by Ice! [V2. 0]
By the time I got back down into the dinghy I was sweating. Supporting myself on a frozen line, over murderously cold water, I kicked out with my feet to bring the wildly swinging dinghy underneath me, so I could drop into it. Then, on my way back paddling over the bay, I hit ice. It was thick enough to support the weight of a man, whereas when I had left the boat it had been very thin. Weighing up the risks involved in heading out to sea with another easterly brewing as against being frozen in here, in what appeared to be a safe place, the answer was obvious. I would stay. A couple of hours later, when I paddled out to reconnoiter the entrance to the bay, I found that it was jammed solid with pack ice driven in by the wind.
Back on board, I set to making the boat shipshape for the coming months. I could not lower the mainmast, as there was nothing to rig a lowering line to. I unshipped the booms and slackened off all the standing rigging, so that by shaking it hard I could remove any ice which might accumulate. With the booms I made a frame for the old mainsail and the big canvas awning to act as a tent. These I lashed down firmly, at a steep angle, so that any snow falling on them would slide over the side. I made sure that the cockpit was well covered, so as to prevent snow from entering, thawing, and getting into the bilges. Then, after shifting the heating stove once more back into the cabin, I let the stove really rip, trying to drive out all the dampness.
After this I could once more live comfortably in the cabin. My cooking stove I moved into the cockpit, so that the humidity from the burnt kerosene would dissipate in the open air.
By the time the "tent" was rigged, the weather was at storm force. Again hail and sleet slashed down. I rested below in the dry cabin, and let it scream overhead. Much better here than out at sea I thought to myself, as I set to, repairing the torn sails, cozy and warm.
It took three days for the storm to pass, and at the end of it the ice around the boat was a foot thick. I decided to lighten her as soon as the ice was strong enough to bear the weight of the stores. Meanwhile, I secured the engine back on its bed—hard work, as it weighed well over 180 pounds.
By the middle of July the days were getting shorter. I had seen very few signs of life—a seal, far away on the ice floes; one or two birds high up; and while out surveying the western floes, a few fish—nothing more. It was nowhere near as lively as the Greenland side.
When the weather was calm, I gingerly felt my way over the bay ice to the western side and made a sketch map of the ice floes, giving all the larger ones names, mainly from the alphabetical Morse code. If any wind was blowing, or if there was any sea movement, this was too risky, as the whole bed of ice would move around violently, like an animal in pain, and great long crevasses would appear and disappear continuously. By the end of July the ice in the bay was around two feet thick. By taking sun and moon sights, I knew that the drift of the ice was to the northwest, and it was obvious that we must be in a part of the Arctic Ocean where the Greenland current doubles back, counterclockwise, onto itself, which was why the cold water formed ice so rapidly.
I started to lighten the boat, unloading the ship's stores and food stores onto the ice, at the same time digging a narrow trench around the hull, so that as she lightened she lifted. Then, when I had her lightened by something like three tons, with the stem and bow almost out of the water, I let the ice freeze again. As soon as the boat was frozen into the ice, but eight inches higher than before, I started to load her once more, at least with the stuff I needed daily and for routine jobs. The rest I left out in the open, covered by the spare mainsail, well pegged down.
As her frames were on nine-inch centers, four-inch balks, the two feet of the boat's bottom now gripped in the ice was almost solid wood. Cresswell's bottom was round, and if she was gradually squeezed by the ice, she would lift up, vertically.
With the boat clear of gear inside, I started to clean her up. It proved impossible to get good fresh water, except when snow fell, which was not regular until late September, so I scraped and painted all the blocks instead, took weather observations, and navigated. With the awning over the boat, not much light got in, but I used my seal-oil lamp, with its chimney fixed up again in the porthole, so I could read by its glare for a few hours a day.
By the end of September the "days" were much shorter and it was obvious that the gap at the mouth of the bay was closing up rapidly. Every time there was a wind, any wind, except from due north, the ice floes would start to move and twist, crushing up against each other. The "Scotland" hill was breaking away from the main ice field, while "England" was steadily and surely heading west. In other words, the iceberg was revolving very slowly in a clockwise direction and making one hell of a noise doing it.
