CHAPTER XX

THE DAYS OF TWILIGHT PRECEDING THE LONG NIGHT

April 26.--The sky is again hazed, the barometer is falling, and the temperature has risen from -21° at 8 A.M. to -2° at 3 P.M. We made a sounding and found the depth 410 metres. During the day Racovitza lowered his paraphernalia to fish submarine life for the laboratory. We had hardly lost the effects of the last storm and were beginning to enjoy the clear steady weather, with the light southerly winds, but to-day there is another storm. The sun burst through the high fog at ten o’clock this morning, but her rays were too feeble to dissolve the cold vapours. Quickly the only bright spot of heavenly glory was smothered by cold leaden clouds coming from the darkness of the north-west. This we knew to be an announcement of the coming of dirty weather from that direction. For five days the barometer has steadily risen, but this morning it began to fall and in this descent we read the story of another week of trouble. Violent winds, in conjunction with the noise, the gloomy darkness, and forbidding exterior conditions, will set up a spirit of discontent and melancholy, followed by insomnia and disturbances of digestion. I suppose, however, we should not complain, for these gales carry us along on interesting journeys where no other human eyes have before scanned the horizon.

April 28.--It is a neutral gray day. There is no sun and nothing to arouse an interest in life. The atmosphere is dark, warm, wet, and, in general, most disgusting. The temperature is -1°, but about the ship the snow has melted much, allowing the _Belgica_ to settle now and then with a crack and a sudden jar. The wind is westerly and comes with a steady rush. The ice is separating, leaving open leads running north-westerly. We saw several white and two-spotted brown petrels. The trawl, yesterday, brought up a mass of weird-looking deep-sea creatures which Racovitza is to-day stowing away in alcohol. In these storms it is not prudent to venture outside over the pack. There are just now too many large fissures covered by soft snow-bridges which are dangerous. We have already had several cold baths by sliding through these soft drifts, and a fatal accident might easily occur. With these perils in view we do not risk going out on the pack for the usual recreation and exploring excursions. The men, too, find it extremely difficult to keep open a passage to embark. The drift is such that it requires the constant efforts of one and sometimes of two men to dig a path. It is irritating that the drifts are usually a few feet from the side of the bark where they do not give the needed shelter, while the excellent wall of snow which the men have placed around is again mostly melted or settled to such an extent that it must all be done again. On board, the naturalist has several mysterious creatures from the bottom of the sea, under the microscope. The geologist is packing away the stones picked from the new land a few months ago. The captain and the commandant are laying out the chart of the discoveries and we are all looking up the bibliography of everything antarctic.

April 30.--It is snowing and blowing still, but the temperature is again falling. It is dark and gloomy and humid outside. We begin to think that the sun, and the moon, and the stars have deserted us, leaving us alone in a cold, howling wilderness. We saw a few white petrels hovering over large lakes of inky waters, which the change in our drift has made from the wide leads of a few days ago, but there is no other life. It is now necessary to light our lamps at three o’clock in the afternoon to do ordinary work about the vessel. I expect it will not be long before it will be necessary to use candles during our midday meal. To-night there is a sign of clearing in the whirling cloud of snow which has driven about us so long. The moon is glowing brightly in an inky sky. It is the first glimpse of a heavenly body in nearly a week. The new moon has partly spent itself above the banks of frosty clouds which, for weeks, have veiled the heavens. To-night it comes to us with a ragged fringe on its upper surface, but we are glad enough to get even that. The moon, like the sun, is sailing along the northern sky from north-east to north-west about 30° above the horizon. There is a bright band of green rays running through the moon to the surface snows where the light expands and becomes diffused. Late last night we observed a series of luminous clouds which, from their quick movement, we took to be an aurora. But the position of the moon to-night, together with a similar exhibition of luminous clouds in the same position which we know to be brightened by lunar light, convinces us that we have been mistaken.

By an observation at ten o’clock to-night our position is deduced to be latitude 70° 43′ 30″, longitude 90° 30′ 45″. It is evident that we have begun to drift rapidly on an easterly course. In five days we have drifted northward seven miles and eastward nearly two degrees. (From this time on, through the long night and far into the advancing day, the trend of our drift was easterly, in response to prevailing westerly winds.)

