Journey into Silence

deep within the arctic circle, by an icy lake without a name, you breathe air son pure that it hurts.

A Chinese-wall-front glacier is, as its name suggests, a giant sheet of glacial ice that pushes up a formidable wall as it moves forward. Often this ice wall acts as a barrier, blocking entrance to the land behind it, creating a situation rare in our time--a place untouched by man.

Just the thought of a fresh area that we haven't littered, polluted and overpopulated is enough to set the imagination afire. The world is so well trampled that no matter where you go--even to the moon--someone has been there before. There are no new lands to conquer and there is little left unspoiled.

Thus, a few years ago, when I received a letter from a Norwegian friend, I took it and ran with it. He had gone back to see his father in Tromsö, Norway, where he had been born; he had spent a couple of weeks there, then returned to Rome, where he worked as a diplomat. His letter said that sealers and cod fishermen in Tromsö had reported that a region with a small lake that hadn't been viewed by man in 12 years was thought to be accessible.

A Chinese-Wall-front glacier had locked it away all those years, but several warm summers and mild winters had melted parts of the glacier, vast cliffs of ice that had reached the sea, undercutting them, and large pieces of ice were calving into the sea. At the rate that this was happening, it was almost certain that a channel would be opened through which a small ship could pass. My friend was fascinated with the prospect of seeing this lake but couldn't take the time to go there. He sent me the name of a shipowner in Tromsö who could arrange the trip if I were interested.

Interested? Visiting an area unmarked by man for 12 years was an opportunity that no one concerned with the survival of his senses could pass up. It seemed impossible that such a place still existed. But it did, and, with some fancy financial footwork, I went there. I write of it now, not only out of nostalgia for an experience and a nearly lost land that I shall never forget but because it all became current when I recently heard that the lake that had again been isolated by ice for four years is reported opened once more. I want to go back, retracing that trail to the far north.

It began with a jet to Copenhagen, then a prop plane to Bardufoss, then a shaky bus through rocky farmland to Tromsö, 329 miles above the Arctic Circle, which surprisingly, with 40,000 people, turned out to be much more than an outpost. There I boarded the Lyngen, a rusty 120-foot steamship of 500 tons that wallowed like a sick whale and took almost a week to reach Longyearbyen, a sparsely populated coalmining settlement.

Bleak, surrounded by towering black mountains, smelling of coal dust and cod, the fish odor coming as if sprayed from two sea-beaten old vessels anchored in the harbor, Longyearbyen is the capital of Svalbard, "archipelago with the cold coasts." It is an accurate description of a group of islands twice the size of Belgium that form this Norwegian Arctic Ocean sovereignty. There are only 1070 people inhabiting the entire area, mainly Norwegian and Russian miners, trappers and those manning weather stations. Traditionally known as Spitsbergen, some of it less than 600 nautical miles from the North Pole, it lies close to the polar ice pack, is half-covered with glaciers and its entire coast line is slashed with fiords. I had the feeling of teetering on the edge of the earth, as I stood (continued on page 187) Journey into Silence (continued from page 103) looking back at about a dozen weathered buildings, forlorn and impermanent against the mountain backdrop, and the sudden, almost desperate desire to get aboard the safety of a ship.

Everyone from the Lyngen was at the miners' community center about a mile from the harbor. I had eaten a reindeer stew there with the rest of them, but, eager to get going, I walked along the docks, waiting for the arrival of the special craft that would take me farther north. I had seen photos of her in Tromsö, had read her specifications and knew her instantly as she came spinning in, at exactly the time promised. Two agile seamen tied her up, then went back aboard.

The Havella looked more like a gull than her Norwegian name, "Sea Duck," as she rode lightly at anchor, broken ice bobbing around her. She resembled the graceful motor sailers of Long Island Sound--with important differences. She had a 150-horsepower diesel, 1178 square feet of sail area, was equipped with automatic steering, echo sounder, direction finder, electric log and radio telephone. Cruising easily at nine knots, she was a white, 57-foot, 40-ton copy of the famed Norwegian rescue boats, constructed with a double hull to take the pack ice. I once traveled the rocky coast of Norway with Captain Kristian Arntzen in the 86-foot cruiser, the Ambassador Bay, and knew a bit about rescue boats and their accomplishments off the Norwegian coast during World War Two. Arntzen had been master of one. It was volunteer winter work, with 15 of the small ships, four to six men on each, braving gales and darkness to help boats in trouble.