On 30 September my latitude was seventy-eight degrees fifty minutes north, 310 miles south of the Fram's furthest north! I was jubilant, for it seemed that at this rate I should pass the eighty-four-degree mark well before the ice turned with the current towards the southwest.
When the weather was calm, now that the dark hours were lengthening, I wandered out on the ice and watched the northern lights shining through the ice of the piled-up floes. A wondrous sight to behold. The great streaks of pure power and energy streaming across the night, right across the star-laden, blue black velvet sky of the Arctic is a vision which still comes into my mind every time I hear someone talk of miracles. But generally, the nights were far too cold to go out for more than a short while, so most of the time I was inside the cabin performing necessary chores. Alone, and having no idea if you are going to survive or not, the main thing is not to think about it too much. All the thinking in the world will not change the circumstances. Self-pity is the harbinger of despair, which, in turn, brings panic and fear. There is only one thing to do in these circumstances—think about and perform only the jobs in hand. If something I was reading dealt too heavily with the more profound aspects of existence, I put the book down and baked some bread, or repaired another sail, or had another go at straightening out the engine propeller shaft. A strict routine helped make time pass. Every "day" at 0900 I was up. Breakfast before ten, then repair and maintenance jobs until noon in clear weather. Then the latitude sight, then lunch until 1300 hours. Next, maintenance again; then tea and a longitude sight. Then read for an hour or so. Then a walk out on the ice with Nelson, or, if it had snowed, shoveling out the walkway. Later in the winter, of course, the snow became too thick for Nelson to walk very far safely, but I would still slog out there in snowshoes, in a wide circle, looking for tracks or anything else.
As the weather became colder, the simplest activities became more difficult. With very low temperatures it was no longer possible to have a shit on the ice. Instead it had to be done in the bucket down below, then carried out onto the ice. One minute's exposure in those temperatures was enough to cause frostbite.
Being alone is not being lonely. If you know there is no other human within a few hundred miles, it is much easier to accept than if there are millions and you know no one. Sex becomes very unimportant. I personally have not, during my long spells of being without relief for the sex urge, found that deprivation had any effect on my performance once back in the green pastures. In fact, the case is the exact reverse, or at least so I am told by impeccable authorities on the subject.
This seems to be the story with most of the other solo sailors that I know, and they all agree that the further away one is from possible partners, the less important sex becomes.
By mid-October the mouth of the bay was completely closed, both by the steady movement of the iceberg's southerly end in a westward direction, and by a jumbled mass of piled-up sea ice, stretching four or five miles to seaward. By the end of October, I hibernated inside the cabin, emerging only on clear nights to take star and moon shots.
So the weeks passed, with both Nelson and I eating sparingly from our diminishing food stocks. By mid-November all was darkness, and I was at latitude seventy-nine degrees fifteen minutes north. Only 285 miles from the target.
Again, on cl
ear nights, when there was no precipitation in the form of falling ice and snow, I would sometimes watch the northern lights for a few minutes at a stretch, filling the whole sky with a display of wonder. I kept notes on how often this phenomenon was followed by strong winds and heavy weather. These events occurred about 90 percent of the tune after the appearance of the aurora borealis. I came to the conclusion that there must be some connection between the northern fights and the weather, especially in the Arctic regions. The arctic wind-pressure system has a great bearing on the rest of the world's weather; if someone could find the connection, and the reasons for it, there might be a new, more accurate way of foretelling long-range climatic changes.
The boat was now completely frozen in. There was nothing but ice and darkness in all directions. Once, back in July, I had heard, far away, the drone of a plane, but there was no time to arrange a smoke signal as the ice was not then safe to step on. It had come, hummed for a few minutes in the cold clear air, and gone away again. That was the only sign of human presence in the world that I saw for ten months. Just a slight noise, anything up to forty miles away.
December 1: latitude seventy-nine, thirty-five.
December 18: latitude seventy-nine, forty-two.
