CHAPTER IX.

THE RETURN OF LIGHT.—THE SPRING OF 1873.

1. Though the sun did not return to our latitude (78° 15′, 71° 38′ E. long.) till the 19th of February, we were able to greet his beams three days previous to that date, owing to the strong refraction of 1° 40′, which accompanied a temperature of -35 (F.). To the Polar navigator the return of the sun is an event of indescribable joy and magnificence. In those dreadful wastes he feels the force of the superstitions of past ages, and becomes almost a worshipper of the eternal luminary. As of old the worshippers of Belus watched its approach on the luxuriant shores of the Euphrates, we, too, standing on mountains of ice or perched on the masts of the ship, waited to hail the advent of the source of light. At last it came! A wave of light rolled through the vast expanse of heaven, and then—up rose the sun-god, surrounded with purple clouds, and poured his beams over the world of ice. No one spoke for a time. Who indeed could have found words to embody the feelings of relief which beamed on the faces of all, and which found a kind of expression in the scarcely audible exclamation of one of the simplest and least cultured of the crew, “Benedetto giorno!” The sun had risen with but half his disk, as if reluctant to shine on a world unworthy of his beams. A rosy hue suffused the whole scene, and the cold Memnon pillars of ice gave forth mysterious whispers in the flood of heat and light. Now indeed with the sun had a new year begun—what was it to bring forth for us and our prospects? But alas, his stay was short—he remained above the horizon for a few minutes only; again his light was quenched, and a hazy violet colour lay over distant objects, and the twinkling stars shone in the heavens.

2. While we watched the sun’s return, we had also an opportunity of looking on each other. How shocked and surprised were we with the change which had been wrought on us in the long Polar night! Our sunken cheeks were overspread with pallor; we had all the signs of convalescence after a long illness—the sharp-pointed nose, the sunken eye. The eyes of all had suffered from the light of lamps which had burnt for months; those especially who had used them for hard work. But all these consequences were of short duration under the beneficent influence of the daylight and the spring sun, which soon brought colour into our faces. Cheerfulness gradually returned to all on board the _Tegetthoff_, as we revelled in the warm beams of the sun. We built a house without a roof, and open to the south, and thither the healthy and the sick on calm fine days used to repair from the dreary ship, and sun themselves like lizards. But within the ship it was still night.

3. The visits of bears again became numerous. February 17th one of about five feet long was shot very close to the ship, and two days afterwards a second came near us, but was scared away by the awkwardness of the hunters. The dogs however pursued him, and we were compelled from fears for their safety to follow up the chase. The temperature of -33° F., and a pretty strong wind against which we had to run in the pursuit, brought on in some of our party palpitation of the heart and spitting of blood, and our return to the ship was a matter of some difficulty. On the morning of the 20th another bear came close to the ship, was fired at, but missed, and got away. Palmich, Haller, and Klotz immediately gave chase, though the temperature was -40° F., and the wind high. After a short time Palmich returned with his face frost-bitten, and the Tyrolese after several hours, without any success, but with their feet so frost-bitten that they had lost all feeling in them. The second stage of the malady had begun, which renders amputation almost a necessity. For several hours their feet had to be rubbed with snow till sensation returned, and with returning sensation much suffering; large swellings as big as a man’s fist rose on their feet, which were reduced only after the application of ice for several days. Again, in the grey of the morning of February 22nd a bear came within eighty paces of the ship, which Sussich, the watch on deck, after several shots, which the animal seemed not in the least to regard, at last hit and killed. By a wound on his right forepaw we recognised our friend whom we had hotly chased a few days before. He was six feet in length, and in his stomach there was nothing but a small piece of the skin of a seal. Sussich was overjoyed with his success, and for the whole day tried to drag everyone outside the ship to show the result of his prowess, “Se mi non era, il copava tutti,” he added, with a look of contempt on those who had not been so successful as himself.

4. Although at the end of February the sun rose with a carmine light which imparted an indescribable charm to the fields of snow and ice, we were doomed to disappointment in our expectation of bright and clear weather in the after-part of the day. Soon after sun-rise, white frosty mists gathered over the ice-fields, making the sun as he shone through them a mere ball of light, or completely concealing him. On February 24th we enjoyed the peculiar spectacle of seeing the sun appear, the temperature being -44° F., distorted by refraction, through the thick mists on the horizon, as if he were quite flat, beamless, and of a coppery red. The end of February reminded us of the carnival time of the land of the South, and the crew appeared in such masques as they could command; but their masquerading formed a sad and mocking contrast with the gravity of our position. The men bestowed all their art on “Sumbu,” who was dressed up as the demon “Lindwurm,” and deported himself in a manner highly becoming his costume.

