A strange thing has happened to us, and I feel I must write it down, even though you may receive this journal only after I have already returned home.
Last Monday, July 31st, our ship was almost completely trapped by ice.
Huge sheets of ice surrounded us on every side, leaving barely enough open water for the ship to float.
Our situation was dangerous enough, and things became even worse when a thick fog covered everything around us.
We had no choice but to stop the ship and wait, hoping the weather would change.
Around two in the afternoon, the fog suddenly began to disappear.
What we saw took our breath away.
Ice stretched in every direction as far as we could see.
There were enormous, broken fields of ice everywhere, with no clear end in sight.
Some of the sailors groaned when they saw it.
I also began to worry.
Then something completely unexpected caught our attention.
Far away, perhaps half a mile from us, we saw a strange vehicle moving across the ice.
It was a small sledge pulled by dogs.
A man was sitting in it.
But he did not look like an ordinary man.
Even from that distance, he appeared enormous.
We quickly grabbed our telescopes and watched him.
The dogs moved rapidly across the ice, carrying the mysterious traveler farther and farther north.
Eventually, he disappeared among the distant hills and ridges of ice.
Everyone aboard was astonished.
We believed we were hundreds of miles from the nearest land.
So where had this man come from?
His presence seemed to prove that land must be much closer than we had thought.
Unfortunately, the ice around us made it impossible to follow his trail.
We could only watch helplessly as he disappeared.
About two hours later, we heard the sound of waves moving beneath the ice.
Then, before nightfall, the ice suddenly began to break apart.
Our ship was finally free.
Even so, we stayed where we were until morning.
Large pieces of broken ice were floating everywhere, and I did not want to risk sailing through them in the darkness.
I used the opportunity to get a few hours of sleep.
The next morning, as soon as it became light, I went onto the deck.
The sailors were gathered along one side of the ship.
They seemed to be talking to someone in the water.
When I went closer, I discovered what had happened.
It was another sledge.
The same kind of sledge we had seen the day before had drifted toward our ship during the night.
It was sitting on a huge piece of floating ice.
Only one of the dogs was still alive.
There was also a man inside the sledge.
The sailors were trying to persuade him to come aboard.
At first, I expected him to be some wild native from an unknown land.
But when I saw him clearly, I realized he was European.
The ship’s master turned to me.
“Here is our captain,” he told the stranger. “He won’t let you die out here on the open sea.”
The stranger looked at me.
Then, in heavily accented English, he asked, “Before I come aboard, will you tell me where your ship is going?”
I was amazed.
Here was a man who was barely alive, stranded in the middle of the frozen ocean.
I would have thought that any ship would be a gift beyond price.
Yet his first concern was where we were going.
I answered him.
“We are on an expedition to explore the northern polar regions.”
The moment he heard this, his expression changed.
He seemed satisfied.
“All right,” he said. “I will come aboard.”
Margaret, you cannot imagine what this man looked like when we brought him onto the ship.
His body was almost completely frozen.
He was painfully thin, and it was obvious that he had suffered terribly from exhaustion and exposure.
I had never seen anyone in such terrible condition.
We tried to carry him into the cabin, but the moment he left the fresh air, he collapsed.
We quickly brought him back onto the deck.
We rubbed his body with brandy and managed to get a little into his mouth.
After a while, he began to show signs of life.
We wrapped him in blankets and placed him near the warm kitchen stove.
Slowly, he recovered.
When we gave him some hot soup, his condition improved surprisingly quickly.
For two days, he remained too weak to speak.
I began to fear that his suffering had damaged his mind.
Once he became strong enough, I moved him into my own cabin and personally cared for him whenever my duties allowed.
I have never met anyone like him.
His eyes usually have a strange, almost wild expression.
At times he even looks as though he might be mad.
But whenever someone shows him even the smallest act of kindness, his entire face changes.
His eyes become gentle.
His expression fills with warmth and gratitude.
I have never seen such a dramatic change in anyone.
Most of the time, however, he is deeply sad.
He often looks hopeless.
Sometimes he even clenches his teeth as though he is struggling against some terrible pain inside himself.
Once he was strong enough to sit up, I had difficulty keeping the sailors away from him.
They wanted to ask him endless questions.
But I refused to let them bother him.
His body and mind had been through too much, and I believed that complete rest was essential to his recovery.
One day, however, the lieutenant finally asked him a question.