December 25: latitude seventy-nine, thirty-two]
December 31: latitude seventy-nine, sixteen!
The direction of the flow of ice had changed! I was heading southwest! By January 10, 1961, I knew for certain: latitude seventy-eight, fifty-five. I had failed to beat the Fram by 285 miles! I had failed to get nearest to the Pole in a sailing craft. I had failed to beat Nansen! I had failed to reach nearer than 618 miles to the Pole!
I bent over my calculations, tears of defeat misting over the scribbled figures on the tattered page of my logbook. I stared, half-blind, at my grimed fist tightening over the pencil, squeezing it until it splintered into three shattered stubs—broken, like my dreams. I opened my palm and glared silently, bitterly, at the fragments. I threw the splinters down onto the table. Then, as I groped for my mug of tea, I glanced at the broken bits of wood and lead. I stared from one to the other and back again, like an idiot. I wiped my eyes, then stared again. A moment passed, then I picked up one of the pieces of wood.
The pencil, the artifact, the result of some man's dreaming effort somewhere, was destroyed, fragmented. But the man's dream survived! I stared closer, turning the splintered shard of wood around and around. The atoms of wood, the molecules of lead were still there; I could touch them. I could see them ... only the man's dreams, only his ideas I could not see. Yet I could see the results of those dreams lying before me shattered. Yet the dream was not shattered, and that's what mattered]
Slowly I began to see that the realization of a dream, an ambition, was not of itself essential. It is the conception and survival of the dream, the idea, the ambition, that matters. But dreams, ideas, unlike atoms, cannot survive of themselves. The dreamer himself must survive to pass on his dream! Then, in the survival of my dream, in my survival, would lie my victory!
I picked up the shards of wood and lead and placed them carefully, reverently, in the pencil box. I would repair that bloody pencil!
Then I finished my tea and turned in.
Nelson stirred in his sleep, dreaming of some faraway bitch.
Everything that happens either happens in such a way that you are formed by nature to bear it or not to bear it. If what happens to you is within your strength to bear, bear it without complaining; if it is beyond your strength, do not complain, for it will perish after it has destroyed you. Remember, however, that you are formed by nature to bear everything which your own opinion can make endurable and tolerable, by thinking that it is either your interest or your duty to do so.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10. 3.
23
An Embarrassing Predicament
During the eternal darkness of deep winter, on the edge of the icecap (although by now Cresswell was ten miles "inland"), the weather was calm for about four "days'" out of ten. Then, the skies would clear and millions of stars shone bright, casting a diffused luminescence over the barren, cold, dead world of ice. High overhead Alkaid, Alcor, Alloth, Dhube, and. Muscida, great blobs of shining light, delineated the backbone of the Great Bear, Ursa Major, while to one side, his cub, Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper, balancing on its unsure backpaws Kochab and Perkhab, pointed a grubby little claw-nail through Yildun at the paralyzed fish around which the whole sky revolved—Polaris—the pulse of the heart of the universe at a spot almost directly above my head.
To the east, the low horizon was obscured by the three mountainous humps of the Brittania-Berg thrusting their gleaming, pale white sugar loaves into the black velvet sky. In every other direction, north, west, and southwest, I could see stars so low in the firmament that they looked like ships passing by far away on a silver sea. Slowly they passed around the rim of the ice world—Vega, the lonely, shy virgin with her lyre, accompanied always by her handmaidens, Shelyak and Sulafat, tripping lightly along the dark corridors of infinity to escape muscle-bound Hercules. Cygnus, the Swan, his regal head picked out by Deneb, with Gienah and Delta Cygni worn, jewellike, on the ends of his wings, led Vega to the court of Queen Cassiopeia, sitting regally in her celestial chair. Toward her, Perseus, the messenger, flew out of the ice horizon, bearing in his right hand the great flaming torch of Algol, the star of knowledge. This arrival of the light of learning at the feet of the eternal queen was watched joyously by her handmaiden, Capella, together with Betelgeuse and Bellatrix, the two lovely wearers of the diamond-studded belt of Orion. Outside the palace door the gallant gladiators, Castor and Pollux, made way through the crowded lanes of the sky for beauteous Athena, while ahead of their proud progress, Leo Minor, the Lion Cub, scampered by the clumsy feet of the Great Bear.