That small fleet had saved 4409 boats from the sea, rescued 4176 people, 266 from certain death along the treacherous coast. Captain Arntzen disgustedly told me of their toughest job, in 1942, off Kristiansand, going out in hurricane-force winds in the small craft with a crew of four to assist a ship that had hit rocks and was being broken up by the storm. It took most of the night and a dozen trips in life-boats to save 40 Nazis, two Norwegians and a dog. The German port captain in Kristiansand wanted the names of the crew of the rescue squad so they could be awarded the Iron Cross. No Norwegian wanted such an "honor," so the captain of the rescue vessel said bluntly, "A daily job merits no reward."

The aristocrats of their profession, Norwegian seamen can be blunt to the point of rudeness; but I have found that if they accept you, they are among the friendliest people on earth, and if you go down to the sea with them in their ships, you discover an entirely new dimension in life. Although I realized that we would be traveling dangerous waters, I had no qualms. I would be with the best seamen in the world, on a ship that they had made as well as they could. If I had any anxiety at all, it was simply in being anxious to meet the crew.

Norwegians also are reserved; unless pretty well relaxed with aquavit, they do not thrust themselves upon you. They waited for me on their ship. The Havella's gangplank was my welcome mat. I walked up it and found five Nordics waiting for me in handsome, heavy knit sweaters, a bold reminder that I was in the true north, where summer is a matter of semantics.

As the crew came across the deck, it was like flipping the pages of Joseph Conrad. First, Haakon Godtliebsen, the captain, stumped toward me with a game leg, so real in his role that he seemed false, like a stock character in a sea drama. He was 5'10", with beefy shoulders, icy blue eyes, yellow hair, a long jaw and a voice as soft as the water lapping the boat. Sigurd Dal, the ice pilot, had the bold features of a wooden figurehead on the prow of a raiding viking's longboat. Big, blocky, full of authority, he took my hand in a firm grip, gutturally pronouncing that he was honored to have me aboard. The youngest was Alf Olsen, the mate, with tousled blond hair and gray eyes; he came across the deck in a slouching walk, looking like Steve McQueen. Harald Hansen, the engineer, was the oldest, in his late 60s, bald, with sun-leathered skin and a reassuring smile that opened his face and dropped 20 years from it. The last man to shake hands was short and slender, with a cap of sleek dark hair, looking more Italian than Norwegian. He needed a shave, deep lines radiated from somber brown eyes as if cut with a knife. He bobbed his head. "Aage Rutwold, steward," he said quickly.

He took my bags, carrying them forward, beckoning with his head. I followed him below to a lounge amidship furnished with a small leather sofa, two cutdown versions of club chairs, two tables, three lamps, all bolted to the deck. This comfortable lounge was prepared for some uncomfortable times. There also were two double cabins, not commodious but more than adequate, a head with a tiny shower, a small, spotless, wellequipped galley and, forward, the crew's quarters.

The diesel muttered into life as I started up the hatchway, the engine sawing like a leopard as we moved smoothly away from the quay. In minutes we were out of the harbor, threading our way among coal barges, the Havella feeling like the Queen Mary under my feet after the wallow of the Lyngen. The mountains of Longyearbyen poked black pagoda heads out of cloud mist as we quickly lost sight of the land behind us, committing ourselves to the Arctic Ocean, ice floes blooming out of the water ahead like crystal flowers, the sun striking prismatic blues and pinks in them.

Less than an hour out, a white whale broke the surface on the port side, rolling like a log, more blue than white, its blowing breath a spray of iridescence above the water.

Alf Olsen joined me at the rail, watching the Havella slice flat floes we couldn't avoid, as cleanly as a wire cutter through cheese. Articulate, intelligent, not yet 30, he had worked in the mines and as a sealer, joining the Havella three years ago. The temperature, he said, that even now in July could drop to freezing but usually stayed above it, was influenced by two currents: the warm Gulf Stream, running along the west and north coasts, making it possible to sail farther north in ice-free water (as far as 82 degrees north latitude) than anyplace else on the globe; and the other current, a frigid stream sweeping from the sea to the east of Svalbard, around South Cape, continuing north along the west coast of Norway between the land and the Gulf Stream.

We were in the period of midnight sun, when it shines steadily from April 19 to August 24. As we stood at the rail looking inland, that hard, golden sun smote the icecap to the north, flaring it a vivid blue, the light splintering back on the water before us. That was the central icecap on a high plateau, its sides deeply trenched by radial valleys, most of which contained glaciers.

Conversation was broken by Aage Rutwold, now dressed in crisp white, saying dinner was ready. "What?" Alf asked.

"Cod," Aage said in English, for my benefit, sinking my spirits, for I had decided to forever strike cod from my diet as I stood inhaling it at the quay in Longyearbyen.

