Seven Frozen Sailors

I didn’t believe it at first, till I had had the pump well sounded; but the ship was quite right, and as sound as ever, so that half an hour after we had made sail, and were leaving the iceberg far behind.

It was some time before I could feel sure that it wasn’t all a dream; but the cool way in which the doctor took it all served to satisfy me, and I soon had enough to take up my attention in the management of the ship.

For the next fortnight we were sailing or steaming on past floating ice, with the greatest care needed to avoid collision or being run down. Then we had foul weather, rain, and fog, and snowstorm, and the season seeming to get colder and colder for quite another fortnight, when it suddenly changed, and we had bright skies, constant sunshine night and day, and steamed slowly on through the pack ice.

The doctor grew more confidential as we got on, telling me of the jealousy with which he had watched the discoveries of other men, and how, for years, he had determined that Curley and Pole should be linked together. He said that there was no doubt about the open Polar Sea, and that if we could once get through the pack ice into it, the rest of the task was easy.

“But suppose, when we’ve got up there, we get frozen in, doctor?” I said.

“Well, what then?” he answered. “We can wait, till we are thawed out.”

“Perhaps all dead,” I said.

“Pooh, my dear sir! No such thing. Freezing merely means a suspension of the faculties. I will give you an example soon.”

“Well, Binny,” said Abram slowly, after overhearing these words, “I don’t want my faculties suspended; that’s all I’ve got to say!”

The next day we were working our way through great canals of clear water, that meandered among the pack ice. There were great headlands on each side, covered with ice and snow, and the solitude seemed to grow awful, but the doctor kept us all busy. Now it was a seal hunt; then we were all off after a bear. Once or twice we had a reindeer hunt, and supplied the ship with fresh meat. Bird shooting, too, and fishing had their turn, so that it was quite a pleasure trip when the difficulties of the navigation left us free.

Eighty degrees had long been passed, and still our progress was not stayed. We often had a bit of a nip from the ice closing in, and over and over again we had to turn back; but we soon found open water again, after steaming gently along the edge of the track, and thence northward once more, till one day the doctor and I took observations, and we found that we were eighty-five degrees north, somewhere about a hundred miles farther than any one had been before.

“We shall do it, Cookson!” cried the doctor, rubbing his hands. “Only five more degrees, my lad, and we have made our fame! Cookson, my boy, you’ll be knighted!”

“I hope not, sir!” I said, shuddering, as I thought of the City aldermen. “I would rather be mourned!”

“That’s a bad habit, trying to make jokes,” he said, gravely. “Fancy, my good fellow, making a pun in eighty-five degrees north latitude! but I’m not surprised. There is no latitude observed now, since burlesques have come into fashion. Where are you going, Cookson!”

“Up in the crow’s-nest, sir,” I said. “I don’t like the look of the hummocky ice out nor’ard.”

I climbed up, spy-glass in hand, when, to my horror, the doctor began to follow me.

“That there crow’s-nest won’t abear you, sir!” cried Scudds, coming to the rescue.

“Think not, my man?” said the doctor.

“Sure on’t!” said Scudds.

“Ah, well, I’m with you in spirit, Cookson!” he exclaimed.

And I finished my climb, and well swept the horizon line with my glass.

There was no mistaking it: ice, ice, ice on every side. The little canal through which we were steaming came to an end a mile farther on; and that night we were frozen in fast, and knew that there was not a chance of being set free till the next year.

The crew was divided into two parties at once, and without loss of time I got one set at work lowering yards, striking masts, and covering in the ship, while the others were busied with the preparation of the sledges.

Two days after, a party of ten of us, with plenty of provisions on our sledge, and a tent, started under the doctor’s guidance for the Pole.

It was very cold, but the sun shone brightly, and we trudged on, the doctor showing the value of his natural covering, though he was less coated with furs than we were.

He pointed out to me the shape of the land, and which was frozen sea; and at the end of two days, when we were in a wild place, all mighty masses of ice, he declared his conviction that there was, after all, no open Polar sea, only ice to the end.

We had had a bitter cold night, and had risen the next morning cold and cheerless; but a good hot cup of coffee set us right, and we were thinking of starting, when Scudds, who was with us, Abram being left in command, kicked at a piece of ice, saying, “That’s rum-looking stuff!”

“There’s something in it,” said the doctor’s nephew, who was always in the way.

“Let me see,” said the doctor, putting on his spectacles. “To be sure – yes! Axes, quick!”

He took one himself, gave the block of ice a sharp blow, split it in halves, and, to our utter astonishment, a strange-looking animal like a woolly dog lay before us, frozen, of course, perfectly hard.

“A prize!” said the doctor; and we, under his orders, made a good-sized fire, laid the perfectly preserved animal by it, and at the end of a couple of hours had the satisfaction of seeing it move one leg, then another, and, at last, it rose slowly on all fours, raised one of its hind legs, scratched itself in the most natural way in the world, and then seemed to sink down all of a heap, and melt quite away, leaving some loose wool on the snow.

“Well,” said Scudds, rolling his one eye, “if I hadn’t ha’ seen that ’ere, I wouldn’t ha’ believed it!”

“Only a case of suspended animation, my man,” said the doctor, calmly. “We shall make more discoveries yet.”

The doctor was right; for this set all the men hunting about, he giving them every encouragement, so that at the end of an hour we had found another dog; but in dislodging the block of ice in which it was frozen, the head was broken off, so that the only good to be obtained by thawing it was the rough wool and some of the teeth, which the doctor carefully preserved.

“Isn’t it much colder here, doctor?” I said, for the wind seemed to go through me like a knife.

“Hush!” he whispered; “don’t let the men hear, or they’ll be discouraged. It’s perfectly frightful; the thermometers are stopped!”

“Stopped?” I said.

“Yes; the cold’s far below anything they can show. They are perfectly useless now. Let’s get on?”

I stood staring at him, feeling a strange stupor coming over me. It was not unpleasant, being something like the minutes before one goes to sleep; but I was startled into life by the doctor flying at me, and hitting me right in my chest. The next moment he had a man on each side pumping my arms up and down, as they forced me to run for quite a quarter of an hour, when I stopped, panting, and the doctor laid his hand upon my heart.

“He’ll do now!” he said, quietly. “Don’t you get trying any of those games again, captain.”

“What games?” I said, indignantly.

“Getting yourself frozen. Now, then, get on, my lads – we must go ahead!”

For the next nine days we trudged on, dragging our sledge through the wonderful wilderness of ice and snow. At night we camped in the broad sunshine, and somehow the air seemed to be much warmer. But on the tenth day, when we had reached the edge of a great, crater-like depression in the ice, which seemed to extend as far as the eye could reach, the intensity of the cold was frightful, and I spoke of it to the doctor, as soon as we had set up our little canvas and skin tent.

“Yes, it is cold!” he said. “I’d give something to know how low it is! But let’s make our observations.”

We did, and the doctor triumphantly announced that we were within one degree of the Pole.

We were interrupted by an outcry among the men, and, on going to the tent, it was to find them staring at the spirit-lamp, over which we heated our coffee. The flame, instead of fluttering about, and sending out warmth, had turned quite solid, and was like a great tongue of bright, bluish-yellow metal, which rang like a bell, on being touched with a spoon.

“Never mind, my men!” says the doctor coolly. “It is only one of the phenomena of the place. Captain, give the men a piece of brandy each.”

“A little brandy apiece, you mean, sir.”

“No,” he said coolly; “I mean a piece of brandy each.”

He was quite right: the brandy was one solid mass, like a great cairngorm pebble, and we had to break it with an axe; and very delicious the bits were to suck, but as to strength, it seemed to have none.