The English at the North Pole Part 24

"And the cruise of the _Farewell_ under him that got lost in the Spitzbergen seas!" said Clifton.

"He was the only man that came back," continued Gripper.

"He and his dog," answered Clifton.

"We won't die for his pleasure," added Pen.

"Nor lose the bounty we've been at so much trouble to earn," cried Clifton. "When we've pa.s.sed the 78th degree--and we aren't far off it, I know--that will make just the 375 pounds each."

"But," answered Gripper, "shan't we lose it if we go back without the captain?"

"Not if we prove that we were obliged to," answered Clifton.

"But it's the captain----"

"You never mind, Gripper," answered Pen; "we'll have a captain and a good one--that Mr. Shandon knows. When one commander goes mad, folks have done with him, and they take another; don't they, Mr. Shandon?"

Shandon answered evasively that they could reckon upon him, but that they must wait to see what turned up. Difficulties were getting thick round Hatteras, but he was as firm, calm, energetic, and confident as ever. After all, he had done in five months what other navigators had taken two or three years to do! He should be obliged to winter now, but there was nothing to frighten brave sailors in that. Sir John Ross and McClure had pa.s.sed three successive winters in the Arctic regions. What they had done he could do too!

"If I had only been able to get up Smith Strait at the north of Baffin's Sea, I should be at the Pole by now!" he said to the doctor regretfully.

"Never mind, captain!" answered the doctor, "we shall get at it by the 99th meridian instead of by the 75th; if all roads lead to Rome, it's more certain still that all meridians lead to the Pole."

On the 31st of August the thermometer marked 13 degrees. The end of the navigable season was approaching; the _Forward_ left Exmouth Island to the starboard, and three days after pa.s.sed Table Island in the middle of Belcher Channel. At an earlier period it would perhaps have been possible to regain Baffin's Sea by this channel, but it was not to be dreamt of then; this arm of the sea was entirely barricaded by ice; ice-fields extended as far as the eye could reach, and would do so for eight months longer. Happily they could still gain a few minutes further north on the condition of breaking up the ice with huge clubs and petards. Now the temperature was so low, any wind, even a contrary one, was welcome, for in a calm the sea froze in a single night. The _Forward_ could not winter in her present situation, exposed to winds, icebergs, and the drift from the channel; a shelter was the first thing to find; Hatteras hoped to gain the coast of New Cornwall, and to find above Albert Point a bay of refuge sufficiently sheltered. He therefore pursued his course northward with perseverance. But on the 8th an impenetrable ice-bank lay in front of him, and the temperature was at 10 degrees. Hatteras did all he could to force a pa.s.sage, continually risking his s.h.i.+p and getting out of danger by force of skill. He could be accused of imprudence, want of reflection, folly, blindness, but he was a good sailor, and one of the best! The situation of the _Forward_ became really dangerous; the sea closed up behind her, and in a few hours the ice got so hard that the men could run along it and tow the s.h.i.+p in all security.

Hatteras found he could not get round the obstacle, so he resolved to attack it in front; he used his strongest blasting cylinders of eight to ten pounds of powder; they began by making a hole in the thick of the ice, and filled it with snow, taking care to place the cylinder in a horizontal position, so that a greater portion of the ice might be submitted to the explosion; lastly, they lighted the wick, which was protected by a gutta-percha tube. They worked at the blasting, as they could not saw, for the saws stuck immediately in the ice. Hatteras hoped to pa.s.s the next day. But during the night a violent wind raged, and the sea rose under her crust of ice as if shaken by some submarine commotion, and the terrified voice of the pilot was heard crying:

"Look out aft!"

Hatteras turned to the direction indicated, and what he saw by the dim twilight was frightful. A high iceberg, driven back north, was rus.h.i.+ng on to the s.h.i.+p with the rapidity of an avalanche.

"All hands on deck!" cried the captain.

The rolling mountain was hardly half a mile off; the blocks of ice were driven about like so many huge grains of sand; the tempest raged with fury.

"There, Mr. Clawbonny," said Johnson to the doctor, "we are in something like danger now."

"Yes," answered the doctor tranquilly, "it looks frightful enough."

"It's an a.s.sault we shall have to repulse," replied the boatswain.

"It looks like a troop of antediluvian animals, those that were supposed to inhabit the Pole. They are trying which shall get here first!"

"Well," added Johnson, "I hope we shan't get one of their spikes into us!"

