Icebreaker

“ Hisses, long-drawn sighs, booming thunder-sounds, mingle with low muttering, plunging, rattling, and popping—a bedlam of all the lunatic voices of the ocean. We appear to be at the edge of a shower, such a sprinkling and spattering of drops. All abroad, and all aloft, from every edge and gutter the iceberg spouts, and rains, and drips. Over the entire face of the ice is flowing swiftly down one noiseless river thin as glass, looking, for all the world, like the perpetual falling of a transparent veil over the richest satin. ”

“ A pine split by lightning has the point, but not the awful breadth and fulness of the sound. Air, ocean, and the berg, all fairly spring at the power of it. And then the ice-fall, with its ringing, rumbling, crashing roar, and the heavy, explosion-like voice of the final plunge, followed by the wild, frantic dashing of the waters. You see the whole upper face of the ice, yards deep, and scores of them in width, all gone. All was blasted off instantly, and dropped at once, a stupendous cataract of brilliant ruins. ”

“ Our track then wound among the snow-drifts until it emerged from the broken ice which was observed to border the land ice-sheet for miles. The travelling became unexpectedly good for a time over highly polished, green sea-ice, and thence on to snow, amid a field of numerous small bergs. Many of these showed a marked degree of ablation, and, in places, blocks of ice perched on eminences had weathered into most grotesque forms. There were numerous streams of thaw-water running from mud-covered bergs. Perspiring in the heat, we more than once stopped to slake our thirst. ”

“ The ice was split in two and the huge floes heaped up into towering icebergs. The snow fell and drifted over meadow and hill; sky and earth were blended into one. It was piercingly cold, and where the snow had been blown away the ground was hard as stone.
[Pg 373] The Prince of Winter stood in the valley and looked upon all this with content. He went into the forest, where the snow was frozen to windward right up to the tips of the smooth beech-trunks; but in the boughs of the fir-trees it lay so thick that they were weighted right down to the ground. ”

“ A column of vapor, mainly invisible, perpetually ascends into its native heavens, while the atmosphere, and the warm, briny currents melt and wear, at every imaginable point of the vast surface. Pass a few sunny weeks, and all will be melted, and, like a snow-flake, lost in the immensity of waters.
Still the flags wave above. We fill our glasses with iceberg-water, and drink with cheers to the Queen and President. As the breeze dies away in the long, long afternoon, and we roll lazily on the glassy swells, the painter and I, the poorest of sailors, lapse into sea-sickness, and go below. ”

“ We never tire of standing on the deck watching the drift-ice, which has a charm for any one who is observing it for the first time, even as it has for “old hands” in the northern regions. Against the sides of the great icebergs waves are breaking, just as they do against the island reefs of the Norwegian coast. The drifting pieces of ice have ever-changing forms. During a thaw, sea, sun, and wind turn them into shapes more weird and fantastic than even a sculptor could do. ”

“ Daily the sun got lower; so did the mercury in the thermometer; and often for days there was no sight of the former because of flying snow and the deep haze of frost-fog. The ice set more and more firmly about the Bowhead, and the pack which ground and crushed against the edge of the shore ice outside the headland no longer made any answering movement in the frozen stretch about her. The winter was upon them, and there were times when their ice igloo was put to severe tests as a frost defender. ”

“ Have you been in such a craft when she was being squeezed in this pack, the one dark spot in the midst of a limitless plain of dazzling snow-clad ice, all lifting and rolling and moving with the pressure of the invisible waves that are passing swiftly underneath? Have you ever heard the terrible sounds an ice-pack emits, when the swell from a distant storm comes sweeping under it, the groaning, the wailing, grinding, griding noise, as if the ocean on which you stood were filled with old-world monsters in their dying agonies? ”

“ The deserts flowered again, but the frost would come always to bite the tiny crops. For still the Ice came. All the world now, but for a narrow strip about the equator, was one great silent desolate vista of stark ice-plains, ice that brooded above the hidden ruins of cities that had endured for hundreds of thousands of years. It was terrible to imagine the awful solitude and the endless twilight that lay on these places, and the grim snow, sailing in silence over all.... ”

“ So great is the wish of the sea to freeze, and so cold is the air, that the wind has only to lull for one instant and the surface is covered with a thin film of ice, as though by magic. But the next blizzard tears it out by force or a spring tide coaxes it out by stealth, whether it be a foot thick or only a fraction of an inch. Such an example we had at our very doors during our last winter, and the untamed winds which blew as a result were atrocious.
Thus it is that floes from a few inches to twenty feet thick go voyaging out to join the belt of ice which is known as the pack. ”

“ It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, then dropped down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes. This was a matter of instinct. To permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet. It did not know this. It merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the deep crypts of its being. But the man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and he removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out the ice-particles. He did not expose his fingers more than a minute, and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them. ”

“ No specks of life glitter in the sunshine, no « 257 » sounds of it float upon the air. We are without a single sign, a single instinct of living thing.
“If now, with the thermometer eighty degrees below the freezing point, and the new sun casting a cold gray sheen upon the snow, you leave the thirty-one, to whom you are the thirty-second, and walk out upon the ice away off—so far that no click of hammer nor drone of voice places you in relation with that little outside world—then you will know how I felt when I caught that ‘creeping wonder’ on my reindeer hood. ”