“Why did you travel so far across the ice in such a strange vehicle?”
The stranger’s face immediately became dark with sorrow.
“I was following someone,” he replied.
“Who?”
“Someone who escaped from me.”
The lieutenant looked surprised.
“Did the man you were following travel in a sledge like yours?”
“Yes.”
The lieutenant stared at him.
“Then I think we may have seen him.”
The stranger suddenly became very alert.
“What do you mean?”
“The day before we found you, we saw a man being pulled across the ice by dogs. He was traveling in a sledge.”
The stranger immediately began asking questions.
He wanted to know exactly where we had seen the other traveler.
He asked which direction the sledge had gone and how far away it had been.
He called the man he was pursuing a “demon.”
Later, when we were alone, he spoke to me.
“I suppose I have made you curious, Captain Walton, just as I have made your sailors curious.”
“But you have been considerate enough not to question me.”
“I did not want to disturb you,” I replied. “It would have been cruel to satisfy my curiosity while you are still recovering.”
The stranger looked at me quietly.
“And yet you saved my life.”
“You found me in an extremely dangerous situation, and you treated me with kindness when I had almost nothing left.”
“Of course,” I said. “Anyone would have done the same.”
Not long afterward, he asked me something that seemed very important to him.
“Do you think the breaking ice might have destroyed the other man’s sledge?”
“I cannot say,” I answered. “The ice did not break until almost midnight. He may have reached safety before then.”
“But I have no way of knowing whether he did.”
From that moment, the stranger seemed to come alive again.
He desperately wanted to return to the deck and search for the other sledge.
But I would not allow it.
He was still far too weak to endure the freezing air.
“I promise you,” I told him, “someone will keep watch for you. If anything appears on the ice, you will be told immediately.”
For now, that is everything I can tell you about this extraordinary event.
The stranger’s health has slowly improved.
He remains very quiet, however, and becomes uncomfortable whenever anyone except me enters his cabin.
Even so, his manners are so gentle and pleasant that the sailors have all become interested in him.
They have hardly spoken with him, but they already feel sympathy for him.
As for me, I am beginning to love him like a brother.
His constant suffering affects me deeply.
There is something noble about him, even now, when misery has reduced him to such a broken condition.
I once told you, Margaret, that I would never find a true friend in the middle of the ocean.
And yet I have found one.
If I had met this man before his spirit was destroyed by suffering, I believe I would have been proud to call him my closest friend.
I will continue writing about him whenever anything new happens.
August 13th
My affection for my guest grows stronger every day.
He fills me with both admiration and pity.
How can I watch such a remarkable man being destroyed by suffering without feeling terrible sadness?
He is gentle, intelligent, and extremely well educated.
When he speaks, his words are carefully chosen, yet they come naturally and quickly.
He speaks with an eloquence unlike anyone I have ever known.
His health has improved greatly now.
He spends much of his time on deck, apparently watching for the sledge that came before his own.
Although he remains deeply unhappy, he is not so consumed by his own suffering that he has lost interest in other people.
He often asks about my expedition.
I have told him everything honestly.
He listens carefully to my plans and examines every detail.
He even discusses the reasons I believe the expedition will succeed.
His interest in my work makes me feel unusually comfortable around him.
Before long, I found myself speaking openly about my deepest ambitions.
I told him how strongly I wanted to succeed.
“I would give up my fortune, my health, even my life if necessary,” I said, “if it meant discovering knowledge that could benefit mankind.”
“To gain such knowledge,” I continued, “one man’s life would be a small price to pay.”
As soon as I said this, I noticed a terrible change in his expression.
The light disappeared from his face.
He covered his eyes with his hands.
I stopped speaking when I saw tears running between his fingers.
A deep groan came from his chest.
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
Finally, he spoke.
“Unhappy man!”
His voice was broken with emotion.
“Are you making the same mistake I made?”
“Have you also allowed yourself to become drunk on the desire for knowledge?”
“Listen to me.”
“Let me tell you what happened to me, and you will throw that dangerous dream away.”
His words immediately made me desperate to hear his story.
But the emotion had completely exhausted him.
He was too weak to continue.
It took many hours of rest and quiet conversation before he finally recovered his composure.
Once he had calmed down, he seemed almost ashamed of how strongly his emotions had controlled him.
He pushed his despair aside and began asking about my own life.
