Evening star., 1928-12-19
SOLID ICE LOCKS
BYRD POLAR SHIP
Day and Night Are Spent by
Antarctic Voyagers in
S Gray Silence.
BY RUSSELL OWEN.


BY wireless to The Star and New York Times.
ON BOARD THE BARK CITY OF
NEW YORK, AT SEA, December 19-
We are lying in a world OF drifting
white. For hours the ship has not
moved, shut in by solid ice that
stretches for many miles. 1t is snow
ing hard, so one cannot see more than
so yards, and the wind Sits past us
in a curtain that opens and closes,
giving swift glimpses of the tortured
surface which are quickly hidden
Overhead is pale glow where the sun
Is trying to break through, but only
succeeds in making a diffused light that
hurts the eyes as they strain to pierce
the obscuring drift.
There is the fascination of the mys-
terious in this eerie concealment. 1t is
not haze or a mist but an enshroud-
ing, impalpable light that closes about
us. When it opens for moment we
realize that our microcosm is not the
limit of this frozen sea, but almost
instantly that quick stabbing rift is
blotted out and we are alone. What
is ahead between us and the forbidden
land we are approaching?
Voices Lost in Emptiness.
A day and night now we have been
living in this gray silence, broken only
by the whistle of the wind in the rig
ging and the whine of the dogs. Voices
are lost In this vast emptiness.
Every hour the light and colors have
changed, painting scenes which can
never be forgotten.
Before the snow there was wind
which lifted clouds of scurrying drift
from the surface of the ice and con-
cealed the horizon. 1t changed its
density constantly and uplifted cakes
and hurnmocks. which pushed out of
the gloom and then were swiftly hidden
as If an Opaque but invisible hand had
swept down over them
A shining line would appear far away
beyond the point where objects could be
distinguished in the dull light, line
where the sun broke through between
two clouds and advanced quickly to-
ward us, picking out white monuments
of snow that cleaned like golden
beacons an instant and then disap-
peared.
White Bird Appears.
A white bird appeared, solitary
thing moving silently and swiftly, all
but unseen against the colorless back
ground of the snow Like q strange
and lonely spirit, it moved among the
obelisks and pyramids of ice.
1t touched some primitive chord of
superstition in those who watched it, SO
much that 1t seemed to belong to an
other world, and one followed it in
tently until it flew into that misty cur
tain and vanished.
Toward midnight the clouds broke
and for two hours the sun sfone above
the horizon, coloring the snow and sky
with delicate pastel tints. From the
ship stretched path of rose colored
light, making beautiful the grotesoue
forms sculptured in the ice by the wind
and the sea.
World of Subtle Color.
The snow and the sky came together
SO that one could not tell where thev
Joined, and the bands of rose and
orange and pale green mounted to the
golden-edged clouds.
Midnight and world of subtle color
that would have been the despair of a
painter. =
The capricious and threatening Ant
arctlc has moments when it charms
NO wonder men come back to it.
NOW we are in this gray world Of
shadows again, the wind driving the
snow against our faces and holding us
pound. Leads may be ahead. but we
cannot see them and so we wait until
the storm blows by and we can push
forward F"'AA
tcopyrisht. 1928 by the New York Times
co; and the st. Louis Post-Dispatch All
rights for publication reserved thronshonnt
the world.)