第46章 LETTER VIII.(9)

By this time it was already well on in the evening,so having agreed with Monsieur de la Ronciere on a code of signals in case of fogs,and that a jack hoisted at the mizen of the "Reine Hortense,"or at the fore of the schooner,should be an intimation of a desire of one or other to cast off,we got into the boat and were dropped down alongside our own ship.Ever since leaving Iceland the steamer had been heading east-north-east by compass,but during the whole of the ensuing night she shaped a south-east course;the thick mist rendering it unwise to stand on any longer in the direction of the banquise,as they call the outer edge of the belt that hems in Eastern Greenland.About three A.M.it cleared up a little.By breakfast time the sun re-appeared,and we could see five or six miles ahead of the vessel.It was shortly after this,that as I was standing in the main rigging peering out over the smooth blue surface of the sea,a white twinkling point of light suddenly caught my eye about a couple of miles off on the port bow,which a telescope soon resolved into a solitary isle of ice,dancing and dipping in the sunlight.As you may suppose,the news brought everybody upon deck,and when almost immediately afterwards a string of other pieces,glittering like a diamond necklace,hove in sight,the excitement was extreme.

Here at all events was honest blue saltwater frozen solid,and when,as we proceeded,the scattered fragments thickened,and passed like silver argosies on either hand,until at last we found oumelves enveloped in an innumerable fleet of bergs,--it seemed as if we could never be weary of admiring a sight so strange and beautiful.

It was rather in form and colour than in size that these ice islets were remarkable;anything approaching to a real iceberg we neither saw,nor are we likely to see.

In fact,the lofty ice mountains that wander like vagrant islands along the coast of America,seldom or never come to the eastward or northward of Cape Farewell.They consist of land ice,and are all generated among bays and straits within Baffin's Bay,and first enter the Atlantic a good deal to the southward of Iceland;whereas the Polar ice,among which we have been knocking about,is field ice,and--except when packed one ledge above the other,by great pressure--is comparatively flat.Ido not think I saw any pieces that were piled up higher than thirty or thirty-five feet above the sea-level,although at a little distance through the mist they may have loomed much loftier.

In quaintness of form,and in brilliancy of colours,these wonderful masses surpassed everything I had imagined;and we found endless amusement in watching their fantastic procession.

At one time it was a knight on horseback,clad in sapphire mail,a white plume above his casque.Or a cathedral window with shafts of chrysophras,new powdered by a snow-storm.Or a smooth sheer cliff of lapis lazuli;or a Banyan tree,with roots descending from its branches,and a foliage as delicate as the efflorescence of molten metal;or a fairy dragon,that breasted the water in scales of emerald;or anything else that your fancy chose to conjure up.After a little time,the mist again descended on the scene,and dulled each glittering form to a shapeless mass of white;while in spite of all our endeavours to keep upon our northerly course,we were constantly compelled to turn and wind about in every direction--sometimes standing on for several hours at a stretch to the southward and eastward.These perpetual embarrassments became at length very wearying,and in order to relieve the tedium of our progress I requested the Doctor to remove one of my teeth.This he did with the greatest ability--a wrench to starboard,--another to port,and up it flew through the cabin sky-light.

During the whole of that afternoon and the following night we made but little Northing at all,and the next day the ice seemed more pertinaciously in our way than ever;neither could we relieve the monotony of the hours by conversing with each other on the black boards,as the mist was too thick for us too distinguish from on board one ship anything that was passing on the deck of the other.Notwithstanding the great care and skill with which the steamer threaded her way among the loose floes,it was impossible sometimes to prevent fragments of ice striking us with considerable violence on the bows;and as we lay in bed at night,I confess that until we got accustomed to the noise,it was by no means a pleasant thing to hear the pieces angrily scraping along the ship's sides--within two inches of our ears.On the evening of the fourth day it came on to blow pretty hard,and at midnight it had freshened to half a gale;but by dint of standing well away to the eastward we had succeeded in reaching comparatively open water,and I had gone to bed in great hopes that at all events the breeze would brush off the fog,and enable us to see our way a little more clearly the next morning.

At five o'clock A.M.the officer of the watch jumped down into my cabin,and awoke me with the news--"That the Frenchman was a-saying summat on his black board!"Feeling by the motion that a very heavy sea must have been knocked up during the night,I began to be afraid that something must have gone wrong with the towing-gear,or that a hawser might have become entangled in the corvette's screw--which was the catastrophe of which I had always been most apprehensive;so slipping on a pair of fur boots,which I carefully kept by the bedside in case of an emergency,and throwing a cloak over--"Le simple appareil D'une beaute qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,"I caught hold of a telescope,and tumbled up on deck.