5. With the month of March the spring had, in name at least, begun; but in our sense of the word no spring as yet appeared. Instead of the joyous gleams of early vegetation, a blinding white waste environed us; instead of the perfumed breath of flowers and the soft air of spring, there rose driving clouds of ice-needles; and parhelia of almost daily occurrence shone in a heavy sleepy fashion through white frosty mists. The atmosphere was filled with snow; to be convinced of this we had only to look at the sun when the weather seemed clear and bright. This continual fall of snow as fine as dust was the cause of the retardation of the evaporation of the ice. The influence of the sun was so great, that on March 3 the black-bulb thermometer indicated the unusual temperature of 45° F., and a layer of snow on the bows of the vessel showed evident signs of diminution. The thermometer, in the sun, rose eight degrees March 6, and nine degrees two days after. The weather was calm and clear, and the increasing influence of the sun was a most joyful sensation. A cube of ice freely suspended showed during the second half of March a daily diminution of 1/100 of its weight from evaporation; while in the sea itself its behaviour was the very opposite; the cube of ice, which was submerged to a depth of ten feet from February 19th to March 5th, showed at the latter date an increase of its mass, amounting to ¾ of an inch round its surface. In the beginning and end of March the cold was so severe, that the thermometer every day for three weeks marked -35° F. Calms and clear weather, however, characterized this period of the spring, and snow-drifting and a clouded sky were rare. On the 13th of March the full moon again appeared in the azure twilight of the western heavens, and its soft light fringed with silver the dark ranges of ice. The days became longer, and the shadows cast by the masses of ice were shorter and more marked, and every one who remained long in the open air was forced to use snow-spectacles. Small avalanches began to fall from the rigging, and the masts, spars, and ropes lost their white frosted aspect. On the 22nd the fore-part of the ship’s hull facing the south was completely free from snow and its dark colour was visible. On the 29th the temperature in the sun exceeded the temperature at 9.30 A.M. by 34° F.; and on the 30th we could for the first time observe the melting of the snow on the seams of the timber of the ship’s hull. The enumeration of these events, insignificant as they may appear, will serve to show with what attention the Polar navigator notes the minutest occurrence due to the influence of the sun.

6. Welcome, though illusive, harbingers of the returning summer were the first birds, whose arrival we greeted on the 19th. These were little divers, which flew over the ship to the open spaces of water amid the ice, there to seek their food in the countless crustaceæ which abound in them. Magnificent auroras continued to illuminate our nights; and although the duration of their intensity was much too brief to serve as a source of light, there was a charm in these phenomena which their daily recurrence could not weaken.

7. While under these various influences the health of all on board the _Tegetthoff_ greatly improved, we were threatened with the serious calamity of losing our excellent physician, Dr. Kepes, who fell ill on the 13th of the month. For two weeks we were kept in a state of anxious fear for him; and our anxieties were increased as we had to treat his malady without the necessary knowledge and experience. To our great joy, however, he was spared to us; and our supply of fresh bear’s-flesh was henceforth reserved for him.

8. For some time the bears had observed a very distressing reserve and shyness in their visits, On the 15th one came near us, and as Pekel had for some time announced his approach, he found a long front of rifles drawn up behind some masses of ice to give him a warm reception. He, as usual, came on under the wind, showing considerable interest in our edifices. He then ascended a small ice-crag, and, after balancing himself carefully, sat down on the top of it, with his snout uplifted, snuffing all round. This seemed so ludicrous to some of our party that they burst out into a laugh so loud, that the bear came down from his pinnacle in evident astonishment, and with much circumspection drew nearer and nearer till at a short distance from us he fell mortally wounded. He was, alas! a very small animal, about 5½ feet long, and his stomach was absolutely empty. On the 30th of March another came close to the ship; the watch on shore fired at, but missed him, whereupon both the watch and the bear took to flight.

