CHAPTER XIV.

SUNRISE OF 1874.

1. An unbroken sleep for the whole winter would, undoubtedly, be a blessing to the Arctic navigator, and the most energetic among us resigned himself to slumber for a few hours in the afternoon—the profane time of the day for all zones of the earth—especially after the coming in of the New Year, when the long unbroken night is intensely felt. The darkness diminished very gradually, and as the weather was frequently cloudy and dull, it was little lessened by the full moon, which we had at the beginning of January and February. December 26, we were able to read only the title of _New Free Press_, at the distance of a few inches, but not a word of Vogt’s _Geology_. January 11, the word Geology on the title of that book was discernible in clear weather, but only when the book was held up to the light of the midday twilight. On the following day it was as dark at nine o’clock in the morning as at noon on December 1st. The moon returned again on the 24th of January, and after it was four days old we could distinguish the common print of the “Press” by its light, and for the first time read off the degrees of the thermometer without artificial means. During the whole of the month we had alternations of high temperatures and snow-drifting, and at the end of it the wind dropped and the cold became exceedingly great, causing the ice to break up to the south of our position. It would be difficult to give in an illustration any notion of the wonderful forms produced by the twilight, and its glowing colour-effects, and quite impossible to describe the blaze of the meridian heavens, while deep shadows still lay over the ice-plains and a dark ridge fringed and closed the horizon.

2. At noon on the 23rd of February the rolling mists glowed with a red light, announcing the reappearance of the sun. The next day the sun himself, raised and distorted into an oval shape, appeared above the horizon about 10 A.M. Again there was spread over the snow that magical rosy hue, those bright azure shadows, which impart a poetical character even to the landscape of the frozen north. The return of the sun was this year the deliverance from our long night of 125 days.[25] Anxiously had we waited his return, and joyously we greeted it, but not with the frenzied feelings of the previous year. Then the reappearance of the sun was tantamount almost to a deliverance from hell itself; but now the sun was nothing to us but as a means to an end: would it enable us to begin our sledge-journeys to explore the Kaiser Franz-Josef Land? The mere thought of the possibility of making new discoveries threw us into a feverish impatience, and our fears became intense lest the ship with its floe should drift away and frustrate the execution of our plans just as they seemed feasible.

3. On that same day Lieutenant Weyprecht and I resolved to abandon the ship after the termination of our projected sledge-journeys of discovery, and to attempt to return to Europe by means of the boats and sledges. No arguments were needed to convince every one of the ship’s company of the absolute necessity of this resolution. Our ship lay on its icy elevation, beyond the power of man to liberate her, and the provisions would not be sufficient to sustain us for another year. But fear lest the state of our health should greatly deteriorate in a third winter spoke more forcibly than anything else in favour of our decision. When we looked at our medical stores, once so ample, now so reduced, at the few bottles of lemon-juice we could count on, all saw the impossibility of our remaining longer in these latitudes. The melancholy issue of Franklin’s expedition forced itself on our mind as an instructive example and warning. In all likelihood that ill-fated expedition had delayed its return a year longer than it should have done, and began it in so weakened a condition, that it was next to an impossibility that they should have succeeded in their purpose. We began to be pinched also in many of our stores, in spite of the greatest economy in their use. To add to our perils, the doctor drew a sad picture of the sanitary condition of our crew. Of nineteen men, several had fallen sick: Krisch still suffered from scurvy and consumption; Marola from the first scorbutic symptoms; Fallesich from its consequences; Vecerina from the utter inability to move his lower extremities produced by the same malady; Palmich from a constant tendency to it and the contraction of his lower extremities; Pospischill from lung disease; and Haller from a rheumatic affection of his extremities which almost incapacitated him for any exertion.