We ate amidships, the table set with a starched white cloth, Danish silver and sturdy goblets. Aage brought warm plates, serving the captain first. The cod was done the Norwegian way I have since adopted--boiled, flaky, tender pieces drenched with melted sweet butter, served with a tart mustard sauce and tiny boiled potatoes rolled in chopped parsley. Bokk?l beer, dark, full-bodied, full of flavor, was poured. Everything was going to be all right.

Bird life kept me on deck much of the time. The chimeric pull of the sea almost immediately set me to dreaming across the shattered jade surface over which the explorers had come. Nansen, Amundsen, Peary, Ellsworth, Byrd and I often stood on deck watching the creamy wake of the Havella in the unreality of a dream, while I tried to nudge myself into the reality of the fact that here I was on historic water that I, as a frustrated explorer, had often traced enviously on a map with my finger. Then the smell of lamb and cabbage cooking in the galley drifted up, mingling with the harsh smoke of Alf's hand-rolled cigarette, the thud of the engine and the loud flapping of an auk winging above the boat, and suddenly set me squarely in time and in space.

The sea birds were Svalbard. I counted over 20 species of gulls, always dominated by the giant white glaucous landing with clumsy belly flops near small floes that glowed as if blue lights had been buried in them. Alf ticked them off by name for me, the forktail darting like a monstrous swallow, Franklin's rosy, Sabine's, the point barrow, the great black-headed, Bonaparte's, the rosy or wedge-tailed, book birds that I never thought I would see in their natural habitat. The elegant white kittiwakes would appear as suddenly as a snowstorm, flaking around the boat. Clown-headed puffins came bursting upon us like a troupe of costumed medieval entertainers, with their white breasts, stark-black wings and backs, broad parrot beaks slashed with brilliant red, purple and yellow cross-stripes.

The arctic petrel was the main performer. Smoky, grayish-white, chunky, its long, tapered sailplane wings kept it gliding just above the waves for long periods without visible motion of the wings. Sounds of harsh growling, almost like angry dogs, heralded the approach of these storm birds. They would flight in near the boat, take off, seemingly with a long walk across the water, as Saint Peter is said to have done, and from whom the birds got their name, petrellus, little Peter.

The captain didn't like petrels, saying they were greedier than gulls, which seemed impossible. A petrel that landed on our deck was barely able to waddle about and immediately became seasick, hawking pieces of smelly fish. Haakon didn't like having his deck soiled and he didn't like anything that was seasick. The captain had a cold disdain for anything that could not hold its own with the sea.

This was a quiet sea now, he told me, painting a quick picture of the water in the winter, when storms were frequent, the sea rough and dangerous. I didn't think it was all that mild now, the water often was chopping heavily and the Havella sometimes struck waves hard, like a car with bad shock absorbers hitting holes in a road. I had few touches of seasickness, but the Arctic Ocean was not Long Island Sound and my stomach knew it. We had about four more days to reach our destination, after being four days out from Longyearbyen, and to pass the time, obviously when he thought I was getting a little bored with my bird watching, the captain gave me lessons at the wheel, letting me handle the Havella.

There were no other boats and vast open water ahead, and as we sailed under an incredibly blue sky, the ice pack in the distance painted a delicate pink, the sea running smooth beneath us, I saw how easily one could get hooked on this life. It is one of the last freedoms. Midafternoon of the sixth day, I took the wheel while the crew, for various reasons, went below. I had been holding it steady on course, dead north, the Havella responding well, for about an hour, when flashings began coming from the shore line like S O S signals. Steadily. Repeated bright flash after bright flash.

I was getting ready to call below when Alf stuck his head out of the hatchway, checking on me. I told him about the flashes. We were heading straight north, he said, and what I was seeing were iceblinks, reflections from the wall of ice rimming the horizon.

About two hours later, clouds moved across the sun, the sky darkened and fogcame on an offshore breeze like smoke from a forest fire, shredding and floating, making visibility poor. Suddenly, through a drift of fog, a wall of ice towered. Heading straight for the glacial mass, I shouted for the captain, hands stuck to the wheel. As he clumped slowly up. we closed within about a mile of the ice blockade, moving fast. Fog swirled over the iceberg, then lifted, forming a circle.

"Hold it steady," the captain said quietly, not offering to take the wheel. He couldn't have, anyway. My hands were frozen tight to it. I doubted that even the upcoming crash against the ice that was obviously imminent could loosen them.

Abruptly, the iceberg, dead ahead of me, vanished.

"Shit!" I said, rigid in disbelief.

Amused, Haakon said. "Looming mirage," explaining that it was caused by an abrupt temperature change and that they often saw them at this time of year.

