Cruising In The Ice

As we leave the land behind us we are followed by hundreds

of kittiwakes, in billowy masses of white and blue, chattering

in endless chorus, now sinking as they swoop low on extended

wing over the vessel's wake, now rising as they soar lightly in

their graceful evolutions up towards the blue sky.

Between heavens and seas, the black form of the Jason, labouring and moaning

as her engines drive her westward. Behind us the rocky coast

of Iceland, a fringe of violet blue, is slowly sinking into the

sea. Behind us lie home and life : what lies before us ? We

cannot tell, but it must be beautiful. A start on such a night

is full of promise.

I am sitting alone in the stern of the vessel and gazing out

into the night at the gathering clouds, which, still tinged by

the sun, are sailing over the horizon to the north-west. Behind

them lies Greenland, as yet invisible.

All nature is, as it were, sunk in her own dreams, and

gently and quietly the mind, too, is drawn back into itself

to pursue the train of its own thoughts, which unconsciously

borrow a reflection of the colours of the sky.

Among all things that are beautiful in life are not such

nights most beautiful?

And life - is it much more than hope and remembrance?

Hope is of the morning, it may be, but on such nights as this

do not memories, all the fair memories of bygone days, arise

dewy and fresh from the mists of the distant past, and sweep

by in a long undulating train, sunlit and alluring, till they dis-

appear once more in the melting western glow? And all

that is mean, all that is odious, lies behind, sunk in the dark

ocean of oblivion.

The very next day, June 5, we reached the ice, which this

year has come a long way south.

The impression which the floe-ice of the Arctic seas makes

upon the traveller the first time he sees it is very remarkable. (...)

The drifting ice, a huge white glittering expanse stretching as far as the eye can reach, and throwing a white reflection

far around upon the air and mist ; the dark sea, often showing

black as ink against the white ; and above all this a sky, now

gleaming cloudless and pale-blue, now dark and threatening

vrith driving scud, or again wrapped in densest fog - now

glowing in all the rich poetry of sunrise or sunset colour,

or slumbering through the lingering twilight of the summer

night. And then in the dark season of the year come those

wonderful nights of glittering stars and northern lights playing

far and wide above the icy deserts, or when the moon, here

most melancholy, wanders on her silent way through scenes

of desolation and death. In these regions the heavens count

for more than elsewhere ; they give colour and character,

while the landscape, simple and unvarying, has no power to

draw the eye.

Never shall I forget the first time I entered these regions.