The months of March and April were, in many respects, the happiest months of the year. Everything at this time was new to us. We found interest in the weird cries of the penguins; we found pleasure and recreation in hunting seals, and we prided ourselves on our ability to wing petrels for specimens. Everything about the new life and the strange, white world around us was fascinating. The weather at this time was occasionally clear and cold, though generally stormy, which was not the case during the greater part of the year. The pieces of ice gathered into groups, and united to form larger fields. The entire pack, one endless expanse of apparently motionless, but still constantly moving, ice, was full of interest to us. The sun presented a curious face in its rise and descent; and the colour effects, though not gorgeous, were attractive for their simplicity of shades. The moon, too, had a distorted face as it came out of the frosty mist resting over the pack. The stars shone occasionally through their setting of heavy blue with a sparkle like huge gems. At this season the aurora australis displayed most of its rare glory on the southern skies. We were drifting rapidly from one unknown sea to another still more unknown. “Perhaps we are on the way to the south pole,” was an everyday suggestion.

Our first and most important work in the pack was to study the strange sea over which we drifted. This necessitated observations, not only of the sea-ice and icebergs and the scant life about us on the ice and in the water, but also of the composition of the water, its depth, the temperatures at various depths, and the material of the sea-bottom. It required also a careful study of the atmosphere. The heads of the various scientific departments and their assistants were kept busy for a part of the time making these studies. The sailors, in addition to assisting with the scientific labour, were kept well engaged by the ordinary routine work of the ship and the task of embanking the vessel with snow to protect her from the expected cold of the coming winter-long night.

By the end of April our ship was snugly arranged for her winter imprisonment. A roof had been erected over the deck amidships, and under it were an anvil and a fire for the use of the engineer while making the necessary iron-work. The cabins were rearranged to offer the greatest possible amount of heat, light, and freedom from humidity. A floor was placed over the engine-room, and on it a small stove to heat the officers’ quarters. The galley was put between decks next to the forecastle, into which should go the superfluous heat. Double doors and double windows were made everywhere, and all possible openings where heat might escape were closed. Exteriorly, the sides of the ship were banked by snow blocks, the decks were blanketed by the constantly falling snow, and over it all the snow-charged winds drifted, making a neat and perfect embankment. Our antarctic home, then, was imbedded under a huge snowbank, on a field of ice which drifted with the winds over the unknown antarctic seas.

[Illustration: The Ross Seal with Trachea Inflated.

(_Ommatophoca Rossi._)]

It was my delight to ascend to the masthead and from the crow’s nest view our horizon day by day. The general aspect of our view changed very little. Some new cracks formed in the ice, and old ones closed. Some of the icebergs occasionally turned a little, showing a different face, but no marked alteration was ever visible in the general topography of the pack. Moving about as we were, there always seemed to be a possibility of finding a speck of land, a rock, or something new in our path; but this never happened. We saw no land during the entire drift. Appearances of land were reported every few days, but always proved deceptions. They were only illuminated clouds. Along the edge of the field in which we were frozen were large ridges or pressure lines, where the contact and pressure against neighbouring fields raised fragments of ice above the surface. These ridges were from three to fifteen feet in height. The field, usually about two miles in diameter, was everywhere dotted by pyramidal and dome-shaped miniature mountains, which arose above the surface from two to twenty feet. These are technically called “hummocks.” Around the hummocks and along the edge of the floe penguins and seals rested, sheltered from the wind. Near the ship and about the outhouses the snow was thrown up in great banks, dotted by black spots representing sledges, snowshoes, sleighs, and general implements. As we emerged from the little hold on the port side which was our only exit, a narrow path led out about one hundred yards to a circular hole through the ice. Over this we had erected a large tripod, from which we suspended the instruments for sounding and fishing and recording deep-sea temperatures. About midway between this and the ship, we built a box-shaped hut for nautical observations. About one hundred yards from the stern of the ship, Mr. Danco contrived a curiously shaped box for magnetic observations, and a little distance beyond, upon a convenient hummock, were placed the meteorological instruments. About two hundred yards off the port bow, a small house had been put up to capture the electricity from the aurora australis. Efforts were made to keep a path open to each of these houses, but the work generally proved futile. The quantity of drift-snow was always so great that it buried every path and every irregularity in the vessel’s vicinity.

