As we leave the land behind us we are followed by hundreds
of kittiwakes, in billowy masses of white and blue, chattering
in endless chorus, now sinking as they swoop low on extended
wing over the vessel's wake, now rising as they soar lightly in
their graceful evolutions up towards the blue sky.
Between heavens and seas, the black form of the Jason, labouring and moaning
as her engines drive her westward. Behind us the rocky coast
of Iceland, a fringe of violet blue, is slowly sinking into the
sea. Behind us lie home and life : what lies before us ? We
cannot tell, but it must be beautiful. A start on such a night
is full of promise.
I am sitting alone in the stern of the vessel and gazing out
into the night at the gathering clouds, which, still tinged by
the sun, are sailing over the horizon to the north-west. Behind
them lies Greenland, as yet invisible.
All nature is, as it were, sunk in her own dreams, and
gently and quietly the mind, too, is drawn back into itself
to pursue the train of its own thoughts, which unconsciously
borrow a reflection of the colours of the sky.
Among all things that are beautiful in life are not such
nights most beautiful?
And life - is it much more than hope and remembrance?
Hope is of the morning, it may be, but on such nights as this
do not memories, all the fair memories of bygone days, arise
dewy and fresh from the mists of the distant past, and sweep
by in a long undulating train, sunlit and alluring, till they dis-
appear once more in the melting western glow? And all
that is mean, all that is odious, lies behind, sunk in the dark
ocean of oblivion.
The very next day, June 5, we reached the ice, which this
year has come a long way south.
The impression which the floe-ice of the Arctic seas makes
upon the traveller the first time he sees it is very remarkable. (...)
The drifting ice, a huge white glittering expanse stretching as far as the eye can reach, and throwing a white reflection
far around upon the air and mist ; the dark sea, often showing
black as ink against the white ; and above all this a sky, now
gleaming cloudless and pale-blue, now dark and threatening
vrith driving scud, or again wrapped in densest fog - now
glowing in all the rich poetry of sunrise or sunset colour,
or slumbering through the lingering twilight of the summer
night. And then in the dark season of the year come those
wonderful nights of glittering stars and northern lights playing
far and wide above the icy deserts, or when the moon, here
most melancholy, wanders on her silent way through scenes
of desolation and death. In these regions the heavens count
for more than elsewhere ; they give colour and character,
while the landscape, simple and unvarying, has no power to
draw the eye.
Never shall I forget the first time I entered these regions.