Fast in the Ice: Adventures in the Polar Regions

Suddenly a tremendous shock was felt! The captain’s cup of tea leaped away from him and flooded the centre of the table. The doctor’s cup was empty; he seized the table with both hands and remained steady; but Dicey’s cup happened to be at his lips at the moment, and was quite full. The effect on him was unfortunate. He was thrown violently on his back, and the tea poured over his face and drenched his hair as he lay sprawling on the floor. The steward saved himself by dropping the bread-tray and grasping the handle of the cabin door. So violent was the shock that the ship’s bell was set a-ringing.

“Beg pardon, gentlemen,” cried the first mate, looking down the skylight. “I forgot to warn you. The ice is getting rather thick around us, and I had to charge a lump of it.”

“It’s all very well to beg pardon,” said the captain, “but that won’t mend my crockery!”

“Or dry my head,” growled Mr Dicey; “it’s as bad as if I’d been dipped overboard, it is.”

Before Mr Dicey’s grumbling remarks were finished all three of them had reached the deck. The wind had freshened considerably, and the brig was rushing in a somewhat alarming manner among the floes. It required the most careful attention to prevent her striking heavily.

“If it goes on like this, we shall have to reduce sail,” observed the captain. “See, there is a neck of ice ahead that will stop us.”

This seemed to be probable, for the lane of water along which they were steering was, just ahead of them, stopped by a neck of ice that connected two floe-pieces. The water beyond was pretty free from ice, but this neck or mass seemed so thick that it became a question whether they should venture to charge it or shorten sail.

“Stand by the fore- and main-topsail braces!” shouted the captain.

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“Now, Mr Mansell,” said he, with a smile, “we have come to our first real difficulty. What do you advise; shall we back the topsails, or try what our little Hope is made of, and charge the enemy?”

“Charge!” answered the mate.

“Just so,” said the captain, hastening to the bow to direct the steersman. “Port your helm.”

“Steady.”

The brig was now about fifty yards from the neck of ice, tearing through the water like a race-horse. In another moment she was up to it and struck it fair in the middle. The stout little vessel quivered to her keel under the shock, but she did not recoil. She split the mass into fragments, and, bearing down all before her, sailed like a conqueror into the clear water beyond.

“Well done the Hope!” said the captain, as he walked aft, while a cheer burst from the men.

“I think she ought to be called the Good Hope ever after this,” said Tom Gregory. “If she cuts her way through everything as easily as she has cut through that neck of ice, we shall reach the North Pole itself before winter.”

“If we reach the North Pole at all,” observed Mr Dicey, “I’ll climb up to the top of it and stand on my head, I will!”

The second mate evidently had no expectation of reaching that mysterious pole, which men have so long and so often tried to find, in vain.

“Heavy ice ahead, sir,” shouted Mr Mansell, who was at the masthead with a telescope.

“Where away?”

“On the weather bow, sir, the pack seems open enough to push through, but the large bergs are numerous.”

The Hope was now indeed getting into the heart of those icy regions where ships are in constant danger from the floating masses that come down with the ocean-currents from the far north. In sailing along she was often obliged to run with great violence against lumps so large that they caused her whole frame to tremble, stout though it was. “Shall we smash the lump, or will it stave in our bows?” was a question that frequently ran in the captain’s mind. Sometimes ice closed round her and squeezed the sides so that her beams cracked. At other times, when a large field was holding her fast, the smaller pieces would grind and rasp against her as they went past, until the crew fancied the whole of the outer sheathing of planks had been scraped off. Often she had to press close to ice-bergs of great size, and more than once a lump as large as a good-sized house fell off the ice-fields and plunged into the sea close to her side, causing her to rock violently on the waves that were raised by it.

Indeed the bergs are dangerous neighbours, not only from this cause, but also on account of their turning upside down at times, and even falling to pieces, so that Captain Harvey always kept well out of their way when he could; but this was not always possible. The little brig had a narrow escape one day from the falling of a berg.

It was a short time after that day on which they had the game of football. They passed in safety through the floes and bergs that had been seen that evening, and got into open water beyond, where they made made good progress before falling in with ice; but at last they came to a part of Baffin’s Bay where a great deal of ice is always found. Here the pack surrounded them, and compelled them to pass close to a berg which was the largest they had fallen in with up to that time. It was jagged in form, and high rather than broad. Great peaks rose up from it like the mountain tops of some wild highland region. It was several hundred yards off the weather-beam when the brig passed, but it towered so high over the masts that it seemed to be much nearer than it was. There was no apparent motion in this berg, and the waves beat and rolled upon its base just as they do on the shore of an island. In fact it was as like an island as possible, or, rather, like a mountain planted in the sea, only it was white instead of green. There were cracks and rents and caverns in it, just as there are on a rugged mountain side, all of which were of a beautiful blue colour. There were also slopes and crags and precipices, down which the water of the melted ice constantly flowed in wild torrents. Many of these were equal to small rivulets, and some of the waterfalls were beautiful. The berg could not have measured less than a mile round the base, and it was probably two hundred feet high. It is well known that floating ice sinks deep, and that there is about eight or ten times as much of it below as there is above water. The reader may therefore form some idea of what an enormous mass of ice this berg was.

The crew of the Hope observed, in passing, that lumps were continually falling from the cliffs into the sea. The berg was evidently in a very rotten and dangerous state, and the captain ran the brig as close to the pack on the other side as possible, in order to keep out of its way. Just as this was done, some great rents occurred, and suddenly a mass of ice larger than the brig fell from the top of a cliff into the sea. No danger flowed from this, but the mass thus thrown off was so large as to destroy the balance of the berg, and, to the horror of the sailors, the huge mountain began to roll over. Fortunately it fell in a direction away from the brig. Had it rolled toward her, no human power could have saved our voyagers. The mighty mass went over with a wild hollow roar, and new peaks and cliffs rose out of the sea, as the old ones disappeared, with great cataracts of uplifted brine pouring furiously down their sides.