As I stood, transfixed by the wonder of this sparkling spectacle, with my arms withdrawn from the sleeves of my jerkin to warm them against my chest, it was sometimes difficult to pick out the familiar stars against the sequin-spangled backdrop reaching to the other side of infinity. Draco, the dragon guard of the Little Bear, the playful favorite of the queen of the skies, was almost impossible to distinguish. Yet there he was, as faithful as ever, with his great tail flailing out from Al Safi, through Eta Draconis and Thuban, millions and trillions of miles across the reaches of space to his tail-tip, Giansar. While at the other end of his twisted frame, his fiery eyes, Eltanin and Alwaid, stared with defiant challenge at lovelorn Hercules wearily plodding through eternity after his virgin Vega.
All the themes of human emotions are shown in the sky. If a man can but tell a thousandth as much as the faintest, most obscure pinprick of light, as it shows its reflection of life, love, and hope to us from the nethermost corner of the most remote galaxy, he will have told more than all the greatest of men that ever lived here on earth.
Most of the moonrises I could not see, for they were obscured by the Brittania-Berg. But on two memorable occasions I did see the full moon rise in a calm arctic night, with not a sound except for the faint, faraway gnashing of the sea ice on the edge of the death white field. I was out on the western side of the bay, mapping the floes which had piled up there, watching for signs of possible leads opening up. This was a job which took twelve hours at a stretch, for the "terrain" over the floes, all jumbled up, was extremely difficult and hazardous. Some of the floes had frozen solid at an angle of sixty degrees from the horizontal. Often there was no way around these capsized slippery surfaces, and it was hard and heavy work to climb up glassy slopes the size of a soccer field. Then, having reached the top, I would have to sling a rope through a block and lower myself down the underside of the floe, which sometimes overhung the next floe. I always had the dinghy compass with me, for once beyond the "shore-side" floes, the frozen-in boat was completely out of sight. Snowstorms often closed in very suddenly, limiting vision to a matter of yards.
One night I reached the southern edge of the Brittania-Berg, or Gibral
tar Point, as I called it. I was attempting to climb up England hill from the south, but this proved impossible. It was far too steeply angled and absolutely smooth. I was resting before making the four-hour scramble back to the boat, when, looking to the southeast, I saw the sky light up, very slowly. The horizon turned a cobalt color, then electric blue, next powder blue, shot with silver rays streaking up through the stars. A little while after, with the whole sky in the east gleaming with shot-silver, the ice accepted, like a woman handling a rich brocade, the moonlight. The tip of the moon's upper arc was actually shining through ten miles of piled-up ice! The light rays glittered, splintered, and slithered at odd angles, flashing right across the horizon. These shocks of pure silver were reflected on the base of the low, slow clouds over the sea, far away. It was as if the world would crack asunder with cold beauty. Then, slowly, the moon showed herself, her light shining horizontally over the cluttered masses of ice, casting long shadows. The whole surface of the world, as far as my eyes could see, became a vast panorama of speckled silver and black while the sky above was black with the speckled silver of twinkling stars. The moon seemed about twice the size she appears in the temperate zones, and the air was so clear I could see every freckle on her pockmarked face. Then, as she rose higher and higher, the shadows of the ice piles withdrew, and soon all was pale white and black again, with the moon's face cold, ghostly, and deathly alone as she became smaller and smaller, to hang in the sky like a crystal ball of ice, under the cold curtain of stars.
I shuddered, then put my arms back in the sleeves of my jerkin and headed off for the boat. Hours later, back over the ice barriers, onto the flat surface of frozen Cresswell bay, trudging wearily through the recently fallen, powdery snow, I saw a black shape advancing towards me. It was Nelson. Once alongside, he jumped up to greet this apparition. "I know, old son, it's alright. I know I look like a bloody Christmas tree!"