During four days we continued threading our way through this apparently interminable labyrinth. The days passed wearily away, for the wind, at best but a "cat's paw," often died away to a dead calm, leaving us to lounge through the hours in a chilly fog or in the broad blaze of the constant daylight. If this state of things had its novelty, it had too its dangers and anxieties.
The bergs, influenced only by the under-currents, were, to us, practically stationary; and the surface flow of the water which drifted us to and fro, when we lost our steerage-way, rendered our situation any thing but safe. They soon came to be looked upon as our natural enemies, and were eyed with suspicion. We were often drifted upon them, and escaped not without difficulty and alarm; and many times more we saved ourselves from collision by the timely lowering of the boats and taking the schooner in tow, or by planting an ice-anchor in another berg and warping ourselves into greater security. Sometimes we tied up to a berg and waited for the wind. We had hard work, and made little progress. I found consolation, however, in my sketch-book, which was in constant use; and one fine day I got out my photographic apparatus. Landing on a neighboring island, with the aid of my two young assistants, Radcliffe and Knorr, I made my first trial at this new business. It was altogether unsatisfactory, except to convince me that, with perseverance, we might succeed in obtaining at least fair pictures.
Practically I knew nothing whatever of the art. It was a great disappointment to me that I could not secure for the expedition the services of a professional photographer; but this deficiency did not, I am happy to say, prevent me, in the end, from obtaining some views characteristic of the rugged beauties of the Arctic landscape. We had, however, only books to guide us. With our want of knowledge and an uncomfortable temperature to contend with, we labored under serious disadvantages.
Sonntag went ashore with me, and obtained good sextant sights for our position, and some useful results with the magnetometer. Knorr added to my collection some fine specimens of birds. The gulls, mollimuks and burgomeisters, the chattering kittiwake and the graceful tern were very numerous. They fairly swarmed upon the bergs. The hunters were often out after eider-ducks, large flocks of which congregate upon the islands, and sweep over us in long undulating lines. Seals, too, were sporting about the vessel, bobbing their intelligent, almost human-looking faces up and down in the still water, marks for the fatal rifles of our sportsmen. They looked so curiously innocent while making their inspections of us that I would not have had the heart to kill them, were it not that they were badly needed for the dogs.