by M. P. Shiel
of a lane might occupy ten or twelve entire hours, and then, onthe other side I might find another one opening right before me.Moreover, on the 8th July, one of the dogs, after a feed on blubber,suddenly died; and there was left me only 'Reinhardt,' a white-hairedSiberian dog, with little pert up-sticking ears, like a cat's. Him, too,I had to kill on coming to open water.
This did not happen till the 3rd August, nearly four months from thePole.
I can't think, my God, that any heart of man ever tholed the appallingnightmare and black abysm of sensations in which, during those fourlong desert months, I weltered: for though I was as a brute, I had aman's heart to feel. What I had seen, or dreamed, at the Pole followedand followed me; and if I shut my poor weary eyes to sleep, those othersyonder seemed to watch me still with their distraught and gloomy gaze,and in my spinning dark dreams spun that eternal ecstasy of the lake.
However, by the 28th July I knew from the look of the sky, and theabsence of fresh-water ice, that the sea could not be far; so I set towork, and spent two days in putting to rights the now battered kayak.This done, I had no sooner resumed my way than I sighted far off astreaky haze, which I knew to be the basalt cliffs of Franz Josef Land;and in a craziness of joy I stood there, waving my ski-staff about myhead, with the senile cheers of a very old man.
In four days this land was visibly nearer, sheer basaltic cliffs mixedwith glacier, forming apparently a great bay, with two small islands inthe mid-distance; and at fore-day of the 3rd August I arrived at thedefinite edge of the pack-ice in moderate weather at about thefreezing-point.
I at once, but with great reluctance, shot Reinhardt, and set to work toget the last of the provisions, and the most necessary of theimplements, into the kayak, making haste to put out to the toillessluxury of being borne on the water, after all the weary trudge. Withinfourteen hours I was coasting, with my little lug-sail spread, along theshore-ice of that land. It was midnight of a calm Sabbath, and low onthe horizon smoked the drowsing red sun-ball, as my canvas skiff lightlychopped her little way through this silent sea. Silent, silent: forneither snort of walrus, nor yelp of fox, nor cry of startled kittiwake,did I hear: but all was still as the jet-black shadow of the cliffs andglacier on the tranquil sea: and many bodies of dead things strewed thesurface of the water.
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When I found a little fjord, I went up it to the end where stood astretch of basalt columns, looking like a shattered temple ofAntediluvians; and when my foot at last touched land, I sat down there along, long time in the rubbly snow, and silently wept. My eyes thatnight were like a fountain of tears. For the firm land is health andsanity, and dear to the life of man; but I say that the great ungenialice is a nightmare, and a blasphemy, and a madness, and the realm of thePower of Darkness.
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I knew that I was at Franz Josef Land, somewhere or other in theneighbourhood of C. Fligely (about 82 deg. N.), and though it was so late,and getting cold, I still had the hope of reaching Spitzbergen thatyear, by alternately sailing all open water, and dragging the kayak overthe slack drift-ice. All the ice which I saw was good flat fjord-ice,and the plan seemed feasible enough; so after coasting about a little,and then three days' good rest in the tent at the bottom of a ravine ofcolumnar basalt opening upon the shore, I packed some bear and walrusflesh, with what artificial food was left, into the kayak, and I set outearly in the morning, coasting the shore-ice with sail and paddle. Inthe afternoon I managed to climb a little way up an iceberg, and madeout that I was in a bay whose terminating headlands were invisible. Iaccordingly decided to make S.W. by W. to cross it, but, in doing so, Iwas hardly out of sight of land, when a northern storm overtook metoward midnight; before I could think, the little sail was all butwhiffed away, and the kayak upset. I only saved it by the happy chanceof being near a floe with an ice-foot, which, projecting under thewater, gave me foot-hold; and I lay on the floe in a mooning state thewhole night under the storm, for I was half drowned.
And at once, on recovering myself, I abandoned all thought of whalersand of Europe for that year. Happily, my instruments, &c., had beensaved by the kayak-deck when she capsized.
