The whaling fleet divided soon after entering the Arctic Ocean. Some of the ships went straight on north to the whaling grounds about Point Barrow and Herschel Island. The others bore to the for the whaling along the ice north of eastern Siberia. We stood to the westward. In a few days we had raised the white coasts of a continent of ice that shut in all the north as far as the eye could see and extended to the Pole and far beyond. With the winds in the autumn always blowing from the northwest, the sea was calm in the lee of this indestructible polar cap. I have been out in the whale boats when they were heeled over on their beam-ends under double-reefed sails before a of wind upon a sea as smooth as the waters of a duck pond.
It was now no longer bright at midnight. The sun already well on its journey to the equator, sank earlier and deeper below the horizon. Several hours of darkness began to intervene between its setting and its rising. By September we had a regular succession of days and nights.
With the return of night we saw for the first time that electric phenomenon of the Far North, the borealis. Every night during our stay in the Arctic the skies were made brilliant with these shooting lights. I had expected to see waving curtains of rainbow colors, but I saw no colors at any time. The auroras of those skies were of pure white light. A great arch would suddenly shoot across the zenith from horizon to horizon. It was nebulously bright, like a shining way or a path of snow upon which moonlight sparkles. You could hear it and crackle distinctly, with a sound like that of heavy silk violently shaken. It shed a cold white radiance over the sea like the light of arc lamps, much brighter than the strongest moonlight.
It was not quite bright enough to read by—but almost—and it threw sharp, black shadows on the deck. Gradually the arch would fade, to be succeeded by others that spanned the heavens from other angles. Often several arches and segments were in the sky at the same time. Sometimes, though rarely, the aurora assumed the form of a curtain hanging along the horizon and as though by a strong wind.
I was pleasantly surprised by the temperatures encountered in the Arctic. We were in the polar ocean until early in October, but the lowest temperature recorded by the brig's thermometer was 10 degrees below zero. Such a temperature seems colder on sea than on land. Greater dampness has something to do with it, but imagination probably plays its part. There is something in the very look of a winter sea, yeasty under the north wind and filled with snowy floes and , that seems to the in one's bones. In the cold snaps, when a big wave curled over the bows, I have seen it break and strike upon the deck in the form of hundreds of ice pellets. Almost every day when it was rough, the old Arctic played marbles with us.
What with the mists, the cold rains, the and snows and flying spray, the brig was soon a mass of ice. The sides became encased in a white armor of ice which at the bows was several feet thick. We frequently had to knock it off. The decks were sheeted with ice, the masts and spars were with it, the , stays, and every rope were coated with ice, and the yard-arms and foot-ropes were hung with ice stalactites. One of the most beautiful sights I ever saw was the whaling fleet when we fell in with it one cold, gray morning. The frost had laid its white witchery upon the other ships as it had upon the brig, and they through the black seas, , , and phantom-like in their ice armor—an armada of ghostly Flying Dutchmen.
The brig was constantly wearing and on the whaling grounds and there was considerable work to be done aloft. By the captain's orders, we did such work with our off. Hauling bare-handed on ropes of solid ice was painful , and "Belay all!" often came like a to souls in . Then we had much ado whipping our hands against our sides to restore the circulation. After Big Foot Louis had frozen a finger, the captain permitted us to keep our mittens on.
Work aloft under such conditions was dangerous. Our walrus-hide boots were heelless and extremely slippery and our footing on the foot-ropes was . We had to depend as much upon our hands as upon our feet to keep from falling when strung out for reefing along the tops............