The crew appeared, chuckling at my ignorance. To regain equilibrium, I went below and had a bottle of Bokk?l. I regained more than my composure, remembering that Admiral Peary himself had been hoodwinked by an arctic mirage when he thought he had discovered a new land mass, Crocker Land. I felt better about being spooked by that icy phantasm after telling this to the crew, who were good-natured about the whole thing, although it was pointed out that Peary also was an American.

Constant sun merged our time into one big day. We had no tight schedule and, as there was no night, there was no hurry. To explain it to myself, I made a 24-hour diagram of the positions of the midnight sun. Its eerie ubiquity inspired questions that I threw at the crew until they found pressing tasks below or in an area I couldn't trespass, the head or the galley. The ice pilot was the most knowledgeable, thus the most cooperative.

Wherever humanity herds in the clutter called civilization, we are governed by the timeless rising and setting of the sun. Our lives are attuned to it. In this polar region, where few people live, that pattern is weirdly distorted. In winter, the sun does not rise at all, night blends into night. In summer, the sun is never down; dusk immediately becomes dawn. On the day I took my notes, the sun was well above the horizon at 5:27 and continued to rise until it reached its zenith at high noon, as it does everywhere. At 27 minutes past midnight, it was at its lowest point, hanging like a flaming orange torch just above the horizon, but still spraying daylight at us. Then it started its rise again, shining quite high and bright at 4:27 A.M.

I suppose you could get used to that bright eye lighting up the hours that you normally welcome in darkness, the romantic time, the cocktail-sun-over-the-yardarm hour, night coming down to mask and dull the trials and defeats of the day. But as a moon-and-star man, I doubt that I could; at least I couldn't during the first few days I was exposed to the midnight sun. The crew, however, who hadn't seen the sun most of the winter, wallowed in it like desert animals discovering oasis water. They sun-bathed, they continually washed clothing, hanging it in the sun to dry, clothing that I am certain never got so much soap-and-water attention during other times; they stood at the rail and dreamed at the sun, they ran hands through their hair, washing the sun into their heads. And, they, like I, slept little, other than cat-napping, seemingly feeling that if they closed their eyes too long, the sun would go away.

To me, the sun seemed to go up and down in waves, almost like the motion of the sea. Actually, it moved on a flat, somewhat tilted plane, lying highest above the horizon in the south and lowest in the north. It was an illusion, I knew, due to the earth's turning, but knowing it didn't lessen the strangeness of its constant presence. It was as if I had suddenly reached the ends of the earth itself, and, in fact, here I literally had. But the earth still rotated on a north-south axis once every 24 hours. That axis, however, was not exactly perpendicular to the flat plane on which the earth moved. It was tilted almost 24 degrees. The tilt effected the midnight-sun trick; we were actually leaning toward the sun, with this North Pole region getting it all, leaving the South Pole in complete darkness.

At the end of the first week of that pure sunlight that I had begun to appreciate with every pore, Alf appeared from below with a rifle, a 270 Winchester, with a Lyman scope on a Weaver swing-mount. The Havella had halted, the captain keeping the motor purring, the boat almost motionless, somehow reminding me of a hummingbird at a flower. Sigurd, the ice pilot, pointed. About 100 yards to our left across water gleaming as if coated with oil was a floe with a dark object on it, bobbing like a life raft. Alf looked at it through the four-power telescopic sight, then handed the rifle to me. Through its scope I saw a sleek, gray-velvet seal, head up, watching us.

We had seen seals often, sliding off ice floes into the water as we approached, as nimbly as New York City subway riders hopping off at their stations. Why select this one to shoot?

Seals are defenseless and completely inoffensive creatures; in fact, this was their habitat we were intruding upon and I had enjoyed watching them pop up in our wake, following us for a while, cavorting skillfully behind us. From my viewpoint, it would be akin to murder to shoot that seal basking in the sun ahead of us. I communicated this feeling to Alf as tactfully as I could and asked what species it was.

Looking a bit baffled at my reaction, he said, "A ringed seal. There are hundreds around here. But this is a fat one. The kind we need." He wouldn't say any more, except that the captain thought that what they were going to do would interest me very much and that the killing of the seal was only one part of it. "Small part," he said, "but necessary."

If puzzlement was involved with what the captain thought would interest me, then they were off to a good start. Alf studied the seal again through the rifle scope, then went to the rail and put the rifle to his shoulder, carefully sighting at the animal for a long time without a noticeable tremor.

The ice pilot came over to stand beside me and tell me that the shot must be exact, to the heart or the brain, killing the seal instantly, for if it slid off the floe, it would immediately sink and be lost.

