Frederick Albert Cook

“ A water sky, a land blink, or some other sign, indicative of land or open water, is constantly before us and these are, to the polar explorer, like the Star of Bethlehem to the children of Israel. They perpetually urge us on. We burn down the fires and wait impatiently for better success on the morrow, feeling always that we have won our success, thus far, by our own hard efforts, and by the same methods we hope to master the barriers now walled around us. Pressing ice, blasting head winds, blinding snow squalls, and all the worst elements of sea and weather combine to bewilder and defeat us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the north-west and the north-east there is a water-sky, but the hopeless ice-blink is in every other direction. A dazzling whiteness has made the pack glitter to such an extent that it has become painful to walk about without smoked glasses, but to-night there is a restful lilac over the white glitter, which is a charming relief from the intense brilliancy of the day. As the sun descended into the invisible mist of ice-crystals, which always hangs over the pack, it poured out a wealth of golden light over the clouds and onto the pack. ”

“ We have left the white line of the pack-ice under the black sea behind us, and now the ever-present electric glimmer, the ice-blink, is fading over our stern. As the blink vanishes, and the sky is screened by the normal South Pacific dulness, we descend from our world of lofty thoughts, in which we had been raised and upheld by the long months of isolation, and frost, and storm; and with this descent our minds and our hearts are set on the joys of home-going. The feeling of isolation and desertion now comes over us stronger than ever before. ”

“ There is a glitter in the sea, a sparkle on the ice, and a stillness in the atmosphere, which fascinates the soul but overpowers the mind. There is a solitude and restfulness about the whole scene which can only be felt; it cannot be described. Here, to the east, the face of the mysterious land is clothed by the successive sheets of snows of the sleeping years of countless silent centuries. About us are scores of icebergs, huge table-topped, pyramidal, and castle-like masses, fragments of this same unknown blanket of accumulated snows which clothes every aspect of antarctic land. ”

“ An easy swell keeps the ice in a constant groan, and penguins send out their social calls. We are now accustomed to all this noise. Indeed, when tired and weary, as we are at present from long-continued anxiety, the groans of the ice and the cries of the penguins serve only to impress us with the awful solitude and the uninterrupted pearly monotony of the antarctic.
A beautiful sunset to-night has served to reawaken our interest in this world of white sameness. Throughout the day the sky has been a cheerless gray from the zenith to a few degrees from the horizon. ”

“ On some of the pans of ice are seals basking in the sun, and over the ship, apparently touching the masts and the ropes as the bark rocks to and fro, are giant petrels, Cape pigeons, gulls, white, brown, and blue petrels, all pointing their bills and stretching their necks to examine, perhaps for the first time, human beings and their crafts.
There is a dreamy stillness in the air, in spite of the frequent stirs of wild life, and a charming touch of colour to the sea, the ice, and the land, though the sky is dull, gray, and gloomy. ”

“ During the night the temperature falls, the fog, which always screens the ice in daytime, is congealed and deposited as snow; and, though the sky here at the edge of the pack generally remains dark at night, there is an incomprehensible metallic glow on the glassy surface of the water, and a sharp phosphoretic glitter from every spire and pan of ice. The night is a long twilight, and when the demons of storm are not hovering about it is a long, dreamy spell of joy. ”

“ What a peculiar effusion of sentiments the welcome face of the sun draws from our frozen fountains of life! How that great golden ball of cold fire incites the spirit to expressions of joy and gratitude! How it sets the tongue to pleasurable utterances, and the vocal chords to music! The sun is, indeed, the father of everything terrestrial. We have suddenly found a tonic in the air, an inspiration in the scenic splendours of the sea of ice, and a cheerfulness in each other’s companionship which make the death-dealing depression of the night a thing of the past. ”

“ Could there be a more melancholy, a more maddening, or a more hopeless region than this? We are passing rapidly into the polar summer, the time when, in other zones, all Nature smiles;—even the sister zone, the arctic, has striking attractive features at this time. The birds fill the air with music, new animals make their appearance, and on land even flowers and mosquitos serve to make life interesting; but here, in this icy antarctic wilderness, the charm of Nature is dead. We see the sun so seldom that it is, indeed, a surprise when its unobstructed rays fall upon the frosted whiteness. ”

“ The ease with which the entire horizon, with its numerous mountains and fields of ice, sails over the invisible sea makes us anxious as to our destiny. If we remain here, on this blank space of the globe, where will we find ourselves a year hence? Will it be north, south, east or west? In this drift it is possible that the ship may be dragged over a submerged reef, and it is also possible that we may be carried onto a rocky shore, or against the formidable land-ice. In each case destruction of our vessel and a miserable death for all must be the inevitable result. ”

