Chapter VI

Chapter VIThe Winter NightIt really looked as if we were now frozen in for good, and I did not expect to get theFramout of the ice till we were on the other side of the Pole, nearing the Atlantic Ocean. Autumn was already well advanced; the sun stood lower in the heavens day by day, and the temperature sank steadily. The long night of winter was approaching—that dreaded night. There was nothing to be done except prepare ourselves for it, and by degrees we converted our ship, as well as we could, into comfortable winter quarters; while at the same time we took every precaution to assure her against the destructive influences of cold, drift-ice, and the other forces of nature to which it was prophesied that we must succumb. The rudder was hauled up, so that it might not be destroyed by the pressure of the ice. We had intended to do the same with the screw; but as it, with its iron case, would certainly help to strengthen the stern, and especially the rudder-stock, we let it remain in its place. We had a good deal of work with the engine, too; each separate part was taken out, oiled, and laidaway for the winter; slide-valves, pistons, shafts, were examined and thoroughly cleaned. All this was done with the very greatest care. Amundsen looked after that engine as if it had been his own child; late and early he was down tending it lovingly; and we used to tease him about it, to see the defiant look come into his eyes and hear him say: “It’s all very well for you to talk, but there’s not such another engine in the world, and it would be a sin and a shame not to take good care of it.” Assuredly he left nothing undone. I don’t suppose a day passed, winter or summer, all these three years, that he did not go down and caress it, and do something or other for it.We cleared up in the hold to make room for a joiner’s workshop down there; our mechanical workshop we had in the engine-room. The smithy was at first on deck, and afterwards on the ice; tinsmith’s work was done chiefly in the chart-room; shoemaker’s and sailmaker’s, and various odd sorts of work, in the saloon. And all these occupations were carried on with interest and activity during the rest of the expedition. There was nothing, from the most delicate instruments down to wooden shoes and axe-handles, that could not be made on board theFram. When we were found to be short of sounding-line, a grand rope-walk was constructed on the ice. It proved to be a very profitable undertaking, and was well patronized.The smithy on the “Fram”The smithy on the “Fram”(From a photograph)Presently we began putting up the windmill whichwas to drive the dynamo and produce the electric light. While the ship was going, the dynamo was driven by the engine, but for a long time past we had had to be contented with petroleum lamps in our dark cabins. The windmill was erected on the port side of the fore-deck, between the main-hatch and the rail. It took several weeks to get this important appliance into working order.As mentioned on page 71, we had also brought with us a “horse-mill” for driving the dynamo. I had thought that it might be of service in giving us exercise whenever there was no other physical work for us. But this time never came, and so the “horse-mill” was never used. There was always something to occupy us; and it was not difficult to find work for each man that gave him sufficient exercise, and so much distraction that the time did not seem to him unbearably long.There was the care of the ship and rigging, the inspection of sails, ropes, etc., etc.; there were provisions of all kinds to be got out from the cases down in the hold, and handed over to the cook; there was ice—good, pure, fresh-water ice—to be found and carried to the galley to be melted for cooking, drinking, and washing water. Then, as already mentioned, there was always something doing in the various workshops. Now “Smith Lars” had to straighten the long-boat davits, which had been twisted by the waves in the Kara Sea; now it was a hook, a knife, a bear-trap, or somethingelse to be forged. The tinsmith, again “Smith Lars,” had to solder together a great tin pail for the ice-melting in the galley. The mechanician, Amundsen, would have an order for some instrument or other—perhaps a new current-gauge. The watchmaker, Mogstad, would have a thermograph to examine and clean, or a new spring to put into a watch. The sailmaker might have an order for a quantity of dog-harness. Then each man had to be his own shoemaker—make himself canvas boots with thick, warm, wooden soles, according to Sverdrup’s newest pattern. Presently there would come an order to mechanician Amundsen for a supply of new zinc music-sheets for the organ—these being a brand-new invention of the leader of the expedition. The electrician would have to examine and clean the accumulator batteries, which were in danger of freezing. When at last the windmill was ready, it had to be attended to, turned according to the wind, etc. And when the wind was too strong some one had to climb up and reef the mill sails, which was not a pleasant occupation in this winter cold, and involved much breathing on fingers and rubbing of the tip of the nose.It happened now and then, too, that the ship required to be pumped. This became less and less necessary as the water froze round her and in the interstices in her sides. The pumps, therefore, were not touched from December, 1893, till July, 1895. The only noticeable leakage during that time was in the engine-room, but it was nothingof any consequence: just a few buckets of ice that had to be hewn away every month from the bottom of the ship and hoisted up.To these varied employments was presently added, as the most important of all, the taking of scientific observations, which gave many of us constant occupation. Those that involved the greatest labor were, of course, the meteorological observations, which were taken every four hours day and night; indeed, for a considerable part of the time, every two hours. They kept one man, sometimes two, at work all day. It was Hansen who had the principal charge of this department, and his regular assistant until March, 1895, was Johansen, whose place was then taken by Nordahl. The night observations were taken by whoever was on watch. About every second day, when the weather was clear, Hansen and his assistant took the astronomical observation which ascertained our position. This was certainly the work which was followed with most interest by all the members of the expedition; and it was not uncommon to see Hansen’s cabin, while he was making his calculations, besieged with idle spectators, waiting to hear the result—whether we had drifted north or south since the last observation, and how far. The state of feeling on board very much depended on these results.Hansen had also at stated periods to take observations to determine the magnetic constant in this unknown region. These were carried on at first in atent, specially constructed for the purpose, which was soon erected on the ice; but later we built him a large snow hut, as being both more suitable and more comfortable.The thermometer houseThe thermometer house(From a Photograph)For the ship’s doctor there was less occupation. He looked long and vainly for patients, and at last had to give it up and in despair take to doctoring the dogs.Once a month he too had to make his scientific observations, which consisted in the weighing of each man, and the counting of blood corpuscles, and estimating the amount of blood pigment, in order to ascertain the number of red-blood corpuscles and the quantity of red coloring matter (hæmoglobin) in the blood of each. This was also work that was watched with anxious interest, as every man thought he could tell from the result obtained how long it would be before scurvy overtook him.Among our scientific pursuits may also be mentioned the determining of the temperature of the water and of its degree of saltness at varying depths; the collection and examination of such animals as are to be found in these northern seas; the ascertaining of the amount of electricity in the air; the