Fitz And Sigurdr - Who Had Begun
Quite To Disbelieve In The Existence Of The Island - Went
To Bed, While I Remained Pacing Up And Down The Deck,
Anxiously Questioning Each Quarter Of The Grey Canopy
That Enveloped Us.
At last, about four in the morning,
I fancied some change was going to take place; the heavy
wreaths
Of vapour seemed to be imperceptibly separating,
and in a few minutes more the solid roof of grey suddenly
split asunder, and I beheld through the gap - thousands
of feet over - head, as if suspended in the crystal sky - a
cone of illuminated snow.
[Figure: fig-p121.gif]
You can imagine my delight. It was really that of an
anchorite catching a glimpse of the seventh heaven. There
at last was the long-sought-for mountain actually tumbling
down upon our heads. Columbus could not have been more
pleased when, after nights of watching, he saw the first
fires of a new hemisphere dance upon the water; nor,
indeed, scarcely less disappointed at their sudden
disappearance than I was, when, after having gone below
to wake Sigurdr, and tell him we had seen bona fide
terra-firma, I found, on returning upon deck, that the
roof of mist had closed again, and shut out all trace of
the transient vision. However, I had got a clutch of the
island, and no slight matter should make me let go my
hold. In the meantime there was nothing for it but to
wait patiently until the curtain lifted; and no child
ever stared more eagerly at a green drop-scene in
expectation of "the realm of dazzling splendour" promised
in the bill, than I did at the motionless grey folds that
hung round us. At last the hour of liberation came: a
purer light seemed gradually to penetrate the atmosphere,
brown turned to grey, and grey to white, and white to
transparent blue, until the lost horizon entirely
reappeared, except where in one direction an impenetrable
veil of haze still hung suspended from the zenith to the
sea. Behind that veil I knew must lie Jan Mayen.
A few minutes more, and slowly, silently, in a manner
you could take no count of, its dusky hem first deepened
to a violet tinge, then gradually lifting, displayed a
long line of coast - in reality but the roots of
Beerenberg - dyed of the darkest purple; while, obedient
to a common impulse, the clouds that wrapped its summit
gently disengaged themselves, and left the mountain
standing in all the magnificence of his 6,870 feet,
girdled by a single zone of pearly vapour, from underneath
whose floating folds seven enormous glaciers rolled down
into the sea! Nature seemed to have turned scene-shifter,
so artfully were the phases of this glorious spectacle
successively developed.
Although - by reason of our having hit upon its side
instead of its narrow end - the outline of Mount Beerenberg
appeared to us more like a sugar-loaf than a spire - broader
at the base and rounder at the top than I had imagined, -
in size, colour, and effect, it far surpassed anything
I had anticipated. The glaciers were quite an unexpected
element of beauty. Imagine a mighty river of as great a
volume as the Thames - started down the side of a mountain, -
bursting over every impediment, - whirled into a thousand
eddies, - tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in
quivering cataracts of foam, - then suddenly struck rigid
by a power so instantaneous in its action, that even the
froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened into
the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it,
it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness
of the contrast between the actual tranquillity of these
silent crystal rivers and the violent descending energy
impressed upon their exterior. You must remember, too,
all this is upon a scale of such prodigious magnitude,
that when we succeeded subsequently in approaching the
spot - where with a leap like that of Niagara one of these
glaciers plunges down into the sea - the eye, no longer
able to take in its fluvial character, was content to
rest in simple astonishment at what then appeared a lucent
precipice of grey-green ice, rising to the height of
several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel.
As soon as we had got a little over our first feelings
of astonishment at the panorama thus suddenly revealed
to us by the lifting of the fog, I began to consider what
would be the best way of getting to the anchorage on the
west - or Greenland side of the island. We were still
seven or eight miles from the shore, and the northern
extremity of the island, round which we should have to
pass, lay about five leagues off, bearing West by North,
while between us and the land stretched a continuous
breadth of floating ice. The hummocks, however, seemed
to be pretty loose with openings here and there, so that
with careful sailing I thought we might pass through,
and perhaps on the farther side of the island come into
a freer sea. Alas! after having with some difficulty
wound along until we were almost abreast of the cape, we
were stopped dead short by a solid rampart of fixed ice,
which in one direction leant upon the land, and in the
other ran away as far as the eye could reach into the
dusky North. Thus hopelessly cut off from all access to
the western and better anchorage, it only remained to
put about, and - running down along the land - attempt to
reach a kind of open roadstead on the eastern side, a
little to the south of the volcano described by Dr.
Scoresby but in this endeavour also we were doomed to be
disappointed; for after sailing some considerable distance
through a field of ice, which kept getting more closely
packed as we pushed further into it, we came upon another
barrier equally impenetrable, that stretched away from
the island toward the Southward and Eastward.
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