With the sharp crack of the shot, the seal lifted slightly, then fell back. Alf had done it well, with a difficult offhand shot, but the feeling that I had, knowing that this was creating entertainment for me, was something close to nausea. I hadn't come all this way to watch something harmless be killed but to view an area that was free from this human arrogance.

Haakon headed for the floe, skillfully spinning the Havella to its edge. Blood danced across the ice, pink and dark-red lines spiderwebbing from the seal. Alf threw a rope ladder over the side, went down and hopped onto the floe, easily carrying the seal on his shoulder.

The seal was four feet long and yellowish-gray; its pelt was dotted with dark circular spots ringed with lighter color that gave the seal its name. Alf deftly skinned it.

Aage came from his galley with a pailful of glowing coals. The Havella was put in her smooth stride again, Sigurd forward, obviously looking for something, ready to key the captain, Alf busy cutting long strips of blubber from the seal, Aage fanning the coals.

As we pulled up to a very large floe, Harald went to get the anchor. With Alf helping, they anchored to the floe. Haakon cut the engine and the silence came suddenly, as if let off a chain, a big, loping silence, broken only by the sounds of Aage broiling pieces of seal blubber over coals in the pail.

Haakon was at the rail with binoculars, watching the shore. Alf, Sigurd, Harald and Aage took positions covering all directions. Arctic terns, the "sea swallows," with red beaks and silvery stomachs, went past like hurled darts.

As the Norwegians played their silent game, I remembered an explorer, probably Peary, who, in a poetic moment, wrote that the only important sound here was the clang of a glacier calving into the sea, a bell ringing out the ages. All I could hear was the water lapping at the Havella, Aage cooking the seal and the creaking against the ice floe to which we were anchored. Even the gulls stitched to the sky along the distant shore line were too far away to be audible. The captain remained riveted to his binoculars.

"He comes!" Haakon said suddenly.

Without binoculars, I couldn't see what the captain saw and I was tempted to go to him and take them, put them to my eyes and say, "Where is he? And what the hell is he?" But I restrained my curiosity.

All scurried to the stern to get three long poles with boat hooks. Aage went to the seal carcass, cut off three chunks of fat and worked them onto the boat hooks Alf brought to him.

I was confused now. I couldn't see anything in the water and wondered if somehow a killer whale was being tempted to come in close to the Havella, and knew that would be a dangerous sport, fooling around with anything that bloodthirsty.

Then, less than a mile out, I saw it, a V-shaped bow wave, and it was worth all the mystery and the puzzled waiting. It came into view, slowly, in segments, like film in developing fluid: a big polar bear, head sun-yellowed ivory as he came closer, black nose above water, back legs trailing like a rudder, moving gracefully as a seal. These waters, dark-green, hard and opaque as topaz, not clear like those of the Mediterranean or Caribbean, made it difficult to see how big the bear was until he got quite close.

Head long and tapered, hair pressed skin-smooth by the pressure of the water, he looked like a huge white fish, so skillfully did he come, front paws cleaving the water without splashing, speed about six miles an hour.

Alf immediately began filling me in, calling the bear isbj?rn, ice bear, the most important animal in the north. His greatest asset was his sense of smell; he had scented our barbecued seal blubber from five miles away. Hunters sometimes took advantage of this superb sense to kill the bear. Many thought the white animal could scent burning seal blubber from 20 miles. The blubber would be cooked, tied to a rope with a bell attached to it and placed in a conspicuous place close to the hunter's cabin. When the bear came and started eating and tinkled the bell, the trapper would put his rifle through an aperture in the cabin and shoot him.

As the ice bear swam toward us, Alf said, with pride, as if talking about his dog winning all the ribbons at a show, that the animal could make 15-foot plunges while swimming, dive like a seal and swim fast underwater. Air spaces in his fur, oil glands in his skin and a thick layer of fat make him so buoyant that he can lie motionless on the surface of the water.

As the bear reached the floe, Alf stopped talking. Like a fat old man hoisting himself onto a raft, the bear put his paws on the edge of the thick floe and pulled himself onto the ice. Ten feet long, weighing about 1000 pounds, Alf estimated in a whisper. Our anchor hook was embedded in floe ice, its manila rope trailing back to the Havella. In one quick movement, proving strength and intelligence, using paws like hands, the bear grabbed the rope and pulled the floe closer to the boat.

As he padded to the edge near us, Alf reached a long boat hook baited with blubber toward the bear. He stood straight up, easily swiping it off. I held a boat hook toward him and he clawed the fat into his mouth so skillfully that I didn't even feel a tremor in the long pole.

Standing and swiping, he ate the seal in less than half an hour. The captain said the bear had a hyped-up digestive system that within 24 hours converted an entire seal to a quart of green bile.

