Cruising In The Ice - The Mountaineering Club Orchestra

[00:06.36]As we leave the land behind us we are followed by hundreds
[00:08.88]of kittiwakes, in billowy masses of white and blue, chattering
[00:11.98]in endless chorus, now sinking as they swoop low on extended
[00:15.69]wing over the vessel's wake, now rising as they soar lightly in
[00:19.41]their graceful evolutions up towards the blue sky.
[00:22.87]Between heavens and seas, the black form of the Jason, labouring and moaning
[00:26.90]as her engines drive her westward. Behind us the rocky coast
[00:30.21]of Iceland, a fringe of violet blue, is slowly sinking into the
[00:33.33]sea. Behind us lie home and life : what lies before us ? We
[00:37.84]cannot tell, but it must be beautiful. A start on such a night
[00:42.08]is full of promise.
[00:44.35]I am sitting alone in the stern of the vessel and gazing out
[00:47.93]into the night at the gathering clouds, which, still tinged by
[00:51.28]the sun, are sailing over the horizon to the north-west. Behind
[00:54.75]them lies Greenland, as yet invisible.
[00:58.06]All nature is, as it were, sunk in her own dreams, and
[01:01.11]gently and quietly the mind, too, is drawn back into itself
[01:04.33]to pursue the train of its own thoughts, which unconsciously
[01:07.34]borrow a reflection of the colours of the sky.
[01:10.64]Among all things that are beautiful in life are not such
[01:14.04]nights most beautiful?
[01:15.26]And life - is it much more than hope and remembrance?
[01:18.61]Hope is of the morning, it may be, but on such nights as this
[01:20.47]do not memories, all the fair memories of bygone days, arise
[01:24.42]dewy and fresh from the mists of the distant past, and sweep
[01:28.07]by in a long undulating train, sunlit and alluring, till they dis-
[01:31.81]appear once more in the melting western glow? And all
[01:35.52]that is mean, all that is odious, lies behind, sunk in the dark
[01:38.78]ocean of oblivion.
[01:41.10]The very next day, June 5, we reached the ice, which this
[01:44.57]year has come a long way south.
[01:48.06]The impression which the floe-ice of the Arctic seas makes
[01:49.40]upon the traveller the first time he sees it is very remarkable. (...)
[01:52.91]The drifting ice, a huge white glittering expanse stretching as far as the eye can reach, and throwing a white reflection
[01:58.88]far around upon the air and mist ; the dark sea, often showing
[02:03.25]black as ink against the white ; and above all this a sky, now
[02:06.71]gleaming cloudless and pale-blue, now dark and threatening
[02:10.20]vrith driving scud, or again wrapped in densest fog - now
[02:14.10]glowing in all the rich poetry of sunrise or sunset colour,
[02:17.68]or slumbering through the lingering twilight of the summer
[02:20.18]night. And then in the dark season of the year come those
[02:23.69]wonderful nights of glittering stars and northern lights playing
[02:26.75]far and wide above the icy deserts, or when the moon, here
[02:30.35]most melancholy, wanders on her silent way through scenes
[02:34.00]of desolation and death. In these regions the heavens count
[02:37.44]for more than elsewhere ; they give colour and character,
[02:41.34]while the landscape, simple and unvarying, has no power to
[02:44.25]draw the eye.
[02:45.83]Never shall I forget the first time I entered these regions.