"It's a siege--let's run to the ramparts!"

And they made haste aft, where the crew, armed with poles, bars of iron, and handspikes, were getting ready to repulse the formidable enemy. The avalanche came nearer, and got bigger by the addition of the blocks of ice which it caught in its pa.s.sage; Hatteras gave orders to fire the cannon in the bow to break the threatening line. But it arrived and rushed on to the brig; a great crackling noise was heard, and as it struck on the brig's starboard a part of her barricading was broken. Hatteras gave his men orders to keep steady and prepare for the ice. It came along in blocks; some of them weighing several hundredweight came over the s.h.i.+p's side; the smaller ones, thrown up as high as the topsails, fell in little spikes, breaking the shrouds and cutting the rigging. The s.h.i.+p was boarded by these innumerable enemies, which in a block would have crushed a hundred s.h.i.+ps like the _Forward_. Some of the sailors were badly wounded whilst trying to keep off the ice, and Bolton had his left shoulder torn open. The noise was deafening. d.i.c.k barked with rage at this new kind of enemy.

The obscurity of the night came to add to the horror of the situation, but did not hide the threatening blocks, their white surface reflected the last gleams of light. Hatteras's orders were heard in the midst of the crew's strange struggle with the icebergs. The s.h.i.+p giving way to the tremendous pressure, bent to the larboard, and the extremity of her mainyard leaned like a b.u.t.tress against the iceberg and threatened to break her mast.

Hatteras saw the danger; it was a terrible moment; the brig threatened to turn completely over, and the masting might be carried away. An enormous block, as big as the steamer itself, came up alongside her hull; it rose higher and higher on the waves; it was already above the p.o.o.p; it fell over the _Forward_. All was lost; it was now upright, higher than the gallant yards, and it shook on its foundation. A cry of terror escaped the crew. Everyone fled to starboard. But at this moment the steamer was lifted completely up, and for a little while she seemed to be suspended in the air, and fell again on to the ice-blocks; then she rolled over till her planks cracked again. After a minute, which appeared a century, she found herself again in her natural element, having been turned over the ice-bank that blocked her pa.s.sage by the rising of the sea.

"She's cleared the ice-bank!" shouted Johnson, who had rushed to the fore of the brig.

"Thank G.o.d!" answered Hatteras.

The brig was now in the midst of a pond of ice, which hemmed her in on every side, and though her keel was in the water, she could not move; she was immovable, but the ice-field moved for her.

"We are drifting, captain!" cried Johnson.

"We must drift," answered Hatteras; "we can't help ourselves."

When daylight came, it was seen that the brig was drifting rapidly northward, along with a submarine current. The floating ma.s.s carried the _Forward_ along with it. In case of accident, when the brig might be thrown on her side, or crushed by the pressure of the ice, Hatteras had a quant.i.ty of provisions brought up on deck, along with materials for encamping, the clothes and blankets of the crew. Taking example from Captain McClure under similar circ.u.mstances, he caused the brig to be surrounded by a belt of hammocks, filled with air, so as to s.h.i.+eld her from the thick of the damage; the ice soon acc.u.mulated under a temperature of 7 degrees, and the s.h.i.+p was surrounded by a wall of ice, above which her masts only were to be seen. They navigated thus for seven days; Point Albert, the western extremity of New Cornwall, was sighted on the 10th of September, but soon disappeared; from thence the ice-field drifted east. Where would it take them to?

Where should they stop? Who could tell? The crew waited, and the men folded their arms. At last, on the 15th of September, about three o'clock in the afternoon, the ice-field, stopped, probably, by collision with another field, gave a violent shake to the brig, and stood still. Hatteras found himself out of sight of land in lat.i.tude 78 degrees 15 minutes and longitude 95 degrees 35 minutes in the midst of the unknown sea, where geographers have placed the Frozen Pole.

CHAPTER XXIV

PREPARATIONS FOR WINTERING

The southern hemisphere is colder in parallel lat.i.tudes than the northern hemisphere; but the temperature of the new continent is still 15 degrees below that of the other parts of the world; and in America the countries known under the name of the Frozen Pole are the most formidable. The average temperature of the year is 2 degrees below zero. Scientific men, and Dr. Clawbonny amongst them, explain the fact in the following way. According to them, the prevailing winds of the northern regions of America blow from the south-west; they come from the Pacific Ocean with an equal and bearable temperature; but in order to reach the Arctic Seas they have to cross the immense American territory, covered with snow, they get cold by contact with it, and then cover the hyperborean regions with their frigid violence.

