To Say That You Could Not See
Your Hand, Ceased Almost To Be Any Longer Figurative;
Even The Ice Was Hid - Except Those Fragments Immediately
Adjacent, Whose Ghastly Brilliancy The Mist Itself Could
Not Quite Extinguish, As They Glimmered Round The Vessel
Like A Circle Of Luminous Phantoms.
The perfect stillness
of the sea and sky added very much to the solemnity of
the scene; almost every
Breath of wind had fallen, scarcely
a ripple tinkled against the copper sheathing, as the
solitary little schooner glided along at the rate of half
a knot or so an hour, and the only sound we heard was
the distant wash of waters, but whether on a great shore,
or along a belt of solid ice, it was impossible to say.
In such weather, as the original discoverers of Jan Mayen
said under similar circumstances, - "it was easier to hear
land than to see it." Thus, hour after hour passed by
and brought no change. 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.
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