“Let no one stir!” shouted Hatteras. “Look out for the ice!”
They swarmed on board the ship with an irresistible force; lumps of ice, weighing many hundredweight, scaled the sides of the ship; the smallest, hurled as high as the yards, fell back in sharp arrows, breaking the shrouds and cutting the rigging. The men were overcome by numberless enemies, who were heavy enough to crush a hundred ships like the Forward. Everyone tried to drive away these lumps, and more than one sailor was wounded by their sharp ends; among others, Bolton, who had his left shoulder badly torn. The noise increased immensely. Duke barked angrily at these new enemies. The darkness of the night added to the horrors of the situation, without hiding the ice which glowed in the last light of the evening.
Hatteras’s orders sounded above all this strange, impossible, supernatural conflict of the men with the ice. The ship, yielding to this enormous pressure, inclined to larboard, and the end of the main-yard was already touching the ice, at the risk of breaking the mast.
Hatteras saw the danger; it was a terrible moment; the brig seemed about to be overturned, and the masts might be easily carried away.
A large block, as large as the ship, appeared to be passing along the keel; it arose with irresistible power; it came on past the quarterdeck; if it fell on the Forward, all was over; soon it rose even above the topmasts, and began to totter.
A cry of terror escaped from everyone’s lips. Everyone ran back to starboard.
But at that moment the ship was relieved. They felt her lifted up, and for an instant she hung in the air, then she leaned over and fell back on the ice, and then she rolled so heavily that her planks cracked. What had happened?
Raised by this rising tide, driven by the ice which attacked her aft, she was getting across this impenetrable ice. After a minute of this strange sailing, which seemed as long as a century, she fell back on the other side of the obstacle on a field of ice; she broke it with her weight, and fell back into her natural element.
“We have got by the thick ice!” shouted Johnson, who had run forward.
“Thank God!” said Hatteras.
In fact, the brig lay in the centre of a basin of ice, which entirely surrounded her, and although her keel lay under water she could not stir; but if she were motionless, the field was drifting along.
“We are drifting, Captain!” shouted Johnson.
“All right,” answered Hatteras.
Indeed, how was it possible to resist it?
Day broke, and it was evident that under the influence of a submarine current the bank of ice was floating northward with great rapidity. This floating mass carried the Forward with it, in the midst of the ice-field, the edge of which could not be seen; to provide for any accident that might happen, Hatteras had a large supply of provisions carried on deck, as well as materials for camping, clothing, and cover; as MacClure had done under similar circumstances, he surrounded the ship with hammocks filled with air to protect her from damage. Soon it was so cold (7°), that the ship was surrounded by a wall from which only the masts issued.
For seven days they sailed in this way; Point Albert, which forms the western extremity of New Cornwall, was seen September 10th, and soon disappeared; the ice-field was seen to be drifting eastward from that time. Where was it going? Where would it stop? Who could say?
The crew waited with folded arms. At last, September 15th, towards three o’clock in the afternoon, the ice-field, having probably run against another one, stopped suddenly; the ship was jarred violently; Hatteras, who had kept his reckoning all along, looked at his chart; he found himself in the north, with no land in sight, in longitude 95° 35′, and latitude 78° 15′, in the centre of the region of the unknown sea, which geographers have considered the place of greatest cold.
XXIV
Preparations for Wintering
The same latitude is colder in the southern than in the northern hemisphere; but the temperature of the New World is fifteen degrees beneath that of the other parts of the world; and in America these countries, known under the name of the region of greatest cold, are the most inclement.
The mean temperature for the whole year is two degrees below zero. Physicists have explained this fact in the following way, and Dr. Clawbonny shared their opinion.
According to them, the most constant winds in the northern regions of America are from the southwest; they come from the Pacific Ocean, with an equal and agreeable temperature; but before they reach the arctic seas they are obliged to cross the great American continent, which is covered with snow; the contact chills them, and communicates to these regions their intense cold.
Hatteras found himself at the pole of cold, beyond the countries seen by his predecessors; he consequently expected a terrible winter, on a ship lost amid the ice, with a turbulent crew. He resolved to meet these dangers with his usual energy. He faced what awaited him without flinching.
He began, with Johnson’s aid and experience, to take all the measures necessary for going into winter-quarters. According to his calculation the Forward had been carried two hundred and fifty miles from any known land, that is to say, from North Cornwall; she was firmly fixed in a field of ice, as in a bed of granite, and no human power could extricate her.
There was not a drop of open water in these vast seas chained by the fierce arctic winter. The ice-fields stretched away out of sight, but without presenting a smooth surface. Far from it. Numerous icebergs stood up in the icy plain, and the Forward was sheltered by the highest of them on three points of the compass; the southeast wind alone reached them. Let one imagine rock instead of ice, verdure
