Fast in the Ice: Adventures in the Polar Regions by R. M. Ballantyne (book suggestions .TXT) 📖

Next morning the Hope was becalmed in the midst of a scene more beautiful than the tongue or the pen of man can describe.

When the sun rose that day, it shone upon what appeared to be a field of glass and a city of crystal. Every trace of the recent storm was gone except a long swell, which caused the brig to roll considerably, but which did not break the surface of the sea.

Ice was to be seen all round as far as the eye could reach. Ice in every form and size imaginable. And the wonderful thing about it was that many of the masses resembled the buildings of a city. There were houses, and churches, and monuments, and spires, and ruins. There were also islands and mountains! Some of the pieces were low and flat, no bigger than a boat; others were tall, with jagged tops; some of the fields, as they are called, were a mile and more in extent, and there were a number of bergs, or ice-mountains, higher than the brig’s topmasts. These last were almost white, but they had, in many places, a greenish-blue colour that was soft and beautiful. The whole scene shone and sparkled so brilliantly in the morning sun, that one could almost fancy it was one of the regions of fairyland!

When young Gregory came on the quarter-deck, no one was there except Jim Croft, a short, thick-set man, with the legs of a dwarf and the shoulders of a giant. He stood at the helm, and although no steering was required, as there was no wind, he kept his hands on the spokes of the wheel, and glanced occasionally at the compass. The first mate, who had the watch on deck, was up at the masthead, observing the state of the ice.

“How glorious!” exclaimed the youth, as he swept his sparkling eye round the horizon. “Ah, Croft! is not this splendid?”

“So it is, sir,” said the seaman, turning the large quid of tobacco that bulged out his left cheek. “It’s very beautiful, no doubt, but it’s comin’ rather thick for my taste.”

“How so?” inquired Gregory. “There seems to me plenty of open water to enable us to steer clear of these masses. Besides, as we have no wind, it matters little, I should think, whether we have room to sail or not.”

“You’ve not seed much o’ the ice yet, that’s plain,” said Croft, “else you’d know that the floes are closin’ round us, an’ we’ll soon be fast in the pack, if a breeze don’t spring up to help us.”

As the reader may not, perhaps, understand the terms used by Arctic voyagers in regard to the ice in its various forms, it may be as well here to explain the meaning of those most commonly used.

When ice is seen floating in small detached pieces and scattered masses, it is called “floe” ice, and men speak of getting among the floes. When these floes close up, so that the whole sea seems to be covered with them, and little water can be seen, it is called “pack” ice. When the pack is squeezed together, so that lumps of it are forced up in the form of rugged mounds, these mounds are called “hummocks.” A large mass of flat ice, varying from one mile to many miles in extent, is called a “field,” and a mountain of ice is called a “berg.”

All the ice here spoken of, except the berg, is sea-ice; formed by the freezing of the ocean in winter. The berg is formed in a very different manner. Of this more shall be said in a future chapter.

“Well, my lad,” said Gregory, in reply to Jim Croft’s last observation, “I have not seen much of the ice yet, as you truly remark, so I hope that the wind will not come to help us out of it for some time. You don’t think it dangerous to get into the pack, do you?”

“Well, not exactly dangerous, sir,” replied Croft, “but I must say that it aint safe, ’specially when there’s a swell on like this. But that’ll go down soon. D’ye know what a nip is, Dr Gregory?”

“I think I do; at least I have read of such a thing. But I should be very glad to hear what you have to say about it. No doubt you have felt one.”

“Felt one!” cried Jim, screwing up his face and drawing his limbs together, as if he were suffering horrible pain, “no, I’ve never felt one. The man what feels a nip aint likely to live to tell what his feelin’s was. But I’ve seed one.”

“You’ve seen one, have you? That must have been interesting. Where was it?”

“Not very far from the Greenland coast,” said Croft, giving his quid another turn. “This was the way of it. You must know that there was two ships of us in company at the time. Whalers we was. We got into the heart of the pack somehow, and we thought we’d never get out of it again. There was nothin’ but ice all round us as far as the eye could see. The name of our ship was the Nancy. Our comrade was the Bullfinch. One mornin’ early we heard a loud noise of ice rubbin’ agin the sides o’ the ship, so we all jumped up, an’ on deck as fast as we could, for there’s short time given to save ourselves in them seas sometimes. The whole pack, we found, was in motion, and a wide lead of water opened up before us, for all the world like a smooth river or canal windin’ through the pack. Into this we warped the ship, and hoistin’ sail, steered away cheerily. We passed close to the Bullfinch, which was still hard and fast in the pack, and we saw that her crew were sawin’ and cuttin’ away at the ice, tryin’ to get into the lead that we’d got into. So we hailed them, and said we would wait for ’em outside the pack, if we got through. But the words were no sooner spoken, when the wind it died away, and we were becalmed about half a mile from the Bullfinch.

“‘You’d better go down to breakfast, boys,’ says our captain, says he, ‘the breeze won’t be long o’ comin’ again.’

“So down the men went, and soon after that the steward comes on deck, and, says he to the captain, ‘Breakfast, sir.’ ‘Very good,’ says the captain, and down he went too, leavin’ me at the wheel and the mate in charge of the deck. He’d not been gone three minutes when I noticed that the great field of ice on our right was closin’ in on the field on our left, and the channel we was floatin’ in was closin’ up. The mate noticed it, too, but he wouldn’t call the captain ’cause the ice came so slowly and quietly on that for a few minutes we could hardly believe it was movin’ and everything around us looked so calm and peaceful like that it was difficult to believe our danger was so great. But this was only a momentary feelin’, d’ye see. A minute after that the mate he cries down to the captain:—

“‘Ice closin’ up, sir!’

“And the captain he runs on deck. By this time there was no mistake about it; the ice was close upon us. It was clear that we were to have a nip. So the captain roars down the hatchway, ‘Tumble up there! tumble up! every man alive! for your lives!’ And sure enough they did tumble up, as I never seed ’em do it before—two or three of ’em was sick; they came up with their clothes in their hands. The ice was now almost touchin’ our sides, and I tell you, sir, I never did feel so queerish in all my life before as when I looked over the side at the edge of that great field of ice which rose three foot out o’ the water, and was, I suppose, six foot more below the surface. It came on so