He wanted to know about my childhood and how I had become an explorer.
I told him my story.
It did not take long.
I also told him how much I wanted a true friend.
“I have always wanted someone who could understand me completely,” I explained.
“I believe a person cannot truly be happy without that kind of friendship.”
The stranger nodded.
“I agree with you,” he said.
“We are incomplete creatures. We are only partly formed.”
“A truly good friend—someone wiser, better, and dearer to us than ourselves—can help us become better people.”
“I know this because I once had such a friend.”
“He was one of the finest human beings I have ever known.”
“So I understand what friendship means.”
“You still have hope, Walton. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
“You have no reason to give in to despair.”
He paused.
“But I…”
“I have lost everything.”
“And I cannot begin my life again.”
His face settled into a quiet, permanent sadness.
The expression touched me deeply.
He said nothing more and returned to his cabin.
Even though his spirit has been badly damaged, he still responds strongly to the beauty of nature.
The stars, the sea, and the strange landscapes around us seem to lift his mind above his suffering.
There is something extraordinary about him.
When he is alone with his thoughts, it is almost as if he becomes a different person.
His misery remains, but for a moment it seems unable to reach the part of him that still appreciates beauty.
You may think I am exaggerating when I describe him this way.
You would not if you could see him.
You have spent years reading and living quietly away from the world, so you may be more capable than most people of recognizing his unusual qualities.
I have often tried to understand what makes him so different from everyone else I have known.
I think it is his extraordinary ability to understand things quickly.
He seems to see the causes behind events almost instinctively.
His judgment is remarkably clear and precise.
And when he speaks, his words come with incredible ease.
His voice changes with every emotion, and sometimes simply listening to him feels like hearing beautiful music.
August 19th
Yesterday, the stranger finally spoke to me about his past.
“You can easily see, Captain Walton, that I have suffered things most people could never imagine.”
“For a long time, I decided that I would take the memory of those events to my grave.”
“But you have changed my mind.”
“You are searching for knowledge and wisdom, just as I once did.”
“I sincerely hope that your ambition will not become a source of suffering for you, as mine did for me.”
“I do not know whether my story will be useful to you.”
“But you are following the same path I followed.”
“You are exposing yourself to the same dangers.”
“If you listen to what happened to me, perhaps you will learn something that can help you if you succeed—or comfort you if you fail.”
I listened carefully.
“Prepare yourself,” he continued.
“My story contains events that most people would consider impossible.”
“If we were in an ordinary part of the world, I might worry that you would think I was lying.”
“You might even laugh at me.”
“But these remote and mysterious regions contain so many strange forces of nature that things which seem impossible elsewhere may not seem so impossible here.”
“And I believe that the events themselves will provide enough evidence that my story is true.”
I was extremely grateful that he was willing to tell me everything.
At the same time, I worried that talking about his past would cause him even more pain.
Still, I could not hide my desire to hear the story.
Part of me was simply curious.
But another part of me desperately wanted to help him if there was anything I could do.
I told him how I felt.
“Thank you for your sympathy,” he replied.
“But it cannot change anything.”
“My fate is almost complete.”
“There is only one thing left for me to endure.”
“After that, I will finally be at peace.”
I wanted to interrupt him, but he continued.
“I know what you are thinking, my friend.”
“Yes, I will call you my friend.”
“But you are mistaken if you think anything can change what is coming.”
“My destiny has already been decided.”
“Listen to my story, and you will understand why.”
He promised to begin the next day, when I would have enough free time to listen.
I thanked him warmly.
From now on, I have decided that whenever my duties allow it, I will write down everything he tells me each night, as close to his own words as I can remember.
If I am too busy to write the whole story, I will at least make notes.
This record will probably be fascinating for you, Margaret.
But for me, it will mean much more.
I know this man.
I have heard his story directly from his own lips.
I will remember not only his words, but his voice, his expression, and the sorrow in his eyes.
Even now, as I begin writing, I can almost hear his deep voice beside me.
I can see his bright eyes looking at me with that strange mixture of sadness and kindness.
I can see his thin hand rising as he speaks, full of emotion.
His face seems almost illuminated by the powerful spirit still living inside him.
His story must be terrible.
Whatever happened to him, it must have been a storm of suffering powerful enough to destroy a brave ship and the life of the man who sailed in it.
And tomorrow, I will finally hear it.