Hatteras found himself at the Frozen Pole beyond the countries seen by his predecessors; he, therefore, expected a terrible winter on a s.h.i.+p lost in the midst of the ice with a crew nearly in revolt.

He resolved to face these dangers with his accustomed energy. He began by taking, with the help of Johnson's experience, all the measures necessary for wintering. According to his calculations he had been dragged two hundred and fifty miles beyond New Cornwall, the last country discovered; he was clasped in an ice-field as securely as in a bed of granite, and no power on earth could extricate him.

There no longer existed a drop of water in the vast seas over which the Arctic winter reigned. Ice-fields extended as far as the eye could reach, bristling with icebergs, and the _Forward_ was sheltered by three of the highest on three points of the compa.s.s; the south-east wind alone could reach her. If instead of icebergs there had been rocks, verdure instead of snow, and the sea in its liquid state again, the brig would have been safely anch.o.r.ed in a pretty bay sheltered from the worst winds. But in such a lat.i.tude it was a miserable state of things. They were obliged to fasten the brig by means of her anchors, notwithstanding her immovability; they were obliged to prepare for the submarine currents and the breaking up of the ice. When Johnson heard where they were, he took the greatest precautions in getting everything ready for wintering.

"It's the captain's usual luck," said he to the doctor; "we've got nipped in the most disagreeable point of the whole glove! Never mind; we'll get out of it!"

As to the doctor, he was delighted at the situation. He would not have changed it for any other! A winter at the Frozen Pole seemed to him desirable. The crew were set to work at the sails, which were not taken down, and put into the hold, as the first people who wintered in these regions had thought prudent; they were folded up in their cases, and the ice soon made them an impervious envelope. The crow's nest, too, remained in its place, serving as a nautical observatory; the rigging alone was taken away. It became necessary to cut away the part of the field that surrounded the brig, which began to suffer from the pressure. It was a long and painful work. In a few days the keel was cleared, and on examination was found to have suffered little, thanks to the solidity of its construction, only its copper plating was almost all torn off. When the s.h.i.+p was once liberated she rose at least nine inches; the crew then bevelled the ice in the shape of the keel, and the field formed again under the brig, and offered sufficient opposition to pressure from without. The doctor helped in all this work; he used the ice-knife skilfully; he incited the sailors by his happy disposition. He instructed himself and others, and was delighted to find the ice under the s.h.i.+p.

"It's a very good precaution!" said he.

"We couldn't do without it, Mr. Clawbonny," said Johnson. "Now we can raise a snow-wall as high as the gunwale, and if we like we can make it ten feet thick, for we've plenty of materials."

"That's an excellent idea," answered the doctor. "Snow is a bad conductor of heat; it reflects it instead of absorbing it, and the heat of the interior does not escape."

"That's true," said Johnson. "We shall raise a fortification against the cold, and against animals too, if they take it into their heads to pay us a visit; when the work is done it will answer, I can tell you. We shall make two flights of steps in the snow, one from the s.h.i.+p and the other from outside; when once we've cut out the steps we shall pour water over them, and it will make them as hard as rock.

We shall have a royal staircase."

"It's a good thing that cold makes ice and snow, and so gives us the means of protecting ourselves against it. I don't know what we should do if it did not."

A roofing of tarred cloth was spread over the deck and descended to the sides of the brig. It was thus sheltered from all outside impression, and made a capital promenade; it was covered with two feet and a-half of snow, which was beaten down till it became very hard, and above that they put a layer of sand, completely macadamising it.

"With a few trees I should imagine myself in Hyde Park," said the doctor, "or in one of the hanging gardens of Babylon."

They made a hole at a short distance from the brig; it was round, like a well; they broke the ice every morning. This well was useful in case of fire or for the frequent baths ordered to keep the crew in health. In order to spare their fuel, they drew the water from a greater depth by means of an apparatus invented by a Frenchman, Francois Arago. Generally, when a s.h.i.+p is wintering, all the objects which enc.u.mber her are placed in magazines on the coast, but it was impossible to do this in the midst of an ice-field. Every precaution was taken against cold and damp; men have been known to resist the cold and succ.u.mb to damp; therefore both had to be guarded against.