“ We passed a filthy night here, for the snow on the sea ice was saturated with brine and, in no time, our sleeping-bags became wet and sticky.
Next day we were called at six to find a blizzard with a high drift making it impossible to move, so we remained in our bags until 4 p.m., when we shifted on to the narrow platform of rock situated on the south side of Little Razorback. We had one small meal here, but our condition was not a pleasant one, since little food remained and fuel was short. There was undoubtedly a chance that the sea ice would break up and drift away in this high wind. ”

“ It is ice, a point of the berg pricking up into the illuminated surface and reflecting the light. You will understand that better, perhaps, by and by. But wait an instant. Now!—now!—Beauty strikes the billow with her magic rod, and, presto—change!—all is glittering green. A thousand feet of purple, cloud-like wave passes, in the twinkling of an eye, into the brightness of an emerald gem, and thus rolls up and smites the iceberg. And thus, like night perpetually bursting into the splendid noon, roll up the billows, and strike the minutes of the hour. ”

“ We next sprang on the ice, the tossing tremulous motion of which literally filled the air with noises as of shrieks and howls, and we quickly got on board all the materials which were lying on the floe, and bound the fissures of the ice hastily together by ice-anchors and cables, filling them up with snow, in the hope that frost would complete our work, though we felt that a single heave might shatter our labours. But, just as in the risings of a people the wave of revolt spreads on every side, so now the ice uprose against us. ”

“ On they came, seemingly at a great pace, and one heard a crunching noise as the hoofs of the ponies trod down the snow crust, but one could not hear the footfalls of the men. One exchanged a "Hallo" with the leading man and passed on until a much bigger white shape loomed up in the obscurity of the noon-twilight, the going underfoot changed and skis fetched up against a great lump of ice which was scarcely discernible in the confusing darkness, and one realised that what little light there was to the northward had been blotted out by one of the big grounded icebergs. ”

“ On the 2nd October the thermometer fell still lower, and the first snow storm came on; there was but little wind, and there were therefore none of those violent whirlpools of snow called drifts, but a vast white carpet of uniform thickness soon clothed the cape, the enceinte of fort, and the coast. The waters of the lake and sea, not yet petrified by the icy hand of winter, were of a dull, gloomy, greyish hue, and on the northern horizon the first icebergs stood out against the misty sky. ”

“ The horse had stopped in front of the ridge of ice in the mid-channel, and was rearing and plunging violently. The driver was lashing furiously and trying to turn the animal, which, frenzied by terror, and maddened by the stinging sleet, refused to obey, and would only rear and kick. Suddenly the ice under the sleigh sank down, and a flood of water rolled over it, followed by an avalanche of ice-blocks which had tumbled from the ridge. With a wild snort of terror, the horse turned, whirling round the sleigh, and with the speed of the wind dashed back toward the shore. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The silent ice world re-echoes with thunders; nature’s giants are awakening to the battle. The ice cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up; and all of a sudden you too find yourself in the midst of the struggle. There are howlings and thunderings round you; you feel the ice trembling, and hear it rumbling under your feet; there is no peace anywhere. In the semi-darkness you can see it piling and tossing itself up into high ridges nearer and nearer you—floes 10, 12, 15 feet thick, broken, and flung on the top of each other as if they were feather-weights. ”

“ Our lives were only a wearing repetition of what had gone before—fierce cold, alarms, the roaring and tumbling of the ice pack, tremendous squeezes and pressures from the floes, and night and day the wheezing of the steam pumps, pumping, forever pumping. It seemed almost a reasonable supposition to conclude that we must have the whole Arctic Ocean nearly pumped dry to judge by the length of time we had been at it and by the huge masses of ice banked up against our bulwarks and spreading out over the floes where the streams of sea water flowing from our scuppers had frozen. ”

“ But the motion of the sea under the ice had grown so perceptible as rather to alarm our travellers, and they began to think it prudent to keep closer to the shore. The ice in many places had fissures and cracks, some of which formed chasms of one or two feet wide; but as they are not uncommon, and the dogs easily leap over them, the sledge following without danger, they are terrible only to new comers.
As soon as the sun declined, the wind increased and rose to a storm. The snow was driven about by whirl winds, both on the ice and from off the peaks of the high mountains, and filled the air. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ice outside of us was constantly in motion, more or less active with the currents of the tides, and about the middle of October the young ice incessantly forming between the large floes became of such thickness, that its crushing up rendered the movement of the ice very audible. First as a loud murmur, later with increasing cold as a hoarse roar, sometimes continuous, sometimes intermittent, like heavy surf upon the shore, which kept the air vibrating, and coming as it did through the darkness and frequently snow-filled air, contained a peculiarly savage and foreboding note. ”

“ Every moment huge masses of ice around us were dashed against each other, and broken into a thousand fragments. Our little party remained fast on our ice island, which was tossed to and fro by the waves. We gazed in most painful inactivity on the wild [27] conflict of the elements, expecting every moment to be swallowed up. We had been three long hours in this position, and still the mass of ice beneath us held together, when suddenly it was caught by the storm, and hurled against a large field of ice. The crash was terrific, and the mass beneath us was shattered into fragments. ”