observation of the formation of the ice, its growth and thickness, and of the temperature of the different layers of ice; the investigation of the currents in the water under it, etc., etc. I had the main charge of this department. There remains to be mentioned the regular observation of the aurora borealis, which we had a splendid opportunity of studying. After I had gone on with it for some time, Blessing undertook this part of my duties; and when I left the ship I made over to him all the other observations that were under my charge. Not an inconsiderable item of our scientific work were the soundings and dredgings. At the greater depths it was such an undertaking that every one hadto assist; and, from the way we were obliged to do it later, one sounding sometimes gave occupation for several days.One day differed very little from another on board, and the description of one is, in every particular of any importance, a description of all.We all turned out at eight, and breakfasted on hard bread (both rye and wheat), cheese (Dutch-clove cheese, Cheddar, Gruyère, and Mysost, or goat’s-whey cheese, prepared from dry powder), corned beef or corned mutton, luncheon ham or Chicago tinned tongue or bacon, cod-caviare, anchovy roe; also oatmeal biscuits or English ship-biscuits—with orange marmalade or Frame Food jelly. Three times a week we had fresh-baked bread as well, and often cake of some kind. As for our beverages, we began by having coffee and chocolate day about; but afterwards had coffee only two days a week, tea two, and chocolate three.Magnetic observationsMagnetic observations(From a photograph)After breakfast some men went to attend to the dogs—give them their food, which consisted of half a stockfish or a couple of dog-biscuits each, let them loose, or do whatever else there was to do for them. The others went all to their different tasks. Each took his turn of a week in the galley—helping the cook to wash up, lay the table, and wait. The cook himself had to arrange his bill of fare for dinner immediately after breakfast, and to set about his preparations at once. Some of us would take a turn on the floe to get some fresh air, and to examinethe state of the ice, its pressure, etc. At 1 o’clock all were assembled for dinner, which generally consisted of three courses—soup, meat, and dessert; or, soup, fish, and meat; or, fish, meat, and dessert; or sometimes only fish and meat. With the meat we always had potatoes, and either green vegetables or macaroni. I think we were all agreed that the fare was good; it would hardly have been better at home; for some of us it would perhaps have been worse. And we looked like fatted pigs; one or two even began to cultivate a double chin and a corporation. As a rule, stories and jokes circulated at table along with the bock-beer.A smoke in the galley of the “Fram”A smoke in the galley of the “Fram”Henriksen Sverdrup BlessingAfter dinner the smokers of our company would march off, well fed and contented, into the galley, which was smoking-room as well as kitchen, tobacco being tabooed in the cabins except on festive occasions. Out there they had a good smoke and chat; many a story was told, and not seldom some warm dispute arose. Afterwards came, for most of us, a short siesta. Then each went to his work again until we were summoned to supper at 6 o’clock, when the regulation day’s work was done. Supper was almost the same as breakfast, except that tea was always the beverage. Afterwards there was again smoking in the galley, while the saloon was transformed into a silent reading-room. Good use was made of the valuable library presented to the expedition by generous publishers and other friends. If the kind donors could have seen us away up there, sitting round thetable at night with heads buried in books or collections of illustrations, and could have understood howinvaluablethese companions were to us, they would have felt rewarded by the knowledge that they had conferred a real boon—that they had materially assisted in making theFramthe little oasis that it was in this vast ice desert. About half-past seven or eight cards or other games were brought out, and we played well on into the night, seated in groups round the saloon table. One or other of us might go to the organ, and, with the assistanceof the crank-handle, perform some of our beautiful pieces, or Johansen would bring out the accordion and play many a fine tune. His crowning efforts were “Oh, Susanna!” and “Napoleon’s March Across the Alps in an Open Boat.” About midnight we turned in, and then the night watch was set. Each man went on for an hour. Their most trying work on watch seems to have been writing their diaries and looking out, when the dogs barked, for any signs of bears at hand. Besides this, every two hours or four hours the watch had to go aloft or on to the ice to take the meteorological observations.I believe I may safely say that on the whole the time passed pleasantly and imperceptibly, and that we throve in virtue of the regular habits imposed upon us.My notes from day to day will give the best idea of our life, in all its monotony. They are not great events that are here recorded, but in their very bareness they give a true picture. Such, and no other, was our life. I shall give some quotations direct from my diary:“The saloon was converted into a reading-room”“The saloon was converted into a reading-room”“Tuesday, September 26th. Beautiful weather. The sun stands much lower now; it was 9° above the horizon at midday. Winter is rapidly approaching; there are 14½° of frost this evening, but we do not feel it cold. To-day’s observations unfortunately show no particular drift northward; according to them we are still in 78° 50′ north latitude. I wandered about over the floe towards evening. Nothing more wonderfully beautifulcan exist than the Arctic night. It is dreamland, painted in the imagination’s most delicate tints; it is color etherealized. One shade melts into the other, so that you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins, and yet they are all there. No forms—it is all faint, dreamy color music, a far-away, long-drawn-out melody on muted strings. Is not all life’s beauty high, and delicate, and pure like this night? Give it brighter colors, and it is no longer so beautiful. The sky is like an enormous cupola, blue at the zenith, shading down into green, and then into lilac and violet at the edges. Over the ice-fields there are cold violet-blue shadows,with lighter pink tints where a ridge here and there catches the last reflection of the vanished day. Up in the blue of the cupola shine the stars, speaking peace, as they always do, those unchanging friends. In the south stands a large red-yellow moon, encircled by a yellow ring and light golden clouds floating on the blue background. Presently the aurora borealis shakes over the vault of heaven its veil of glittering silver—changing now to yellow, now to green, now to red. It spreads, it contracts again, in restless change; next it breaks into waving, many-folded bands of shining silver, over which shoot billows of glittering rays, and then the glory vanishes. Presently it shimmers in tongues of flame over the very zenith, and then again it shoots a bright ray right up from the horizon, until the whole melts away in the moonlight, and it is as though one heard the sigh of a departing spirit. Here and there are left a few waving streamers of light, vague as a foreboding—they are the dust from the aurora’s glittering cloak. But now it is growing again; new lightnings shoot up, and the endless game begins afresh. And all the time this utter stillness, impressive as the symphony of infinitude. I have never been able to grasp the fact that this earth will some day be spent and desolate and empty. To what end, in that case, all this beauty, with not a creature to rejoice in it? Now I begin to divine it.Thisis the coming earth—here are beauty and death. But to what purpose? Ah, what is the purpose of allthese spheres? Read the answer, if you can, in the starry blue firmament.