this desert sh.o.r.e. Mingled with this fringe of unhewn timber that lined the beach lay waifs and strays of a more sinister kind; pieces of broken spars, an oar, a boat's flagstaff, and a few shattered fragments of some long-lost vessel's planking. Here and there, too, we would come upon skulls of walrus, ribs and shoulder-blades of bears, brought possibly by the ice in winter. Turning again from the sea, we resumed our search for deer; but two or three hours' more very stiff walking produced no better luck. Suddenly a cry from Fitz, who had wandered a little to the right, brought us helter-skelter to the spot where was standing. But it was not a stag he had called us to come and look upon.

Half imbedded in the black moss at his feet, there lay a grey deal coffin falling almost to pieces with age; the lid was gone--blown off probably by the wind--and within were stretched the bleaching bones of a human skeleton. A rude cross at the head of the grave still stood partially upright, and a half obliterated Dutch inscription preserved a record of the dead man's name and age.

.....VANDER SCh.e.l.lING....

COMMAN....JACOB MOOR....