“ Except for the little touch of colour at sunrise this morning, the weather has been one of a type which we now style gray days. These gray days are entirely characteristic of the antarctic. There is no brightness, no sparkle, no moving wind or water, nothing to infuse new life or to lighten our spirits. The atmosphere is heavy, but not opaque, the sky is low and gray, the extensive pans and bands of new ice are a smoky colour, the water is leaden, and only the snow-decked old pans form a contrast to the gray monotony, and even these take on a dirty aspect. ”

“ It is a strange sensation to know that, blown with the winds, you are moving rapidly over an unknown sea, and yet see nothing to indicate a movement. We pass no fixed point, and can see no pieces of ice stir; everything is quiet. The entire horizon drifts with us. We are part of an endless frozen sea. Our course is zigzag, but generally west—we do not know our destination, and are always conscious that we are the only human beings to be found in the entire circumpolar region at the bottom of the globe. ”

“ The morning dawned, as it usually does over Cape Horn seas, without the sun, and with a smoky, low, lead-streaked sky. At noon the icy mist overhead melted and an occasional sunburst gave life and colour to the scene. Our soundings indicated a proximity to land, which caused us to skim the horizon constantly through our glasses with keen interest. A small white speck here and there indicated distant icebergs. At about three o’clock in the afternoon a series of low pyramidal masses appeared under the southern sky. It was like a bank of blue fog fringed with snowy bands. ”

“ The long unbroken darkness has not totally blinded us to its few real charms which are strikingly brought out by the awful contrasts of heat and cold, of light and darkness. As lovers of Nature, we found many pleasures for the eye and the intellect in the flashing aurora australis, in the play of intense silvery moonlight over the mountainous seas of ice, and in the fascinating clearness of the starlight over the endless expanse of driven snows. ”

“ There are about us great numbers of white and gray petrels seeming to urge us on. The fog rises and falls offering a peep, now and then, into the white world to which we are so anxious to force our way. Most of the men are standing about on the decks, offering words of encouragement to the bark as she batters and breaks the offending floes which hinder her passage. A few men, sitting on the anchor chains, have premonitions of impending danger and discuss the prospects of an antarctic winter, and the incidents of starving and freezing, cast adrift on the ice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have not behind us the winter storms and cold discomforts. We have not before us the evident joys of a coming summer; sweet smelling flowers, green fields, pretty girls in new bonnets, and the hundreds of [255] things which go to make up the accustomed pleasures of Easter are all far removed from us. We are on the verge of what promises to be the worst winter on record. The faint delights of summer are behind. The desperation, the despondency, the mystery of the unknown, impenetrable darkness, with its ceaseless frost, is on the horizon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is an ice-blink, a reflection of the ice beyond our horizon upon the particles of watery vapour suspended in the air. As night comes upon us it becomes necessary to choose between the forbidding blackness of the north and the more cheerful, but less hospitable, whiteness of the south. With icebergs on every side, always in our course, coming as suddenly out of the thickening darkness as if dropped from the skies, it is not wise, or prudent, either to move out of, or to rest in, our position. ”

“ They bud, if I may so express it, with the first sharp breath of winter, casting their fragile tendrils into a hundred delicate forms wherever a suspicion of humidity can be hardened with sufficient regularity and force. Upon porous young ice, adjacent to open water, is the garden spot for these curious growths. They give the finishing touch of harmony to the rough outline of the frowning cliffs of ice. They gleam from the miniature ice mountains. They appear as sparkling flowers upon the black sheets of young ice, and convert the cold monotony of the pack into a glistening field of beauty. ”

“ March 5.—We are not yet prepared to resign ourselves to the doubtful destiny of an unknowable life in the restless sea of ice. We still hope against hope that some favourable force will separate the ice and permit us to retreat. Day after day we have tried to slide into some promising lead, but each effort has been a bitter disappointment. The weather is getting colder and clearer. The pack and the sky is touched with new charms of colour, and the life is full of inspiration. ”

“ In a few places the [218] water is covered with a green lacework of new ice, and everywhere there is a delicate suggestion of lilac, raising the high lights, colouring the shadows, and saturating the air with a mysterious luminosity.
Our position at the top of the mast is like that of a bird far up under the heavens. The great ugly-looking, but vigorous, giant petrels are dashing past our heads with an air of inquisitiveness. The little dove-like white petrels come to us almost within reach of our arms, and the graceful brown sea-gulls rush over us and around us with a startling buzz. ”

“ It is not a very joyful place in the tropics, but when an endless sea of ice surrounds us, and the wind is blowing, and the decks are covered with snow, then, with steaming food on the table, we shall find its true value.
A door through the left of the cabin opens into an aisle, to the side of which are the four berths where the devotees of science sleep. The sides are thoughtfully lined with lockers, but every nook, the beds, the ceiling, and at times even the floor, is covered with clothing, instruments and books. After a storm it is a sad rivalry in hopeless entanglement. ”