“Wednesday, September 27th. Gray weather and strong wind from the south-southwest. Nordahl, who is cook to-day, had to haul up some salt meat which, rolled in a sack, had been steeping for two days in the sea. As soon as he got hold of it he called out, horrified, that it was crawling with animals. He let go the sack and jumped away from it, the animals scattering round in every direction. They proved to be sandhoppers, orAmphipoda,which had eaten their way into the meat. There were pints of them, both inside and outside of the sack. A pleasant discovery; there will be no need to starve when such food is to be had by hanging a sack in the water.“Bentzen is the wag of the party; he is always playing some practical joke. Just now one of the men came rushing up and stood respectfully waiting for me to speak to him. It was Bentzen that had told him I wanted him. It won’t be long before he has thought of some new trick.Scott-Hansen and Johansen inspecting the barometersScott-Hansen and Johansen inspecting the barometers(From a photograph)“Thursday, September 28th. Snowfall with wind. To-day the dogs’ hour of release has come. Until now their life on board has been really a melancholy one. They have been tied up ever since we left Khabarova. The stormy seas have broken over them, and they have been rolled here and there in the water on the deck; they have half hanged themselves in their leashes, howlingmiserably; they have had the hose played over them every time the deck was washed; they have been sea-sick; in bad as in good weather they have had to lie on the spot hard fate had chained them to, without more exercise than going backward and forward the length of their chains. It is thus you are treated, you splendid animals, who are to be our stay in the hour of need! When that time comes, you will, for a while at least, have the place of honor. When they were let loose there was a perfect storm of jubilation. They rolled in the snow, washed and rubbed themselves, and rushed about the ice in wild joy, barking loudly. Our floe, a short time ago so lonesome and forlorn, was quite a cheerful sight with this sudden population; the silence of ages was broken.”It was our intention after this to tie up the dogs on the ice.“Friday, September 29th. Dr. Blessing’s birthday, in honor of which we of course had a fête, our first great one on board. There was a double occasion for it. Our midday observation showed us to be in latitude 79° 5′ north; so we had passed one more degree. We had no fewer than five courses at dinner, and a more than usually elaborate concert during the meal. Here follows a copy of the printed menu:’FRAM’Menu. September29, 1893Soupe à la julienne avec des macaroni-dumplings.Potage de poison (sic) avec des pommes de terre.Pudding de Nordahl.Glacé du Greenland.De la table bière de la Ringnæes.Marmalade intacte.MUSIC À DINÉ (sic)1. Valse Myosotic.2. Menuette de Don Juan de Mozart.3. Les Troubadours.4. College Hornpipe.5. Die letzte Rose de Martha.6. Ein flotter Studio Marsch de Phil. Farbach.7. Valse de Lagune de Strauss.8. Le Chanson du Nord (Du gamla, du friska....).9. Hoch Habsburg Marsch de Kral.10. Josse Karads Polska.11. Vårt Land, vårt Land.12. Le Chanson de Chaseuse.13. Les Roses, Valse de Métra.14. Fischers Hornpipe.15. Traum-Valse de Millocher.16. Hemlandssång. ‘A le misérable.’17. Diamanten und Perlen.18. Marsch de ‘Det lustiga Kriget.’19. Valse de ‘DetlustigaKriget.’20. Prière du Freischütz.I hope my readers will admit that this was quite a fine entertainment to be given in latitude 79° north; but of such we had many on board theFramat still higher latitudes.Dr. Blessing in his cabinDr. Blessing in his cabin(From a photograph)“Coffee and sweets were served after dinner; and after a better supper than usual came strawberry and lemon ice (aliasgranitta) and limejuice toddy, without alcohol. The health of the hero of the day was first proposed ‘in a few well-chosen words’; and then we drank a bumper to the seventy-ninth degree, which we were sure was only the first of many degrees to be conquered in the same way.“Saturday, September 30th. I am not satisfied that theFram’spresent position is a good one for the winter. The great floe on the port side to which we are moored sends out an ugly projection about amidships, which might give her a bad squeeze in case of the ice packing. We therefore began to-day to warp her backward into better ice. It is by no means quick work. The comparatively open channel around us is now covered with tolerably thick ice, which has to be hewn and broken in pieces with axes, ice-staves, and walrus-spears. Then the capstan is manned, and we heave her through the broken floe foot by foot. The temperature this evening is -12.6° C. A wonderful sunset.“Sunday, October 1st. Wind from the W.S.W. and weather mild. We are taking a day of rest, which means eating, sleeping, smoking, and reading.“Monday, October 2d. Warped the ship farther astern, until we found a good berth for her out in the middle of the newly frozen pool. On the port side we have our big floe, with the dogs’ camp—thirty-five blackdogs tied up on the white ice. This floe turns a low, and by no means threatening, edge towards us. We have good low ice on the starboard too; and between the ship and the floes we have on both sides the newly frozen surface ice, which has, in the process of warping, also got packed in under the ship’s bottom, so that she lies in a good bed.“As Sverdrup, Juell, and I were sitting in the chart-room in the afternoon, splicing rope for the sounding-line, Peter1rushed in shouting, ‘A bear! a bear!’ I snatched up my rifle and tore out. ‘Where is it?’ ‘There, near the tent, on the starboard side; it came right up to it, and had almost got hold of them!’“And there it was, big and yellow, snuffing away at the tent gear. Hansen, Blessing, and Johansen were running at the top of their speed towards the ship. On to the ice I jumped, and off I went, broke through, stumbled, fell, and up again. The bear in the meantime had done sniffing, and had probably determined that an iron spade, an ice-staff, an axe, some tent-pegs, and a canvas tent were too indigestible food even for a bear’s stomach. Anyhow, it was following with mighty strides in the track of the fugitives. It caught sight of me and stopped, astonished, as if it were thinking, ‘What sort of insect canthatbe?’ I went on to within easy range; it stood still, looking hard at me. At last it turned its head alittle, and I gave it a ball in the neck. Without moving a limb, it sank slowly to the ice. I now let loose some of the dogs, to accustom them to this sort of sport, but they showed a lamentable want of interest in it; and ‘Kvik,’ on whom all our hope in the matter of bear-hunting rested, bristled up and approached the dead animal very slowly and carefully, with her tail between her legs—a sorry spectacle.“I must now give the story of the others who made the bear’s acquaintance first. Hansen had to-day begun to set up his observatory tent a little ahead of the ship, on the starboard bow. In the afternoon he got Blessing and Johansen to help him. While they were hard at work they caught sight of the bear not far from them, just off the bow of theFram.“‘Hush! Keep quiet, in case we frighten him,’ says Hansen.“‘Yes, yes!’ And they crouch together and look at him.“‘I think I’d better try to slip on board and announce him,’ says Blessing.“‘I think you should,’ says Hansen.“And off steals Blessing on tiptoe, so as not to frighten the bear. By this time Bruin has seen and scented them, and comes jogging along, following his nose, towards them.“Hansen now began to get over his fear of startling him. The bear caught sight of Blessing slinking off to theship and set after him. Blessing also was now much less concerned than he had been as to the bear’s nerves. He stopped, uncertain what to do; but a moment’s reflection brought him to the conclusion that it was pleasanter to be three than one just then, and he went back to the others faster than he had gone from them. The bear followed at a good rate. Hansen did not like the look of things, and thought the time had come to try a dodge he had seen recommended in a book. He raised himself to his full height, flung his arms about, and yelled with all the power of his lungs, ably assisted by the others. But the bear came on quite undisturbed. The situation was becoming critical. Each snatched up his weapon—Hansen an ice-staff, Johansen an axe, and Blessing nothing. They screamed with all their strength, ‘Bear! bear!’ and set off for the ship as hard as they could tear. But the bear held on his steady course to the tent, and examined everything there before (as we have seen) he went after them.