Icebox

“ He switched off his light and went back to the kitchen quarters to tend the furnace.
I hesitate to touch upon a topic of domestic bitterness, but candor compels me to say that Roger's evening vigils invariably ended at the ice-box. There are two theories as to this subject of ice-box plundering, one of the husband and the other of the wife. Husbands are prone to think (in their simplicity) that if they take a little of everything palatable they find in the refrigerator, but thus distributing their forage over the viands the general effect of the depredation will be almost unnoticeable. ”

“ It is perfectly true that nearly every ordinary American housewife possesses an ice-box. An ordinary English housewife would no more expect to possess an ice-box than to possess an iceberg. And it would be about as sensible to tow an iceberg to an English port all the way from the North Pole, as to trail that one pale and frigid joke to Fleet Street all the way from the New York papers. ”

“ Now we must use all caution and give the larger icebergs a wide berth. They are treacherous creatures, these icebergs. You may be paddling along by a peaceful looking berg, sleeping on the water as mild and harmless as a lamb; when suddenly he will take a notion to turn over, and up under your canoe will come a spear of ice, impaling it and lifting it and its occupants skyward; then, turning over, down will go canoe and men to the depths.
Our progress up the sixty miles of Glacier Bay was very slow. Three
nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of the bay. ”

“ Now and then one broke and fell apart before our eyes, sending up a funnel-shaped spray of color,—rose, pale green, or azure.
At every blast of the steamer's whistle great masses of ice came thundering headlong into the sea—to emerge presently, icebergs. Canoeists approach glaciers closely at their peril, never knowing when an iceberg may shoot to the surface and wreck their boat. Even larger craft are by no means safe, and tourists desiring a close approach should voyage with intrepid captains who sail safely through everything. ”

“ The Arctic navigators have given various names to these movable shoals,46 which are the cause of so much delay and danger. They are icebergs when they tower to a considerable height above the waters, and ice-fields when they have a vast horizontal extension. A floe is a detached portion of a field; pack-ice, a large area of floes or smaller fragments closely driven together so as to oppose a firm barrier to the progress of a ship; and drift-ice, loose ice in motion, but not so firmly packed as to prevent a vessel from making her way through its yielding masses. ”

“ Better than a portable ice box is an ice room which is built into one corner of the store room, the walls, floor and ceiling of which are double, lined with tar paper and the space of four inches between them filled with sawdust or cork. The door into the store room should be very heavy, made double and fitted closely. The small ice door can be on the outside of the building, made like the large door, fitted closely and opening into the ice compartment. The ice compartment should be lined with zinc and a slatted door should open into it from the ice room. ”

“ Nearer, nearer he crept, till at last, lying motionless with his lean muzzle just over the crest of the ice-ridge, he could make out the dark shapes of the seals, vague as shadows, emerging for a few moments to sprawl upon the edge of the ice. Every few seconds one would slip into the water again, while another would awkwardly scramble forth. In that phenomenal cold it was necessary for them to take heed to the air-holes, lest these should get sealed up and leave them to drown helplessly under the leagues of solid ice-field. ”

“ Our guides having delivered us over to their friends, immediately set off to rejoin the party we had met proceeding northward. This made us believe that they expected the ice would soon break up, and that the object of their journey was to secure summer quarters, when the rest would rejoin them in their kayaks.
Our new friends at once set to work to build for us an igloo, or hut of ice, each block being about six inches in thickness, and a couple of feet in length, cemented by snow. The domed roof was made of snow, the key piece at the top being a large square slab. ”

“ But the Fair Rambler was still forbidden the strait. By the end of September, and at this latitude, even though the mean temperature was already below zero, the arm of the sea which separates Asia from America was not frozen yet. True, numerous icebergs passed by, accumulated in the open sea on the verge of the basin of Behring, and were drifted northward along the Alaskan coast by the current from the Pacific. But these icebergs had to cohere into one solid mass ere they offered the gigantic, firm, and steady ice-field we spoke of, a veritable “carriage-drive” between the two continents. ”

“ By the time our vessel has reached Baffin's Bay, still coasting along Greenland, in addition to old floes and bergs, the water is beset with "pancake ice." That is the young ice when it first begins to cake upon the surface. Innocent enough it seems, but it is sadly clogging to the ships. It sticks about their sides like treacle on a fly's wing; collecting unequally, it destroys all equilibrium, and impedes the efforts of the steersman. Rocks split on the Greenland coast with loud explosions, and more icebergs fall. ”

“ It is difficult for the imagination to conceive of the great magnitude of some of these Greenland icebergs; and yet, as we have seen, they are but comparatively trifling pieces, torn by the sea from glaciers. The iceberg is indeed as the paring of a finger-nail to the whole body, when compared to the quantity of ice in the reservoir from which it came. Magnify the bit of ice in your tumbler until it becomes to your imagination half a mile in diameter each way, and you have a mass that is far from uncommon. ”

“ If in sight, we must try to push through the ice to land, for the whole shore is inhabited. As many sealers should now be in this part of the Gulf, we should always be upon the watch for them."
"I think," said Waring, "that we ought to keep one man as a lookout on the highest ice in the vicinity." [Pg 250]
"Pity the great iceberg so far off," added Regnar.
"Sposum wind hold north-west, and ice keep packed, why not go down to-morrow and look alound?" asked Peter, quietly. ”

“ Crillon [9] are simply unrivalled in frigid grandeur by anything that is lauded in Switzerland or the Himalayas, though the vast bulk of the Greenland ice-sheets is, of course, not even feebly approximated by them; the waters of the channels which lead up from the ocean to the feet of these large glaciers of Cross Sound and Lynn Canal, are full of bobbing icebergs that have been detached from the main sheet, in every possible shape and size—a detachment which is taking place at intervals of every few moments, giving rise, in so doing, to a noise like parks of artillery ”

