_To Mrs. Saville, England._
July 7th, 17—.
My dear Sister,
I write a few lines in haste from the desk that has been made fast for me in the captain's cabin, a small oak contraption that rocks with the motion of the ship and threatens at every swell to spill my ink across the charts that lie spread beneath the letter. I write in haste, and yet I find my hand lingering over the page, unwilling to set down in plain words all that I feel, lest I give you pain. Be patient with me, Margaret, as you have always been. I am safe, and well advanced on my voyage—farther toward that frozen goal than any English keel has ever ploughed, at least so far as I have been able to learn from the records in our father's library and from the talk of the old whalers at Archangel.
This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years, and who may, in truth, never again walk beneath the elms of our village or hear the church bell sound across the meadow at evening. I have made my peace with this, or nearly so. The longing is sharp, but the purpose is sharper. I am, however, in good spirits—remarkably so, considering the solitude of these latitudes and the strangeness of the light that hangs above us at this season, a light that refuses wholly to depart and yet brings no true day, but only a kind of pale and watchful dawn. My men are bold and apparently firm of purpose; they go about their work with a quiet steadiness that reassures me more than any words could. Nor do the floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, glittering white and pale blue against the dark water and indicating the dangers of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them in the least. They have seen ice before, many of them, and they trust their officers and their ship. As for me, I trust them.
We have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales, which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not expected. The air, though chill, is pure beyond anything I have ever breathed; it enters the lungs like wine, and I find myself, after a night of broken sleep, waking with an alertness that surprises me. I had thought this voyage would weary me, but instead it has awakened me. I stand upon the deck and feel the blood move swiftly through my veins, and I am young again, as young as I was when you and I chased the swallows through the orchard, and the whole world lay open before us like a book we had only just begun to read.
There are moments, Margaret, when I feel that I have been preparing for this voyage all my life, though I could not have said so until now. As a boy I pored over the maps of the northern seas; as a young man I devoured every account of polar exploration I could find; and now, at last, I am here, and the maps are no longer maps but the world itself, cold and indifferent and beautiful beyond all my imaginings. I have read of men who wept at the sight of the ice, and I did not understand them; but now I understand. There is a kind of beauty here that wounds the heart, because it reminds us of how brief our lives are, and how small our footprints upon the snow.
I stood on the prow this morning as the sun, which here refuses wholly to set, hung low above the northern horizon and poured a strange amber light across the water. The ice moved past us in slow procession, each floe a small continent with its own hills and valleys of frozen white, and I felt as though I were intruding upon some ancient and patient ceremony of the world. There is a silence here, Margaret, that I have nowhere else encountered—a silence that is not the mere absence of sound, but a presence, almost a voice, that speaks to the listening soul of things long forgotten. I confess I listened, and I was afraid. Not afraid of any danger I could name, but afraid of the immensity, the indifference, the sheer cold patience of it all. Man is so small here, and his purposes so slight; and yet it is in such places, perhaps, that his purposes are most clearly seen.
No incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a figure in a letter. One or two stiff gales and the springing of a leak are accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record. The carpenter mended the leak in two hours, the sails were reefed in three, and we proceeded on our way as though nothing had interrupted the even tenor of our progress. I shall be well content if nothing worse befall us during our voyage; though I confess that a small part of me—the part that hungered for this voyage in the first place—would welcome even some greater trial, if only to prove that we are equal to it, and that the dreams of a young man in a quiet study may be translated, by perseverance, into the realities of a ship's log. But that is a thought I must repress. I have promised to be prudent, and prudent I shall be; though prudence, as you know, has never been my master vice.
Adieu, my dear Margaret. Be assured that for my own sake, as well as yours, I will not rashly encounter danger. I will be cool, persevering, and prudent. I think of you often, sitting with your embroidery beside the window, or walking in the garden where the roses bloom in that soft English rain that you used to say was the only fit weather for serious reading. I think of our father, white-haired and bent over his books, and of all the quiet evenings we spent together before this consuming desire took hold of me and bore me, as it were, out of the world. I would not have you grieve for me, Margaret. Whatever happens, know that your brother loved you, and that his last thought, if thought he has at liberty, will be of you; and that whatever discoveries I may make, however splendid or however terrible, will be told to you first, if God permits me the telling.
But success _shall_ crown my endeavours. Wherefore not? Thus far I have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas, the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph. Why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man? I have asked myself this question a hundred times, and I have never found a satisfactory answer. Ice, perhaps, or storm, or the failure of provisions; but these are obstacles, not impossibilities. The truly determined man finds a way, or makes one; and if he perishes in the making, his very perishing is a kind of testimony to the indomitable spirit within him. I do not wish to die. I wish to live, and to achieve, and to return; but if I must die, let me die with my face toward the pole, and let the snow cover me honorably.
My swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus. But I must finish. Heaven bless my beloved sister! May the same gentle winds that bear me northward bear my love back to you, and may you think of your wandering brother with tenderness rather than tears. When the merchantman reaches you, give my remembrance to our father, and tell him that his son has not forgotten his lessons, nor the long evenings by the fire when he would read aloud from the voyages of the old navigators. Tell him I am well, and that I shall return, if return I may, a man worthy of his teaching.
R.W.