“It was a lean he-bear. The only thing that was found in its stomach when it was opened was a piece of paper, with the names ‘Lütken and Mohn.’ This was the wrapping-paper of a ‘ski’ light, and had been left by one of us somewhere on the ice. After this day some of the members of the expedition would hardly leave the ship without being armed to the teeth.“I let loose some of the dogs”“I let loose some of the dogs”“Wednesday, October 4th. Northwesterly wind yesterday and to-day. Yesterday we had -16°, and to-day-14° C. I have worked all day at soundings and got to about 800 fathoms depth. The bottom samples consisted of a layer of gray clay 4 to 4½ inches thick, and below that brown clay or mud. The temperature was, strangely enough, just above freezing-point (+0.18° C.) at the bottom, and just below freezing-point (-0.4° C.) 75 fathoms up. This rather disposes of the story of a shallow polar basin and of the extreme coldness of the water of the Arctic Ocean.“While we were hauling up the line in the afternoon the ice cracked a little astern of theFram, and the crack increased in breadth so quickly that three of us, who had to go out to save the ice-anchors, were obliged to make a bridge over it with a long board to get back to the ship again. Later in the evening there was some packing in the ice, and several new passages opened out behind this first one.“Thursday, October 5th. As I was dressing this morning, just before breakfast, the mate rushed down to tell me a bear was in sight. I was soon on deck and saw him coming from the south, to the lee of us. He was still a good way off, but stopped and looked about. Presently he lay down, and Henriksen and I started off across the ice, and were lucky enough to send a bullet into his breast at about 310 yards, just as he was moving off.“We are making everything snug for the winter and for the ice-pressure. This afternoon we took up therudder. Beautiful weather, but cold, -18° C. at 8P.M.The result of the medical inspection to-day was the discovery that we still have bugs on board; and I do not know what we are to do. We have no steam now, and must fix our hopes on the cold.“I must confess that this discovery made me feel quite ill. If bugs got into our winter furs the thing was hopeless. So the next day there was a regular feast of purification, according to the most rigid antiseptic prescriptions. Each man had to deliver up his old clothes, every stitch of them, wash himself, and dress in new ones from top to toe. All the old clothes, fur rugs, and such things, were carefully carried up on to the deck, and kept there the whole winter. This was more than even these animals could stand; 53° C. of cold proved to be too much for them, and we saw no more of them. As the bug is made to say in the popular rhyme:“‘Put me in the boiling pot, and shut me down tight;But don’t leave me out on a cold winter night!’“Friday, October 6th. Cold, down to 11° below zero (Fahr.). To-day we have begun to rig up the windmill. The ice has been packing to the north of theFram’sstern. As the dogs will freeze if they are kept tied up and get no exercise, we let them loose this afternoon, and are going to try if we can leave them so. Of course they at once began to fight, and some poor creatures limped away from the battle-field scratched and torn.But otherwise great joy prevailed; they leaped, and ran, and rolled themselves in the snow. Brilliant aurora in the evening.The men who were afraid of frightening the bear. “Off steals Blessing on tiptoe”The men who were afraid of frightening the bear. “Off steals Blessing on tiptoe”(Drawn by A. Bloch)“Saturday, October 7th. Still cold, with the same northerly wind we have had all these last days. I am afraid we are drifting far south now. A few days ago we were, according to the observations, in 78° 47′ north latitude. That was 16′ south in less than a week. This is too much; but we must make it up again; wemustget north. It means going away from home now, but soon it will mean going nearer home. What depth of beauty, with an undercurrent of endless sadness, there is in these dreamily glowing evenings! The vanished sun has left its track of melancholy flame. Nature’s music, which fills all space, is instinct with sorrow that all this beauty should be spread out day after day, week after week, year after year, over a dead world. Why? Sunsets are always sad at home too. This thought makes the sight seem doubly precious here and doubly sad. There is red burning blood in the west against the cold snow—and to think that this is the sea, stiffened in chains, in death, and that the sun will soon leave us, and we shall be in the dark alone! ‘And the earth was without form and void;’ is this the sea that is to come?“Sunday, October 8th. Beautiful weather. Made a snow-shoe expedition westward, all the dogs following. The running was a little spoiled by the brine, which soaks up through the snow from the surface of the ice—flat, newly frozen ice, with older, uneven blocks breaking through it. I seated myself on a snow hummock far away out; the dogs crowded round to be patted. My eye wandered over the great snow plain, endless and solitary—nothing but snow, snow everywhere.“The observations to-day gave us an unpleasant surprise; we are now down in 78° 35′ north latitude; but there is a simple enough explanation of this when one thinks of all the northerly and northwesterly wind we have had lately, with open water not far to the south of us. As soon as everything is frozen we must go north again; there can be no question of that; but none the less this state of matters is unpleasant. I find some comfort in the fact that we have also drifted a little east, so that at all events we have kept with the wind and are not drifting down westward.“Monday, October 9th. I was feverish both during last night and to-day. Goodness knows what is the meaning of such nonsense. When I was taking water samples in the morning I discovered that the water-lifter suddenly stopped at the depth of a little less than 80 fathoms. It was really the bottom. So we have drifted south again to the shallow water. We let the weight lie at the bottom for a little, and saw by the line that for the moment we were drifting north. This was some small comfort, anyhow.“All at once in the afternoon, as we were sitting idly chattering, a deafening noise began, and the whole shipshook. This was the first ice-pressure. Every one rushed on deck to look. TheFrambehaved beautifully, as I had expected she would. On pushed the ice with steady pressure, but down under us it had to go, and we were slowly lifted up. These ‘squeezings’ continued off and on all the afternoon, and were sometimes so strong that theFramwas lifted several feet; but then the ice could no longer bear her, and she broke it below her. Towards evening the whole slackened again, till we lay in a good-sized piece of open water, and had hurriedly to moor her to our old floe, or we should have drifted off. There seems to be a good deal of movement in the ice here. Peter has just been telling us that he hears the dull booming of strong pressures not far off.“Tuesday, October 10th. The ice continues disturbed.