When we stopped feeding the bear, he went down on all fours and began to act as nervous as a fox in a cage, rushing to the far end of the floe, then back. When he reached the far edge the second time, Alf and Harald quickly dragged in the anchor. Haakon had the engine purring; we pulled away, Alf and Harald coiling the rope.

As I looked back at the bear still agitatedly pacing the floe, Alf said, laughing, "We may find one at the lake you can get even closer to. That is, if an ice bear has been locked up there for twelve years without seeing a human."

I have the hard-won philosophy that considers the seeking more rewarding than the finding, a viewpoint that has rubbed off some of life's rough edges. But the mention of that untouched lake we were seeking was so strong with the mystery of what would be there, what each of us would find, that it even wiped out the aftereffect of that dramatic encounter with the bear.

The ice pilot was gabbing away like a boy about the char that should be in the lake, rainbow char, he said, of many colors, as he speculated upon what Aage would do with the fish in his galley. The captain was going to fill some bottles with the lake's pure water; Alf proved his youth by pronouncing that he would chisel his name in stone for posterity; Harald would try to bring back wild flowers in their soil to transplant in his window box in Tromsö. I thought of the rare experience of drinking in air that hadn't been used. Aage had no comment. He went below to secure his galley equipment.

We were still about 75 miles from the lake and had a couple of hazards ahead before reaching it: We would be hitting some very rough water and we would have to go through a region of drifting ice. The rough water came first. Aage had been wise in securing his equipment.

Less than three hours after we saw the blubber-loving bear, the Havella, which normally sailed this northern water like a swan on a pond, acted like a crippled bird, heeling, violently pitching. We sailed directly into water that actually boiled; there was no way of avoiding it. Haakon explained that it was a confluence, where the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream met the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean head on. I was still dizzy, equilibrium disturbed, two hours after we staggered through it.

It grew colder as we went, dropping to about 32 degrees. We were now navigating by degrees on the chart; 80 degrees, 10 minutes-23 degrees was the position along the northeast coast of Nordaustlandet Island where the small fiord we were looking for was supposed to have been released from its prison of ice.

We could see the glitter of ice of Nordaustlandet shining like a distant dawn, a barren, uninhabited place burdened with four great glaciers. Sailing through relatively smooth water, suddenly, almost like coming upon the mirage that had confused me, there was the ice field ahead of us, looking frozen in, impenetrable. Immediately, Sigurd went forward to guide us through the ice and Haakon took the wheel from Alf. Even to my inexperienced eye, much of the floating ice seemed unrelated, varying in shape and character, flat pieces, bobbing chunks, shattered sheets, and the dangerous blue-white points of icebergs, massive bodies nine tenths submerged. This was steel-hard ice that could easily punch a hole through even the Havella's double hull.

Alf pointed out the kinds of ice, probably to take my mind off our running through that blockade. Three varieties dominated: ice calving from glaciers, ice that formed on fiords and the sea in winter and still hadn't melted and drift ice borne in by currents and wind. The large amount of drift ice was partially broken water ice and old polar ice of large dimensions, drifting from the north and northeast.

Although it was anything but a game, except in the exhibition of professional skill, the teamwork of the captain and the ice pilot reminded me of football, Sigurd quarterbacking from the bow, shouting back direction, Haakon spinning the Havella through that ice like a broken-field runner, never getting tackled but being grabbed several times, as we bumped a hunk of ice or sheared through a drifting sheet.

As we reached the outside edge of the ice field, Haakon stopped near an iceberg. Perspiration stood out like an old scar just under his hairline. It was the only visible sign of emotion of any kind that he had evinced so far on this cruise, and it was immediately accentuated as important by the actions of Alf and Aage.

Alf nimbly went over the side, hopped onto the iceberg and chopped a bucketful of ice. Aage went below and came up with a bottle and glasses. Schnapps was poured straight over the iceberg ice, the captain served first, the ice pilot second, the silence and solemnity marking it as ritualistic.

After he had started the second glass, the captain said that this was special aquavit, aged in motion in the hold of a seagoing Norwegian freighter. It was a white liquid that went down as if ignited. Haakon obviously wanted to relax for a while after his ice-field ordeal. He talked for a few minutes with the ice pilot, then announced that we were only three hours or so from our destination. We would go closer to shore and follow the coast line of Nordaustlandet, stopping off at one fiord before going on to the lake. There we would see a bird cliff, one of the world's unique sights, existing mainly here in the solitude of the far north, places eagerly sought by bird experts but seldom seen even by them, unless they were willing to come this far off the beaten path. It was a spectacle of bird species swarming together in great numbers in their own colonies. Many of the sea birds did it; the one we would stop to watch was the gull cliff.