9. April at last arrived, and with it the time of icicles, which hung down from every yard of the ship, and from every rope of the rigging, from every icy ridge and crag. The melting and decaying of the ice, though always a source of satisfaction when the question of its breaking up is discussed, went on, to our impatient desires, with intolerable slowness. What was it to us that we were able to read even at midnight on the 2nd of April; that the number of divers and sea-gulls constantly increased; that on the 6th the difference of temperature between sun and shade was 18°; that the black-bulb thermometer on the 20th showed 43° F.; that the sun on the 11th rose about two o’clock in the morning, and from the 16th remained constantly in the heavens? What did all this matter? The constant light notwithstanding, we were still environed with the signs of deepest winter, and the forms and masses of ice collapsed with a slow deliberation that tortured us. We were no longer to be satisfied and amused with the spectacle of parhelia, even though the phenomenon should appear, as it did on the 1st of April, with eight suns. Months of weary waiting still lay before us; daily we had to arm ourselves with patience, as, when we came on deck, we discovered the apparently unchangeable character of our environment, with all its forms, which had become familiar to us down to the smallest details. Reluctantly condemned to almost total idleness, we filled up our time with such occupations as fancy suggested. Some of our people built a tower of ice on a level part of our floe; others tried their rifles—tried often enough before—at empty bottles as targets. Along with the Tyrolese I constructed a road through hills of ice, over passes and ridges, going up and down in serpentine paths, making a circuit of about three miles round the ship. The labour of weeks with picks and shovels was expended in making and preserving it; after each downfall of snow this road had to be dug out afresh. Our passing and repassing along it through a maze of ice not only beneficially exercised our bodies, but furnished opportunities for training our dogs to drag heavy-laden sledges. I continued also to fill my portfolio with studies of scenery in the ice, and I accustomed myself, whenever there was no wind, whatever might be the temperature, to draw for hours together with no other protection to my hands than light gloves.

10. April had begun with a temperature of -38° F.; as the month advanced it steadily increased. At the end of the month the extreme of cold was but -20° F. But the weather had now lost the clearness of the early spring; and constant calms, together with the frequent falls of snow, undid the work of the few hours of the day on which the sun shone. The ice was covered with deep snow; on the level we sank ankle deep, while among the hummocks it was up to our knees. Sledging would have been impracticable. Among the changes produced by the softening of the weather, none was greater or more agreeable than the return of daylight to the cabin, when we took off the covering of the skylight and removed the tent-roof from the fore-part of the ship. Once more to be able to read without the dull glimmer of artificial light was an extraordinary event in our monotonous life. For five months our lamps had been burning in our mess-room, so that the walls were black with smoke, and it was a work of no small labour to make them clean and pleasant. The unloading of the ship’s hold was, however, a far heavier, though necessary task; the thick crusts of ice which had accumulated on its sides must be removed, lest the provisions should be damaged by their thawing; and there was no time to lose, for the temperature in the hold was only 1° below zero. The provisions, which had been left out on the ice, were again stowed in the ship, the cessation of the ice-pressures rendering this precautionary measure useless.

11. Round a ship which has wintered in the ice there is gradually accumulated a mass of rubbish of all kinds, of which cinders form a considerable constituent. These, when thrown out in small quantities, sink at once into the snow, while larger quantities act as a non-conducting layer. Hence we were surrounded by a maze of holes, big and little, alternating with plateaus, under which winter still continued to linger. When thaw-water made its appearance, all this was transformed into a succession of lakes and islands, which we bridged over by planks.

12. Meantime we began our labours of digging out the ship. We removed the wall of snow, which had served as an outer garment and protection during the winter, and the hard-trodden layer which covered the deck a foot thick. In clearing away from the after-part of the ship, we discovered that the machinery protecting the screw had been torn away by the ice-pressures. The mischief done, however, was not considerable; and as the ship made no water, we consoled ourselves with the thought, that she had sustained no material injury, though she had lain so long out of water perched on the floe.

13. The continued cessation of movements in the ice induced Weyprecht to erect a tent at no great distance from the ship, to carry on in it observations of the magnetic constants, which were taken on certain appointed days. On the night of one of such days, Orel, who conducted these observations, was surprised by the visit of a bear. His shouts for help brought us on deck, but before we could actually reach him, the seaman on the watch had killed the bear with an explosive bullet. Hitherto these animals had shown little courage in the neighbourhood of the ship, and to shoot them from the deck exposed no one to any danger; but this incident showed us that we could not count securely on their actions. Soon after this we had another surprise. Stiglich, the seaman on watch on shore, suddenly found himself confronted with a bear about eight paces off. Throwing his cap to the bear, he made a rush for the rope-ladders of the ship, but fell in his hurry and confusion. Carlsen, hearing his cries for help, hastened to the rescue, and dexterously shot the pursuer. A glorious event for Carlsen! who used to tell us strange stories of his encounters with bears: how he had scared them away with the glance of his eye; and how once in Novaya Zemlya he had frightened away a whole pack of them by the magic of his glance. All doubts in the prowess of his eye were silenced to-day by the more unquestionable prowess of his rifle. On the 28th of May a bear clambering over the wall of ice close astern of the ship was shot dead with an explosive bullet. His stomach was empty, but notwithstanding his leanness, he furnished more meat than many others, for he was fully seven feet long.