“Wednesday, October 11th. The bad news was brought this afternoon that ‘Job’ is dead, torn in pieces by the other dogs. He was found a good way from the ship, ‘Old Suggen’ lying watching the corpse, so that no other dog could get to it. They are wretches, these dogs; no day passes without a fight. In the day-time one of us is generally at hand to stop it, but at night they seldom fail to tear and bite one of their comrades. Poor ‘Barabbas’ is almost frightened out of his wits. He stays on board now, and dares not venture on the ice, because he knows the other monsters would set onhim. There is not a trace of chivalry about these curs. When there is a fight, the whole pack rush like wild beasts on the loser. But is it not, perhaps, the law of nature that the strong, and not the weak, should be protected? Have not we human beings, perhaps, been trying to turn nature topsy-turvy by protecting and doing our best to keep life in all the weak?Dogs chained on the iceDogs chained on the ice“The ice is restless, and has pressed a good deal to-day again. It begins with a gentle crack and moan along the side of the ship, which gradually sounds louder in every key. Now it is a high plaintive tone, now it is a grumble, now it is a snarl, and the ship gives a start up. The noise steadily grows till it is like all thepipes of an organ; the ship trembles and shakes, and rises by fits and starts, or is sometimes gently lifted. There is a pleasant, comfortable feeling in sitting listening to all this uproar and knowing the strength of our ship. Many a one would have been crushed long ago. But outside the ice is ground against our ship’s sides, the piles of broken-up floe are forced under her heavy, invulnerable hull, and we lie as if in a bed. Soon the noise begins to die down; the ship sinks into its old position again, and presently all is silent as before. In several places round us the ice is piled up, at one spot to a considerable height. Towards evening there was a slackening, and we lay again in a large, open pool.“Thursday, October 12th. In the morning we and our floe were drifting on blue water in the middle of a large, open lane, which stretched far to the north, and in the north the atmosphere at the horizon was dark and blue. As far as we could see from the crow’s-nest with the small field-glass, there was no end to the open water, with only single pieces of ice sticking up in it here and there. These are extraordinary changes. I wondered if we should prepare to go ahead. But they had long ago taken the machinery to pieces for the winter, so that it would be a matter of time to get it ready for use again. Perhaps it would be best to wait a little. Clear weather, with sunshine—a beautiful, inspiriting winter day—but the same northerly wind. Took soundings, and found 50 fathoms of water (90 metres). Weare drifting slowly southward. Towards evening the ice packed together again with much force; but theFramcan hold her own. In the afternoon I fished in a depth of about 27 fathoms (50 metres) with Murray’s silk net,2and had a good take, especially of small crustaceans (Copepoda,Ostracoda,Amphipoda, etc.) and of a little Arctic worm (Spadella) that swims about in the sea. It is horribly difficult to manage a little fishing here. No sooner have you found an opening to slip your tackle through than it begins to close again, and you have to haul up as hard as you can, so as not to get the line nipped and lose everything. It is a pity, for there are interesting hauls to be made. One sees phosphorescence3in the water here whenever there is the smallest opening in the ice. There is by no means such a scarcity of animal life as one might expect.We lay in open waterWe lay in open water(From a photograph)“Friday, October 13th. Now we are in the very midst of what the prophets would have had us dread so much. The ice is pressing and packing round us with a noise like thunder. It is piling itself up into long walls, and heaps high enough to reach a good way up theFram’srigging; in fact, it is trying its very utmost to grind theFraminto powder. But here we sit quite tranquil, noteven going up to look at all the hurly-burly, but just chatting and laughing as usual. Last night there was tremendous pressure round our old dog-floe. The ice had towered up higher than the highest point of the floe and hustled down upon it. It had quite spoiled a well, where we till now had found good drinking-water, filling it with brine. Furthermore, it had cast itself over our stern ice-anchor and part of the steel cable which held it, burying them so effectually that we had afterwards to cut the cable. Then it covered our planks and sledges, which stood on the ice. Before long the dogs were in danger, and the watch had to turn out all hands to save them. At last the floe split in two. This morning the ice was one scene of melancholy confusion, gleaming in the most glorious sunshine. Piled up all round us were high, steep ice walls. Strangely enough, we had lain on the very verge of the worst confusion, and had escaped with the loss of an ice-anchor, a piece of steel cable, a few planks and other bits of wood, and half of a Samoyede sledge, all of which might have been saved if we had looked after them in time. But the men have grown so indifferent to the pressure now that they do not even go up to look, let it thunder ever so hard. They feel that the ship can stand it, and so long as that is the case there is nothing to hurt except the ice itself.“In the morning the pressure slackened again, and we were soon lying in a large piece of open water, as wedid yesterday. To-day, again, this stretched far away towards the northern horizon, where the same dark atmosphere indicated some extent of open water. I now gave the order to put the engine together again; they told me it could be done in a day and a half or at most two days. We must go north and see what there is up there. I think it possible that it may be the boundary between the ice-drift theJeannettewas in and the pack we are now drifting south with—or can it be land?“We had kept company quite long enough with the old, now broken-up floe, so worked ourselves a little way astern after dinner, as the ice was beginning to draw together. Towards evening the pressure began again in earnest, and was especially bad round the remains of our old floe, so that I believe we may congratulate ourselves on having left it. It is evident that the pressure here stands in connection with, is perhaps caused by, the tidal wave. It occurs with the greatest regularity. The ice slackens twice and packs twice in 24 hours. The pressure has happened about 4, 5, and 6 o’clock in the morning, and almost at exactly the same hour in the afternoon, and in between we have always lain for some part of the time in open water. The very great pressure just now is probably due to the spring-tide; we had new moon on the 9th, which was the first day of the pressure.Then it was just after mid-day when we noticed it, but it has been later every day, and now it is at 8P.M.”The theory of the ice-pressure being caused to a considerable extent by the tidal wave has been advanced repeatedly by Arctic explorers. During theFram’sdrifting we had better opportunity than most of them to study this phenomenon, and our experience seems to leave no doubt that over a wide region the tide produces movement and pressure of the ice. It occurs especially at the time of the spring-tides, and more at new moon than at full moon. During the intervening periods there was, as a rule, little or no trace of pressure. But these tidal pressures did not occur during the whole time of our drifting. We noticed them especially the first autumn, while we were in the neighborhood of the open sea north of Siberia, and the last year, when theFramwas drawing near the open Atlantic Ocean; they were less noticeable while we were in the polar basin. Pressure occurs here more irregularly, and is mainly caused by the wind driving the ice. When one pictures to one’s self these enormous ice-masses, drifting in a certain direction, suddenly meeting hinderances—for example, ice-masses drifting from the opposite direction, owing to a change of wind in some more or less distant quarter—it is easy to understand the tremendous pressure that must result.Such an ice conflict is undeniably a stupendous spectacle. One feels one’s self to be in the presence of titanic forces, and it is easy to understand howtimid souls may be overawed and feel as if nothing could stand before it. For