It was at no time possible to leave the ship without snowshoes of some sort. The little exercise on the ice, which freedom from duties permitted, was taken on the Norwegian snowshoe, the _ski_. For mere pleasure-journeys these proved in every way superior to the Canadian rackets and other patterns; but where it became necessary to pull sledges or travel over rough paths, the other kinds were better. We made several long journeys to neighbouring icebergs. Sometimes on these journeys we met with serious obstructions and detentions. It was not found practicable to carry food, extra clothing, or camping equipments, and yet often the need of these became very great. The ice, in separating, would leave large zones of water between us and the next field, thus cutting off our retreat, and leaving us to spend hours of meditation upon the prospect of starvation and of death by freezing.

May 1.--The day is fair with a light south-westerly wind at noon. Low down on the northern sky the sun has been edging along the pack, screened by flying banks of ice crystals, but it has given no perceptible heat and only a feeble light. Hardly had the sun sunk under the sea when a furious westerly gale swept over us, and drove snow into every crack and opening of the _Belgica_. Leads have spread again, and great lakes are pictured on the sky by smoky patches. We secured five small and two king penguins and saw some seals and whales. Life is always abundant when large continuous leads are open. There is so much movement now among the individual floes, and so much pressure and crushing about the ship that we believe it unsafe to venture out in the dark for fear of stepping into one of the many new crevasses. For the same reason we entertain some anxiety regarding the safety of our outhouses and the implements scattered about on the ice. It is curious that we should have such continued warm weather, and equally curious to find the pack breaking up when the days are already far advanced in the antarctic winter. The only explanation for this unexpected condition of things is that we have drifted to a region close to the edge of the pack.

There are many changes in our surroundings which seem to indicate our nearness to open water. There is a noticeable swell which is shown by the alternate advance and retreat of floes about the icebergs, and by a total rise and fall of six inches of the sea-ice on the walls of the icebergs. The time between each rise is from 24 to 32 seconds. The evidence, then, of a wave under the ice is quite conclusive. Just how far beyond the pack edge the swell can be made to penetrate will depend very much upon the size of the floes and the amount of space between them. From our present experience it seems likely that a northerly storm is able to send an undulation at least fifty miles under a loose pack and, perhaps, much farther. But there are other signs of a nearness to an open sea. The floe into which the _Belgica_ is frozen is getting noticeably smaller, and all of the other floes are diminishing likewise. There is a great deal of brash, broken blocks, and pulverised ice and snow, in the water. The icebergs turn and move about, changing their relations to each other. New cracks and new leads are daily appearing. The temperature is rising steadily instead of falling, as it should with the retreat of the sun. The weather is unsteady, and constantly changing, but always in such a way as to indicate a nearness to an open sea. A month ago a storm had little effect upon the ice, but now even light winds bring about a noticeable commotion.

May 4.--At seven o’clock this morning Lecointe rushed out of his bunk to get a glimpse of the stars, which broke through the high mist for a short period. From this observation he calculates our position at latitude 70° 33′ 30″, longitude 89° 22′. A sounding made at about the same time gave a depth to the sea of 1150 metres. From this great increase in depth we are still more convinced that we are going to the edge of the pack, and off of the submarine bank over which we have drifted since entering the main body of the ice. In nine days we have drifted about seventeen miles northward, and eastward nearly three degrees. We are going back to the east, and when the veil of darkness rises, we shall perhaps find ourselves near the position where we entered if, in the meantime, we are not forced out of the ice into the open sea. To be compelled to leave the ice at present, much as we should like it, would be quite dangerous. We have almost no daylight; the weather outside of the ice would certainly be stormy and foggy. How could we find our way in the darkness, among the certain dangers of icebergs and unknown rocks, over the storm-swept seas to South America at this time? Since the first the weather has grown colder; the temperature has ranged from -5° to -18° C. We have occasional strips of blue sky, with a cold sunburst, but in general the heavens have been cheerless--still it is an agreeable change from the wet, dirty weather which we had before.

May 10.--There are now constant complaints of the warm weather. A few days ago the temperature rose a half of a degree above zero, and it has remained about one degree under zero for several days. Such weather, in the commencement of winter, when steady cold weather is expected, is positively oppressive. Everybody is in a disgruntled spirit, because everything is wet, and there is a never-ceasing howl of the storm. It may seem unnatural that we should hate warm weather in this wilderness of south polar ice, but it is followed by so much discomfort that we are ever praying for steady frigid temperatures. In this warm weather the ice is becoming more and more broken. Seals and whales are sporting in the open channels, but penguins are rarely seen. There are a few giant and brown petrels about, and great numbers of white petrels. We have killed a few seals, and have removed from them their skins and blubber for future use, but we have left the remainder of the carcasses out on the floes. These have been claimed as prizes by the petrels. For about ten days hundreds of birds have remained near us. They are mostly white petrels, but there are also giant and brown petrels and a few brown sea-gulls.