We swung about and headed straight toward shore. I could hear that island of ice before I could see much more than a gray outline. It was a crackling noise, like a giant ice crusher at work, coming from the layered structure of a glacier, when the compressed air in bubbles, trapped in the glacier, was released as the ice calved into the sea.

We had to dodge large, tabular icebergs, bobbing like incredible ice cubes, as we got closer to the island. I have never seen the Great Wall of China, but the glacier of that name pushing out to sea from Nordaustlandet would have to dwarf it. The vertical edge towered 300 feet, blue-green stratified ice reflecting light in electric sparks of rose, violet, magenta. Several muddy streams roared from beneath the glacier and occasionally a jagged piece of ice broke off. It was like standing on the edge of creation, watching the world move into life. That was what it had all been once; we came into existence from under that mountain of ice after it had slid forward, carving lakes and valleys, shaping the earth in its own brute-force design.

Farther along these cliffs of ice, another glacier had moved into the sea, leaving a fiord open, Duvefjorden. We would sail up that to a cove, Duyve Bay, "Pigeon Bay," named for a large flock of resident ivory gulls. Beyond that was our lake.

We went slowly, first looking for the little fiord that would lead into the bird cliff, where we would stop briefly before striking straight for the lake. Coming off the big water into a bukt, a small bay, we went off that into a fiord, Mushamna, which seemed just wide enough for the Havella, its ice-slicked rocky sides rising straight up like the walls of a moat. About a mile in, we came to the cliff, a vast, rocky lump.

Take all the gulls you have seen in a lifetime, multiply this by 10,000 and you'll have a rough picture of a Svalbard bird cliff. The giant rock was living feather. Birds spurted from it in a continuous sweep, a perpetual motion of thousands of gulls. The sound was deafening. The cliff moved, as if about to take off into the sky, squirming with slate-gray, white, creamy buff, brown gulls in various sizes. White droppings scrawled the cliff face in gleaming graffiti.

We came out of the fiord and, staying to the coast line, we went slowly, fog coiling off the ice as if the shore line were afire. Alf had the wheel, Haakon was forward with binoculars. After a long silence, the Havella's motor like a beating heart beneath the deck, Haakon said quietly, "We have luck. Duvefjorden is open."

We went into the calm water that had stolen in from the sea, up the narrow, rocky chasm. The white birds were there as we came from the long tongue of fiord into the bay, mist coming in gunsmoke puffs, the high reaches beyond a glistening palace of ice. Swooping close, hundreds of small ivory gulls shrilled "Keer! Keer!" as we anchored in the middle of the little bay.

My mouth was dry; the birds made me nervous. It seemed to me that it took Haakon a long time to react. He had brought us here; it was his move. I felt like jumping overboard and swimming ashore.

Finally, Haakon pointed ashore and the crew slowly got Jolle, the little boat, ready to lower over the side. A streak flashed out there, on the shore, a rush of white light, a tiny stream coming from fresh water inland, our lost glacial lake without a name.

There was almost a fistfight when Alf discovered that Harald hadn't stowed fishing rods aboard; lines, hooks--but no rods. Alf got control of himself and went below, appearing with five whiskey bottles we had emptied in the normal manner. Holding a bottle by the neck, he wound nylon line tightly around the center, fastening on a copper Swedish lure. Still grasping the bottle by the neck, he went to the rail and made an easy cast into the bay, the line peeling off as it does from a spinning reel.

We went ashore in Jolle and walked upstream, heading toward the source of the little stream that ran into the bay. Far left, slopes of snow were streaked, tinted red by moisture running off carboniferous sandstone that jutted out of high ground. Small streams ran under our feet. The land ahead looked like the rubble from a hydrogen-bomb attack. The glacier, the top stratum of the icecap, had advanced with enormous force, upending rocks, ripping the earth. It was like walking across the rocky, pitted bottom of a dead sea.

The isolation was total. The vast barrier of the Arctic Ocean behind us, the towering massif of black, snow-capped mountains before us, rearing across the skies to the north like an immense fortress, the pure, clear air moving around us, the stillness, as if the earth had stopped moving, made this place more a part of heaven than of earth. Beyond the mountains lay the unexplored fonna, land of eternal snow.

The streams running before us widened now as we quickly moved forward; snow on the ridges and slopes was heavier and suddenly we were wading in icy water up to our hips. We went up a steep slope that was spilling water like a dam. Below was the lake. It was the blue of sun-struck glacial ice. The sensation was like stepping into a deep but bright cave of instant solitude. The quiet came from the small lake like a physical presence.

