第63章 LETTER XI(3)

During the next four-and-twenty hours we ran along the edge of the ice,in nearly a due westerly direction,without observing the slightest indication of anything approaching to an opening towards the North.It was weary work,scanning that seemingly interminable barrier,and listening to the melancholy roar of waters on its icy shore.

At last,after having come about 140miles since leaving Bear Island,--the long,white,wave-lashed line suddenly ran down into a low point,and then trended back with a decided inclination to the North.Here,at all events,was an improvement;instead of our continuing to steer W.by S.,or at most W.by N.,the schooner would often lay as high up as N.W.,and even N.W.by N.Evidently the action of the Gulf Stream was beginning to tell,and our spirits rose in proportion.In a few more hours,however,this cheering prospect was interrupted by a fresh line of ice being reported,not only ahead,but as far as the eye could reach on the port bow;so again the schooner's head was put to the westward,and the old story recommenced.And now the flank of the second barrier was turned,and we were able to edge up a few hours to the northward;but only to be again confronted by another line,more interminable,apparently,than the last.But why should I weary you with the detail of our various manoeuvres during the ensuing days?They were too tedious and disheartening at the time,for me to look back upon them with any pleasure.Suffice it to say,that by dint of sailing north whenever the ice would permit us,and sailing west when we could not sail north,we found ourselves on the 2nd of August,in the latitude of the southern extremity of Spitzbergen,though divided from the land by about fifty miles of ice.All this while the weather had been pretty good,foggy and cold enough,but with a fine stiff breeze that rattled us along at a good rate whenever we did get a chance of making any Northing.

But lately it had come on to blow very hard,the cold became quite piercing,and what was worse--in every direction round the whole circuit of the horizon,except along its southern segment,--a blaze of iceblink illuminated the sky.A more discouraging spectacle could not have met our eyes.The iceblink is a luminous appearance,reflected on the heavens from the fields of ice that still lie sunk beneath the horizon;it was,therefore on this occasion an unmistakable indication of the encumbered state of the sea in front of us.

I had turned in for a few hours of rest,and release from the monotonous sense of disappointment,and was already lost in a dream of deep bewildering bays of ice,and gulfs whose shifting shores offered to the eye every possible combination of uncomfortable scenery,without possible issue,--when "a voice in my dreaming ear"shouted "LAND!"and I awoke to its reality.I need not tell you in what double quick time I tumbled up the companion,or with what greediness I feasted my eyes on that longed-for view,--the only sight--as I then thought--we were ever destined to enjoy of the mountains of Spitzbergen!

The whole heaven was overcast with a dark mantle of tempestuous clouds,that stretched down in umbrella-like points towards the horizon,leaving a clear space between their edge and the sea,illuminated by the sinister brilliancy of the iceblink.In an easterly direction,this belt of unclouded atmosphere was etherealized to an indescribable transparency,and up into it there gradually grew--above the dingy line of starboard ice--a forest of thin lilac peaks,so faint,so pale,that had it not been for the gem-like distinctness of their outline,one could have deemed them as unsubstantial as the spires of fairy-land.The beautiful vision proved only too transient;in one short half hour mist and cloud had blotted it all out,while a fresh barrier of ice compelled us to turn our backs on the very land we were striving to reach.

Although we were certainly upwards of sixty miles distant from the land when the Spitzbergen hills were first observed,the intervening space seemed infinitely less;but in these high latitudes the eye is constantly liable to be deceived in the estimate it forms of distances.

Often,from some change suddenly taking place in the state of the atmosphere,the land you approach will appear even to RECEDE;and on one occasion,an honest skipper--one of the most valiant and enterprising mariners of his day--actually turned back,because,after sailing for several hours with a fair wind towards the land,and finding himself no nearer to it than at first,he concluded that some loadstone rock beneath the sea must have attracted the keel of his ship,and kept her stationary.

The next five days were spent in a continual struggle with the ice.On referring to our log,I see nothing but a repetition of the same monotonous observations.

"July 31st.--Wind W.by S.--Courses sundry to clear ice.""Ice very thick."