At noon there was just a slight suggestion of a sunburst, but it is growing feebler and feebler. The beams of light come to us at such an ineffective angle that our noonday is not now brighter than our twilight of a month ago. The sun is constantly veiled by a bank of frozen mist which prevents our seeing its departing splendour, but there is an occasional break which offers us for a few seconds a view of his fading face. It is sad, cold, and expressionless. The accustomed heat is absent, and the light is a despairing gray glow which, on the surface ice, makes long blue shadows. Still, despondent as this seems in comparison to brighter days, it is the only source of direct light and heat which we now have. It is the only show of seeming cheerfulness in this gloomy world of blackness into which we are fast drifting. This feeble burst of lost noonday splendour is the last draft of life which now fans the fading cinders of the soul, while the death-dealing darkness is doing its devilish work of extinguishment.

May 15.--Unless we get a clear sky sometime during the night, we shall not be able to determine the exact commencement of the long night. If our position is approximately where our dead reckoning places us, we should have seen the sun for a few minutes at noon to-day for the last time; but the sky was too hazy to give us this last peep. In the south-east there is a dull, creamy light on the clouds, which suggests the presence of a high country, reflecting an ice-blink. The west and north, in the morning and afternoon, were marked by a dark, purple-blue zone. At noon the light was so feeble that we could not see the outline of the hummock on the pack.

Our floe, the sheet of ice into which the _Belgica_ is frozen, now offers a sad appearance. It is cracked, torn, rasped, ground, and so swept by thawing storms that the picturesque glory of its glowing days has gone. And what is still more disheartening is that, torn and fractured as the field is now, it no longer affords us a safe harbour, free of crushing influences, as it did when all about was one solid mass. The thick bed of soft spotless snow, which softened the sharp edges and cushioned the rough irregularities, has been reduced to a mere film through which the hard blue ice, with its savage roughness and its gloomy skeleton-like projections, is clearly seen. The unique velvety and wavy surface has given way to an ugly water-soaked plane of hard ice. We have watched the field grow by the addition of one floe after another, and we have steadily increased our comfort upon its bosom. Our sense of safety has grown with the augumented breadth and thickness. We have, to some extent, helped to harbour the _Belgica_ by walls of snow; but Nature here has curious moods. With one hand she protects, with the other she destroys,--she aided us by drifting around the ship an enormous amount of snow, but she has injured us by breaking that which sheltered us.

We have learned to regard this _Belgica_ field as a little polar farm preserved for our special benefit, to harbour us safely through the long night which is before us. It is a substitute for land, though it drifts about with the wind, and on its edges we find products in the form of seals and penguins. But this faith in security and prospective rest in a solid unbroken crust has now vanished and at a time when we most need it. Only a month ago the broadest diameter of the field was four miles. About two weeks ago an assault began along the outer edge of the north and south. Huge fragments were torn off, bits of other fields were pushed on by neighbouring sheets. Little by little our field has been reduced to less than half its former size; but the _Belgica_ always escaped this battle of Nature until this morning. Now the field is completely destroyed and the bark is again among the pieces in the sea, taking hard thumps from the restless ice. We are somewhat anxious about the safety of our outhouses. There are several crevasses near Danco’s observatory. The captain’s “hotel,” from which he sights the stars, is threatened by a crevasse under it, and Arctowski has gathered up all his instruments and placed them aboard for safe keeping. It is just these little black spots about the vessel which add the suggestion of a village and a home to our otherwise dull surroundings. (However, the threatened destruction did not proceed beyond a lively scare. On the day following the ice came together, the temperature fell, the fissures closed, and a heavy fall of snow gave the _Belgica_ a soft feathery bed in which she rested until relieved by our own hands.)

[Illustration: True Sea-Leopard.

(_Ogmorhynus Leptonyx._)]

[Illustration: True Sea-Leopard.

(_Ogmorhynus Leptonyx._)]

[Illustration: Crab-eater.

(_Lobodon Carcinophaga._)]

[Illustration: True Sea-Leopard.

(_Ogmorhynus Leptonyx._)]

[Illustration: Crab-eater.

(_Lobodon Carcinophaga._)]

[Illustration: False, or Weddell Sea-Leopard.

(_Leptonychotes Weddelli._)]

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