when the packing begins in earnest it seems as though there could be no spot on the earth’s surface left unshaken. First you hear a sound like the thundering rumbling of an earthquake far away on the great waste; then you hear it in several places, always coming nearer and nearer. The silent ice world re-echoes with thunders; nature’s giants are awakening to the battle. The ice cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up; and all of a sudden you too find yourself in the midst of the struggle. There are howlings and thunderings round you; you feel the ice trembling, and hear it rumbling under your feet; there is no peace anywhere. In the semi-darkness you can see it piling and tossing itself up into high ridges nearer and nearer you—floes 10, 12, 15 feet thick, broken, and flung on the top of each other as if they were feather-weights. They are quite near you now, and you jump away to save your life. But the ice splits in front of you, a black gulf opens, and water streams up. You turn in another direction, but there through the dark you can just see a new ridge of moving ice-blocks coming towards you. You try another direction, but there it is the same. All round there is thundering and roaring, as of some enormous waterfall, with explosions like cannon salvoes. Still nearer you it comes. The floe you are standing on gets smaller and smaller; water pours over it; there can be no escape except by scrambling over the rolling ice-blocks to get tothe other side of the pack. But now the disturbance begins to calm down. The noise passes on, and is lost by degrees in the distance.This is what goes on away there in the north month after month and year after year. The ice is split and piled up into mounds, which extend in every direction. If one could get a bird’s-eye view of the ice-fields, they would seem to be cut up into squares or meshes by a network of these packed ridges, or pressure-dikes, as we called them, because they reminded us so much of snow-covered stone dikes at home, such as, in many parts of the country, are used to enclose fields. At first sight these pressure-ridges appeared to be scattered about in all possible directions, but on closer inspection I was sure that I discovered certain directions which they tended to take, and especially that they were apt to run at right angles to the course of the pressure which produced them. In the accounts of Arctic expeditions one often reads descriptions of pressure-ridges or pressure-hummocks as high as 50 feet. These are fairy tales. The authors of such fantastic descriptions cannot have taken the trouble to measure. During the whole period of our drifting and of our travels over the ice-fields in the far north I only once saw a hummock of a greater height than 23 feet. Unfortunately, I had not the opportunity of measuring this one, but I believe I may say with certainty that it was very nearly 30 feet high. All the highest blocks I measured—and they were many—had a height of 18 to 23 feet; and I can maintain with certainty that the packing of sea ice to a height of over 25 feet is a very rare exception.4“Saturday, October 14th. To-day we have got on the rudder; the engine is pretty well in order, and we are clear to start north when the ice opens to-morrow morning. It is still slackening and packing quite regularly twice a day, so that we can calculate on it beforehand. To-day we had the same open channel to the north, and beyond it open sea as far as our view extended. What can this mean? This evening the pressure has been pretty violent. The floes were packed up against theFramon the port side, and were once or twice on the point of toppling over the rail. The ice, however,broke below; they tumbled back again, and had to go under us after all. It is not thick ice, and cannot do much damage; but the force is something enormous. On the masses come incessantly without a pause; they look irresistible; but slowly and surely they are crushed against theFram’ssides. Now (8.30P.M.) the pressure has at last stopped. Clear evening, sparkling stars, and flaming northern lights.”I had finished writing my diary, gone to bed, andwas lying reading, inThe Origin of Species, about the struggle for existence, when I heard the dogs out on the ice making more noise than usual. I called into the saloon that some one ought to go up and see if it was bears they were barking at. Hansen went, and came back immediately, saying that he believed he had seen some large animal out in the dark. “Go and shoot it, then.” That he was quite ready to do, and went up again at once, accompanied by some of the others. A shot went off on deck above my head, then another; shot followed shot, nine in all. Johansen and Henriksen rushed down for more cartridges, and declared that the creature was shot, it was roaring so horribly; but so far they had only indistinctly seen a large grayish-white mass out there in the dark, moving about among the dogs. Now they were going on to the ice after it. Four of them set off, and not far away they really did find a dead bear, with marks of two shots. It was a young one. The old one must be at hand, and the dogs were still barking loudly. Now they all felt sure that they had seen two together, and that the other also must be badly wounded. Johansen and Henriksen heard it groaning in the distance when they were out on the ice again afterwards to fetch a knife they had left lying where the dead one had lain. The creature had been dragged on board and skinned at once, before it had time to stiffen in the cold.“Sunday, October 15th. To our surprise, the icedid not slacken away much during last night after the violent pressure; and, what was worse, there was no indication of slackening in the morning, now that we were quite ready to go. Slight signs of it showed themselves a little later, upon which I gave orders to get up steam; and while this was being done I took a stroll on the ice, to look for traces of yesterday evening. I found tracks not only of the bear that had been killed and of a larger one that might be the mother, but of a third, which must have been badly wounded, as it had sometimes dragged itself on its hind quarters, and had left a broad track of blood. After following the traces for a good way and discovering that I had no weapon to despatch the animal with but my own fists, I thought it would be as well to return to the ship to get a gun and companions who would help to drag the bear back. I had also some small hope that in the meantime the ice might have slackened, so that, in place of going after game, we might go north with theFram. But no such luck! So I put on my snow-shoes and set off after our bear, some of the dogs with me, and one or two men following. At some distance we came to the place where it had spent the night—poor beast, a ghastly night! Here I also saw tracks of the mother. One shudders to think of her watching over her poor young one, which must have had its back shot through. Soon we came up to the cripple, dragging itself away from us over the ice as best it could.Seeing no other way of escape, it threw itself into a small water opening and dived time after time. While we were putting a noose on a rope the dogs rushed round the hole as if they had gone mad, and it was difficult to keep them from jumping into the water after the bear. At last we were ready, and the next time the creature came up it got a noose round one paw and a ball in the head. While the others drew it to the ship, I followed the mother’s tracks for some way, but could not find her. I had soon to turn back to see if there was no prospect of moving theFram; but I found that the ice had packed together again a little at the very time when we could generally calculate on its slackening. In the afternoon Hansen and I went off once more after the bear. We saw, as I expected, that she had come back, and had followed her daughter’s funeral procession for some way, but then she had gone off east, and as it grew dark we lost her tracks in some newly packed ice. We have only one matter for regret in connection with this bear episode, and that is the disappearance of two dogs—‘Narrifas’ and ‘Fox.’ Probably they went off in terror on the first appearance of the three bears. They may have been hurt, but I have seen nothing to suggest this. The ice is quiet this evening also, only a little pressure about 7 o’clock.“Monday, October 16th. Ice quiet and close. Observations on the 12th placed us in 78° 5′ north latitude.Steadily southward. This is almost depressing. The two runaways returned this morning.“Tuesday, October 17th. Continuous movement in the ice. It slackened a little again during the night; some way off to starboard there was a large opening. Shortly after midnight there was strong pressure, and between 11 and 12 A.M. came a tremendous squeeze; since then it has slackened again a little.“Wednesday, October 18th. When the meteorologist, Johansen, was on deck this morning reading the thermometers, he noticed that the dogs, which are now tied up on board, were barking loudly down at something on the ice. He bent over the rail astern, near the rudder, and saw the back of a bear below him, close in at the ship’s side. Off he went for a gun, and the animal fell with a couple of shots. We saw afterwards by its tracks that it had inspected all the heaps of sweepings round the ship.“A little later in the morning I went for a stroll on the ice. Hansen and Johansen were busy with some magnetic observations to the south of the ship. It was beautiful sunshiny weather. I was standing beside an open pool a little way ahead, examining the formation and growth of the new ice, when I heard a gun go off on board. I turned, and just caught a glimpse of a bear making off towards the hummocks. It was Henriksen who had seen it from the deck coming marching towards the ship. When it was a few paces off it saw Hansenand Johansen, and made straight for them. By this time Henriksen had got his gun, but it missed fire several times. He has an unfortunate liking for smearing the lock so well with vaseline that the spring works as if it lay in soft soap. At last it went off, and the ball went through the bear’s back and breast in a slanting direction. The animal stood up on its hind-legs, fought the air with its fore-paws, then flung itself forward and sprang off, to fall after about 30 steps; the ball had grazed the heart. It was not till the shot went off that Hansen saw the bear, and then he rushed up and put two revolver-balls into its head. It was a large bear, the largest we had got yet.“About midday I was in the crow’s-nest. In spite of the clear weather I could not discover land on any side. The opening far to the north has quite disappeared; but during the night a large new one has formed quite close to us. It stretches both north and south, and has now a covering of ice. The pressure is chiefly confined to the edges of this opening, and can be traced in walls of packed ice as far as the horizon in both directions. To the east the ice is quite unbroken and flat. We have lain just in the worst pressure.“Thursday, October 19th. The ice again slackened a little last night. In the morning I attempted a drive with six of the dogs. When I had managed to harness them to the Samoyede sledge, had seated myself on it, and called ‘Pr-r-r-r, pr-r-r-r!’ they went off in quite goodstyle over the ice. But it was not long before we came to some high pack-ice and had to turn. This was hardly done before they were off back to the ship at lightning speed, and they were not to be got away from it again. Round and round it they went, from refuse-heap to refuse-heap. If I started at the gangway on the starboard side, and tried by thrashing them to drive them out over the ice, round the stern they flew to the gangway on the port side. I tugged, swore, and tried everything I could think of, but all to no purpose. I got out and tried to hold the sledge back, but was pulled off my feet, and dragged merrily over the ice in my smooth sealskin breeches, on back, stomach, side—just as it happened. When I managed to stop them at some pieces of pack-ice or a dust-heap, round they went again to the starboard gangway, with me dangling behind, swearing madly that I would break every bone in their bodies when I got at them. This game went on till they probably tired of it, and thought they might as well go my way for a change. So now they went off beautifully across the flat floe until I stopped for a moment’s breathing space. But at the first movement I made in the sledge they were off again, tearing wildly back the way we had come. I held on convulsively, pulled, raged, and used the whip; but the more I lashed the faster they went on their own way. At last I got them stopped by sticking my legs down into the snow between the sledge-shafts, and driving a strong seal-hook into it as well. But while I was off my guardfor a moment they gave a tug. I lay with my hinder-part where my legs had been, and we went on at lightning speed—that substantial part of my body leaving a deep track in the snow. This sort of thing went on time after time. I lost the board I should have sat on, then the whip, then my gloves, then my cap—these losses not improvingmy temper. Once or twice I ran round in front of the dogs, and tried to force them to turn by lashing at them with the whip. They jumped to both sides and only tore on the faster; the reins got twisted round my ankles, and I was thrown flat on the sledge, and they went on more wildly than ever. This was my first experience in dog driving on my own account, and I will not pretend that I was proud of it. I inwardly congratulated myself that my feats had been unobserved.

Chapter VIThe Winter NightIt really looked as if we were now frozen in for good, and I did not expect to get theFramout of the ice till we were on the other side of the Pole, nearing the Atlantic Ocean. Autumn was already well advanced; the sun stood lower in the heavens day by day, and the temperature sank steadily. The long night of winter was approaching—that dreaded night. There was nothing to be done except prepare ourselves for it, and by degrees we converted our ship, as well as we could, into comfortable winter quarters; while at the same time we took every precaution to assure her against the destructive influences of cold, drift-ice, and the other forces of nature to which it was prophesied that we must succumb. The rudder was hauled up, so that it might not be destroyed by the pressure of the ice. We had intended to do the same with the screw; but as it, with its iron case, would certainly help to strengthen the stern, and especially the rudder-stock, we let it remain in its place. We had a good deal of work with the engine, too; each separate part was taken out, oiled, and laidaway for the winter; slide-valves, pistons, shafts, were examined and thoroughly cleaned. All this was done with the very greatest care. Amundsen looked after that engine as if it had been his own child; late and early he was down tending it lovingly; and we used to tease him about it, to see the defiant look come into his eyes and hear him say: “It’s all very well for you to talk, but there’s not such another engine in the world, and it would be a sin and a shame not to take good care of it.” Assuredly he left nothing undone. I don’t suppose a day passed, winter or summer, all these three years, that he did not go down and caress it, and do something or other for it.We cleared up in the hold to make room for a joiner’s workshop down there; our mechanical workshop we had in the engine-room. The smithy was at first on deck, and afterwards on the ice; tinsmith’s work was done chiefly in the chart-room; shoemaker’s and sailmaker’s, and various odd sorts of work, in the saloon. And all these occupations were carried on with interest and activity during the rest of the expedition. There was nothing, from the most delicate instruments down to wooden shoes and axe-handles, that could not be made on board theFram. When we were found to be short of sounding-line, a grand rope-walk was constructed on the ice. It proved to be a very profitable undertaking, and was well patronized.The smithy on the “Fram”The smithy on the “Fram”(From