A hundred yards from us, a pair of gray-blue arctic foxes, the shyest of the north's animals, stood, ears flicking, then walking casually away as we advanced. A flock of eider ducks, among the wariest of all creatures, didn't raise a reddish-brown feather as we went to the lake shore. Cupped in rock, the water, clear as light through a window, revealed dozens of foot-long black-backed fish, so undisturbed by us that they lay as if frozen in ice.

All objects were sharply isolated, with the result that there was no confusion in the eye of what was before you. It was like being a small boy again, standing beside a woodland pool, identifying objects that floated, starkly exposed in the clearness of the water. I had the feeling of losing all sense of proportion, of thinking that something vital to mankind was being born in this cocoon of isolation. Silence wove a net around me and, as I stood caught by it, not wanting to even scuff a foot to break out of it, I thought that I finally understood what Leonardo da Vinci had meant when he said, "If you are alone, you are your own man." I had a sudden clearness of mind, a mind that was dropping its problems like invisible litter. Could mind cleansing despoil this place?

Haakon, still leading us, stopped and held up a hand, pointing. We saw movement ahead, a gray shape advancing across the rock-strewn landscape. A young reindeer, antlers in velvet. We stood still and the animal, never having seen a human, came within 50 feet, sniffing, cocking its head. It stood calmly aside as we went on. Harald, a gardener, pointed out the phenomenon of flowers sprouting from rocks, saxifrage, petals like drops of blood, delicate yellow arctic poppies, lacey red licebane, mountain avens running in burning white lines.

Suddenly, as if Haakon, standing silently beside me, had struck me with an ax, I had a headache that split straight through my skull. I touched my head, wincing.

Haakon noticed. "Headache?"

At my nod, he said, "You are a polluted man. I am surprised you haven't had one before this. This happens sometimes in the far north. The air is so pure that until you get used to it, it is like taking too much aquavit. There has been no one breathing here, using up the air, no disease, so you probably are taking in really fresh air for the first time since you were born."

The headache didn't go right away; it was. I suppose, like a deep-sea diver decompressing in stages before he resurfaces. I, the polluted man, was adjusting my breathing in this sea of clean air, where I was out of my element.

Without speaking, we fished then, stopping when we had caught 12, just enough for dinner. A bond was understood, as if by some kind of osmosis, that we would not take advantage of this lake. The char were slimmer than salmon, larger than brook trout, spotted with red and gold; three were orange, dotted with deep red. Aage reverently placed them in snow until we were ready to leave.

As if in a cathedral, we kept our silence; each man did what he had in his mind; Alf went to find a high rock on which to chisel his name; Aage and Sigurd stood watching the fish flashing like jewels in the hard, clear water. Haakon limped to the other side of the lake to fill two gallon bottles. Would he, like the Hindus think of the Ganges, believe that this pure water would stay forever fresh in the bottles? Would he also use it to sprinkle on the newborn, the newly married, the sick? Did he believe that a single drop of this water, perhaps made holy by being untouched, when dropped on the eyelids of a dying man, would immediately purify him?

Harald went off looking for flowers that he hoped to transplant; and I, headache easing, sat on a high rock overlooking the lake, in communion with myself for the first time. The amazing aspect of this place wasn't in anything physical. It was in the first pure silence I had ever known. We seemed to be separated from the world by a wall of air that washed around us as sweet as spring water. Not one of us spoke. We were mesmerized by the tranquillity. I had a sudden longing to stay here at least long enough to come to terms with myself and understand what nature can do when not tampered with. It could bring peace, I was certain. Even to a man polluted by more than soiled air and water.

The shout shattered the silence and the thought, making me realize the impossibility of both. It was Harald calling from back near the bay.

We converged, walking rapidly toward the sound of his voice. Harald was waiting for us near the bay in the center of a circle of rocks. He bent and picked up a tarnished brass button.

Surrounding him were buttons, heels of boots, rotting bills of caps, human bones, bleached and twisted by wind and water into surrealistic ivory forms. We all bent, examining pieces of gray uniforms, the rusted remains of short-wave radios.

Haakon finally straightened. "Nazis," he said, not speculating upon how they died or whether they had been trapped behind the glacier. He just said, in a voice that dripped quiet venom, that these arctic waters had enabled the Nazis to make their main U-boat thrusts and also helped them open up a wider coast line to counter the enemy blockade. This northern lane also gave them access to Sweden's iron ore that had made the Nazi war possible.

We all heard the faint sound at the same time. Something, or someone, was watching us. We turned as one.

Less than 25 yards from us were six reindeer, noses twitching curiously. The arctic fox and his vixen were also there, bright eyes on us. There were no enemies here. This was the peaceable kingdom, where man had not yet had the opportunity to create fear.