* * * * *
A hundred yards inland from the shore-rim, in a circular place wherethere was some moss and soil, I built myself a semi-subterranean Eskimoden for the long Polar night. The spot was quite surrounded by highsloping walls of basalt, except to the west, where they opened in athree-foot cleft to the shore, and the ground was strewn with slabs andboulders of granite and basalt. I found there a dead she-bear, twowell-grown cubs, and a fox, the latter having evidently fallen from thecliffs; in three places the snow was quite red, overgrown with a redlichen, which at first I took for blood. I did not even yet feel securefrom possible bears, and took care to make my den fairly tight, a workwhich occupied me nearly four weeks, for I had no tools, save a hatchet,knife, and metal-shod ski-staff. I dug a passage in the ground two feetwide, two deep, and ten long, with perpendicular sides, and at its northend a circular space, twelve feet across, also with perpendicular sides,which I lined with stones; the whole excavation I covered withinch-thick walrus-hide, skinned during a whole bitter week from four ofa number that lay about the shore-ice; for ridge-pole I used a thinpointed rock which I found near, though, even so, the roof remainednearly flat. This, when it was finished, I stocked well, putting ineverything, except the kayak, blubber to serve both for fuel andoccasional light, and foods of several sorts, which I procured by merelystretching out the hand. The roof of both circular part and passage wassoon buried under snow and ice, and hardly distinguishable from thegeneral level of the white-clad ground. Through the passage, if I passedin or out, I crawled flat, on hands and knees: but that was rare: and inthe little round interior, mostly sitting in a cowering attitude, Iwintered, harkening to the large and windy ravings of darkling Decemberstorms above me.
* * * * *
All those months the burden of a thought bowed me; and an unansweredquestion, like the slow turning of a mechanism, revolved in my gloomyspirit: for everywhere around me lay bears, walruses, foxes, thousandsupon thousands of little awks, kittiwakes, snow-owls, eider-ducks,gulls-dead, dead. Almost the only living things which I saw were somewalruses on the drift-floes: but very few compared with the numberwhich I expected. It was clear to me that some inconceivable catastrophehad overtaken the island during the summer, destroying all life aboutit, except some few of the amphibia, cetacea, and crustacea.
On the 5th December, having crept out from the den during a southernstorm, I had, for the third time, a distant whiff of that self-sameodour of peach-blossom: but now without any after-effects.
* * * * *
Well, again came Christmas, the New Year--Spring: and on the 22nd May Iset out with a well-stocked kayak. The water was fairly open, and theice so good, that at one place I could sail the kayak over it, the windsending me sliding at a fine pace. Being on the west coast of FranzJosef Land, I was in as favourable a situation as possible, and I turnedmy bow southward with much hope, keeping a good many days just in sightof land. Toward the evening of my third day out I noticed a large flatfloe, presenting far-off a singular and lovely sight, for it seemedfreighted thick with a profusion of pink and white roses, showing in itsclear crystal the empurpled reflection. On getting near I saw that itwas covered with millions of Ross's gulls, all dead, whose pretty rosybosoms had given it that appearance.
Up to the 29th June I made good progress southward and westward (theweather being mostly excellent), sometimes meeting dead bears, floatingaway on floes, sometimes dead or living walrus-herds, with troop aftertroop of dead kittiwakes, glaucus and ivory gulls, skuas, and every kindof Arctic fowl. On that last day--the 29th June--I was about to encampon a floe soon after midnight, when, happening to look toward the sun,my eye fell, far away south across the ocean of floes, uponsomething--_the masts of a ship_.
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br /> A phantom ship, or a real ship: it was all one; real, I must haveinstantly felt, it could not be: but at a sight so incredible my heartset to beating in my bosom as though I must surely die, and feeblywaving the cane oar about my head, I staggered to my knees, and thencewith wry mouth toppled flat.
So overpoweringly sweet was the thought of springing once more, like thebeasts of Circe, from a walrus into a man. At this time I was tearing mybear's-meat just like a bear; I was washing my hands in walrus-blood toproduce a glairy sort of pink cleanliness, in place of the black greasewhich chronically coated them.
Worn as I was, I made little delay to set out for that ship; and I hadnot travelled over water and ice four hours when, to my in-describablejoy, I made out from the top of a steep floe that she was the _Boreal_.It seemed most strange that she should be anywhere hereabouts: I couldonly conclude that she must have forced and drifted her way thus farwestward out of the ice-block in which our party had left her,