“ Ice-boats often upset, but we can't fall very far," and he looked down at the ice, which was only a few inches below them. "And we have so many robes and blankets that falling would be like tumbling into bed. There is no danger."
The wind was blowing harder and harder. It was sweeping right across the lake and forcing the boat down. The steel runners clinked on the ice, now and then scraping up a shower of icy splinters that sparkled in the sun. On the other side of the lake were other ice-boats, and Bert wished he could have a race with some of them. ”

“ For several hours but little progress was made, but this morning the ice became more open; clear water was seen ahead, and reached by noon. Although it is calm I prefer waiting for a breeze to expending more coals. We are only ten miles from Possession Bay. The air is so very clear that the land appears quite close to us. All that is not mountainous is well cleared of snow. There is immense refraction. Only a single iceberg in sight. The sea-water is light green, as remarked by Parry in 1819. ”

“ Helpless as we were among the floating masses, we began to look upon the floe that carried us as a protecting barrier against the approaches of others less friendly; and as the month advanced, and the chances increased of our passing into the sound, our apprehensions of being frozen up in the heart of the ice-pack gave place to the opposite fear of a continuous drift. We had seen enough, and encountered enough of the angry strife among the ice-floes in the channel, to assure us of disaster if we should be forced to mingle in the sterner conflicts of the older ice-fields of the sound. ”

“ The employment of an open-bottom ice-box, or its equivalent, in combination with a dividing partition, open above and below, so placed that by means of self-operating internal circulation the whole of the contained air shall be kept in motion, and caused to revolve around that partition in currents, moving downward only on one side of this partition, and upward only on the other side, when the same is combined with a chamber for the refrigeration of food, &c., placed directly under the ice-box. ”

“ It was nearly an hour before they found the box and its pile of decoys, but the box had been furnished with rude runners, and being already clear of the ice, there was no delay in what was evidently becoming a dangerous proximity to the sea; for that edge of the ice was already breaking up, as the rollers broke over it, bearing it down with the weight of water. Sunset must have been close at hand when the party [Pg 166] arrived, wet, weary, and almost despairing, at the berg.
"Now, boys," said La Salle, "we must build our house at once, for no one can tell how long this storm may last. ”

“ A multitude of grounded icebergs showed a shoal, which appears to bar the northern entrance to Jones's Sound; and, during the night, a sudden gale from the north, together with high water in the tides, set them all floating and dancing around us in a very exciting style. Edging constantly along large floe-pieces, we were eventually carried next day into the packed ice, through which our way had to be found under double-reefed sails, the two pretty screw-schooners thrashing away in gallant style, until a dead calm again left us to steam our best ”

“ It is desirable that those who write on the origin of icebergs, should take into consideration the fact that icebergs are only formed at places where a violent motion takes place in the mass of the ice, which again within a comparatively short time results in the excavation of the deep ice-fjord. The largest iceberg, which, so far as I know, has been measured in that part of the Polar Sea which lies between Spitzbergen and Wrangel Land, is one which Barents saw at Cape Nassau on the 17/7th August 1596. It was sixteen fathoms high, and had grounded in a depth of thirty-six fathoms. ”

“ Whatever may be the latent heat of ice, is a question for the professed naturalist. Two things are evident to the unlearned observer: an iceberg is as solid as ivory, or marble from the lowest depths of a quarry, and cold apparently as any substance on the earth can be made. This compact and perfectly frozen body, immersed in the warm seas of summer, and warmer atmosphere, finds its entire outside, and especially that portion of it which is exposed to the July sun, expanding under the influence of the penetrating heat. ”

“ We put in at Hammerfest, latitude seventy-one degrees and forty minutes, for a few days' rest. Here we remained one week, laying in an extra supply of provisions and several casks of drinking-water, and then sailed toward Spitzbergen.
For the first few days we had an open sea and a favoring wind, and then we encountered much ice and many icebergs. A vessel larger than our little fishing-sloop could not possibly have threaded its way among the labyrinth of icebergs or squeezed through the barely open channels. ”

“ That’s the service for you, old man, the iceberg patrol. Think of the lives you have a chance to save and—and—but I’ve got to be off with this message to the old man.”
Jack hurried from the cabin, and forwarded his message to Captain Briggs on the bridge. Raynor followed with more deliberation and made for his own cabin and soap and water. As he removed the grime of the engine-room, he mused on the subject of icebergs. Not many weeks before a big liner had blundered at night into a huge floating continent of ice and had sunk, with a terrible toll of lives and suffering. ”

“ But this building-up of the rink requires immense patience and forethought. Night after night when the building is going on,{28} and the weather is warm and beastly, the head iceman, if he is really competent, will sit up through the long tale of dark hours, keeping himself awake with coffee, and watching the thermometer to see when it registers sufficient degrees of frost to enable him to put more water on to the ice. He will wait all through a cloudy night, hoping for the sky to clear, in order to get a half inch more foundation. ”

“ The imaginative spectator could fancy all kinds of resemblances, but the "cold fact" remained that they were simply mountains of ice, with no more symmetry of outline than a mass of rock blasted from a quarry.
"I have read," said Fred, "that in the iceberg factories of the north, as they are called, they are sometimes two or three years in forming, before they break loose and sweep off into the ocean."
"That is true," added Captain McAlpine; "an iceberg is simply a chunk off a frozen river, and a pretty good-sized one, it must be admitted. ”