14. At the end of April the force of the winds so loosened the compactness of the ice, that dark strips hanging above the horizon in all directions announced the existence of numerous fissures, although they were invisible even from the masts of the ship. We counted on these signs with such unshaken confidence, that when on the 2nd of May we heard in the distance the now familiar sound of the ice-pressures, we heard them not only without dismay, but as the voice of a joyous message. Three-quarters of a year had passed away since we were first caught in the ice—a time laden to us with bitter disappointments to our hopes, and great dangers to our lives. The hour of our long and ardently desired liberation seemed at hand. If once we got free, it lay within the bounds of possibility that we might reach, if not the somewhat mythical Gillis’ Land, then at least the uninhabited Arctic coasts of Siberia. Siberia had, in fact, become the rosiest of our hopes. Some, indeed, still indulged in extravagant expectations and counted on the discovery of new lands, even while they drifted with the ice. But our wishes for the most part had become so subdued, that the discovery of the smallest cliff would have satisfied our ambition as discoverers.

15. But Nature’s laws held their own course, undisturbed by our desires. Snow continued to fall in abundance, and spread its mantle over the ice. The constant round of downfalls and evaporation was a sad bar to our hopes. In the beginning of May the snow began to thaw on the surface, and became soft and sticky. Even in the depth of winter it was never hard, but like the fine dry grains of driving sand. This change in the snow, which occurs a fortnight earlier than in Greenland, compelled us to substitute our black leather boots for those of sailcloth, which we had hitherto worn. On the 2nd of May the temperature fell to -8° F., but it now began to rise gradually, so that it sometimes reached the freezing point about the end of the month, and on the 29th rose five degrees above it. The mean temperature of the month, however, was not above 16° F. But the difference of temperature in the sun and the shade became greater and greater. The thermometer marked -18° F. at 6 P.M. of the 1st of May, and on the 11th the black-bulb thermometer showed 90° F. at 3 P.M., while the common instrument gave only 14° F. In the middle of the month, after the heavy winds fell, we were enveloped with dark fog banks; stray beams of the sun broke through the warm misty atmosphere, and dark skies were succeeded by masses of white vapour illuminated by the sun. Just as in our happier clime, the Arctic April has her alternations of cloud and sunshine.

16. Hitherto the only birds which had visited us were divers and gulls. Once only a snow-bunting flew among us, and fearlessly settled on the ship. On the 24th of May the auks made their appearance, and from that date we were constantly entertained by the whirring sounds of their flight. As they keep one direction in their flight, we could shoot those only which passed over the ship; they were a useful addition to our table, though they had to be steeped in vinegar to make them palatable. The majestic Burgomaster Gull appeared somewhat later, and later still the “Ice-birds” frequented the shores of the lakes around us, and hovered round the remains of the bears we had shot. These birds settled with the greatest boldness in the immediate neighbourhood of the ship, and day and night filled the air with their wild shrill cries.

17. By the middle of March, Krisch, the engineer, had put the steam machinery in working order, but another month elapsed before the screw-propeller, which had been frozen fast, was set free; our fears lest it should refuse to act proved to be groundless. As, however, there was no prospect of our being able to use steam for some time, it was thought advisable to dig out and raise the rudder in order to secure it.

18. On the 26th of May a partial eclipse of the sun was visible in our latitude; but from an error in our calculations we had ante-dated the commencement of the observation by about two hours and a half. Everyone on board who had an instrument at his command stood ready to observe the passage of the moon over the sun’s disk. After waiting for some time in vain, we discovered the error we had committed as to the time of the beginning of the eclipse, but in order that the dignity of astronomical observation might not be degraded in the eye of the crew, we still held our ground with the telescopes in our hands. Two hours of such suspense enabled us to feel that there could be no more perfect fulfilment of the punishment of Sisyphus than being condemned to wait for an eclipse of the sun which would not come off! At last the eclipse took place, but not until great disgust had been excited in the minds of men who were too much inclined to regard the whole thing as a piece of humbug. At the height of the eclipse about one-third only of the sun’s disk was obscured, and the sun was so covered with mist that we could look at it without the use of coloured glasses. The whole duration of the eclipse was one hour and fifty-six minutes.

19. From the 1st of the month the number of living creatures belonging to the expedition had been increased by the birth of four Newfoundland puppies, who passed the earliest days of their youth in a tent erected on the ice, and artificially heated to the temperature of a European May. But all our care in rearing this litter was frustrated by one of these little Polar wretches, who, after sucking his mother till he was as round as a drum, lay on his brothers as they slept, and stifled them. This little criminal received the name of Torossy, and soon became the pet of the crew, and a favourite with all the other dogs. The fame which he afterwards gained made him an important member of the expedition. All the dogs had become so hardy during the past winter, that they now slept outside their kennels, finding the inside too warm for them.