In the Great White Land: A Tale of the Antarctic Ocean
9781465683908
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“Is it a man, or is it a young Polar bear standing on end?” Had any one seen that strange figure, shuffling slowly to and fro on the snow clad Polar ice on this bitterly cold morning late in winter, he might have been excused for asking himself that question. All around was a scene of desolation such as can only be witnessed in Arctic seas at this season of the year. Desolation? Yes; but beautiful desolation—a desolation that held one spellbound in silent, solemn admiration. It had been a long, long night of just three months or nearly, and yesterday the sun—glad herald of the opening season—had glinted over the southern horizon for one brief spell, then sunk again in golden glory. Yesterday all hands had crowded the deck, the frozen rigging, and the tops themselves of the good barque Walrus, to welcome with cheers and song the first appearance of the god of day. And from many a hole in igloo side, in the village that clustered half hidden beneath those pearly hills, natives had crawled out, as crawleth rat from its burrow, to throw themselves on their faces, to moan, to worship, and to pray. To day the romance has worn off a little, and the crew of the Walrus (which a peep round the side of the one solitary iceberg that rises in the midst of this frozen bay reveals) will raise nor song nor cheer. But the white light broadens in the southern sky, the beams of the aurora, that a little while before were flickering and dancing pink and white in the north, fade, the bright stars wax faint and beautiful, then die. A broad band of orange light low down on the horizon, with far above one crimson feather cloud—then the sun’s appearance. Ah! We can see now that the figure is no bear, but a man, though covered with hoar frost—his skin boots, skin cap, skin coat and all, and his beard and moustache are white and hung with icicles, which tinkle as he climbs the iceberg, lifts the old quadrant, and takes his sight. While he does so he touches a button, on a little box hung to his short belt, which sets up communication with an instrument and chronometer on the ship. The man with the beard of tinkling icicles is Captain Mayne Brace himself. Laughing with almost boyish glee as he slings his quadrant and beats his mittened, paw like hands to woo back their circulation, he quickly descends, and begins to round in the slack of the field telegraph. Two huge black Newfoundlands, Nora and Nick, have found their way down off the ship, and now come rushing to meet him, making the icy rocks and hills around the bay ring back their joyous barking. There is, I believe, no light in all the wide world half so bright and dazzling as that of the first brief day of an Arctic spring. Scarce can the human eye, so long accustomed to the soft, tender star rays, the flickering, coloured aurora, or magic moon beams, bear to look on the white wastes all around, which seem to have been sown with billions and trillions of tiny diamonds, the God made prisms and crystals of the virgin snow, pure and white as brow of angel. The ship towards which Captain Mayne Brace is slowly advancing looks, but for her masts and rigging, like a white marquee, for from stem to stern she had been roofed over, many, many moons ago, when first anchored here in the Gulf of Incognita high to the North, and west of Baffin’s Bay.