a photograph)Presently we began putting up the windmill whichwas to drive the dynamo and produce the electric light. While the ship was going, the dynamo was driven by the engine, but for a long time past we had had to be contented with petroleum lamps in our dark cabins. The windmill was erected on the port side of the fore-deck, between the main-hatch and the rail. It took several weeks to get this important appliance into working order.As mentioned on page 71, we had also brought with us a “horse-mill” for driving the dynamo. I had thought that it might be of service in giving us exercise whenever there was no other physical work for us. But this time never came, and so the “horse-mill” was never used. There was always something to occupy us; and it was not difficult to find work for each man that gave him sufficient exercise, and so much distraction that the time did not seem to him unbearably long.There was the care of the ship and rigging, the inspection of sails, ropes, etc., etc.; there were provisions of all kinds to be got out from the cases down in the hold, and handed over to the cook; there was ice—good, pure, fresh-water ice—to be found and carried to the galley to be melted for cooking, drinking, and washing water. Then, as already mentioned, there was always something doing in the various workshops. Now “Smith Lars” had to straighten the long-boat davits, which had been twisted by the waves in the Kara Sea; now it was a hook, a knife, a bear-trap, or somethingelse to be forged. The tinsmith, again “Smith Lars,” had to solder together a great tin pail for the ice-melting in the galley. The mechanician, Amundsen, would have an order for some instrument or other—perhaps a new current-gauge. The watchmaker, Mogstad, would have a thermograph to examine and clean, or a new spring to put into a watch. The sailmaker might have an order for a quantity of dog-harness. Then each man had to be his own shoemaker—make himself canvas boots with thick, warm, wooden soles, according to Sverdrup’s newest pattern. Presently there would come an order to mechanician Amundsen for a supply of new zinc music-sheets for the organ—these being a brand-new invention of the leader of the expedition. The electrician would have to examine and clean the accumulator batteries, which were in danger of freezing. When at last the windmill was ready, it had to be attended to, turned according to the wind, etc. And when the wind was too strong some one had to climb up and reef the mill sails, which was not a pleasant occupation in this winter cold, and involved much breathing on fingers and rubbing of the tip of the nose.It happened now and then, too, that the ship required to be pumped. This became less and less necessary as the water froze round her and in the interstices in her sides. The pumps, therefore, were not touched from December, 1893, till July, 1895. The only noticeable leakage during that time was in the engine-room, but it was nothingof any consequence: just a few buckets of ice that had to be hewn away every month from the bottom of the ship and hoisted up.To these varied employments was presently added, as the most important of all, the taking of scientific observations, which gave many of us constant occupation. Those that involved the greatest labor were, of course, the meteorological observations, which were taken every four hours day and night; indeed, for a considerable part of the time, every two hours. They kept one man, sometimes two, at work all day. It was Hansen who had the principal charge of this department, and his regular assistant until March, 1895, was Johansen, whose place was then taken by Nordahl. The night observations were taken by whoever was on watch. About every second day, when the weather was clear, Hansen and his assistant took the astronomical observation which ascertained our position. This was certainly the work which was followed with most interest by all the members of the expedition; and it was not uncommon to see Hansen’s cabin, while he was making his calculations, besieged with idle spectators, waiting to hear the result—whether we had drifted north or south since the last observation, and how far. The state of feeling on board very much depended on these results.Hansen had also at stated periods to take observations to determine the magnetic constant in this unknown region. These were carried on at first in atent, specially constructed for the purpose, which was soon erected on the ice; but later we built him a large snow hut, as being both more suitable and more comfortable.The thermometer houseThe thermometer house(From a Photograph)For the ship’s doctor there was less occupation. He looked long and vainly for patients, and at last had to give it up and in despair take to doctoring the dogs.Once a month he too had to make his scientific observations, which consisted in the weighing of each man, and the counting of blood corpuscles, and estimating the amount of blood pigment, in order to ascertain the number of red-blood corpuscles and the quantity of red coloring matter (hæmoglobin) in the blood of each. This was also work that was watched with anxious interest, as every man thought he could tell from the result obtained how long it would be before scurvy overtook him.Among our scientific pursuits may also be mentioned the determining of the temperature of the water and of its degree of saltness at varying depths; the collection and examination of such animals as are to be found in these northern seas; the ascertaining of the amount of electricity in the air; the observation of the formation of the ice, its growth and thickness, and of the temperature of the different layers of ice; the investigation of the currents in the water under it, etc., etc. I had the main charge of this department. There remains to be mentioned the regular observation of the aurora borealis, which we had a splendid opportunity of studying. After I had gone on with it for some time, Blessing undertook this part of my duties; and when I left the ship I made over to him all the other observations that were under my charge. Not an inconsiderable item of our scientific work were the soundings and dredgings. At the greater depths it was such an undertaking that every one hadto assist; and, from the way we were obliged to do it later, one sounding sometimes gave occupation for several days.One day differed very little from another on board, and the description of one is, in every particular of any importance, a description of all.We all turned out at eight, and breakfasted on hard bread (both rye and wheat), cheese (Dutch-clove cheese, Cheddar, Gruyère, and Mysost, or goat’s-whey cheese, prepared from dry powder), corned beef or corned mutton, luncheon ham or Chicago tinned tongue or bacon, cod-caviare, anchovy roe; also oatmeal biscuits or English ship-biscuits—with orange marmalade or Frame Food jelly. Three times a week we had fresh-baked bread as well, and often cake of some kind. As for our beverages, we began by having coffee and chocolate day about; but afterwards had coffee only two days a week, tea two, and chocolate three.Magnetic observationsMagnetic observations(From a photograph)After breakfast some men went to attend to the dogs—give them their food, which consisted of half a stockfish or a couple of dog-biscuits each, let them loose, or do whatever else there was to do for them. The others went all to their different tasks. Each took his turn of a week in the galley—helping the cook to wash up, lay the table, and wait. The cook himself had to arrange his bill of fare for dinner immediately after breakfast, and to set about his preparations at once. Some of us would take a turn on the floe to get some fresh air, and to examinethe state of the ice, its pressure, etc. At 1 o’clock all were assembled for dinner, which generally consisted of three courses—soup, meat, and dessert; or, soup, fish, and meat; or, fish, meat, and dessert; or sometimes only fish and meat. With the meat we always had potatoes, and either green vegetables or macaroni. I think we were all agreed that the fare was good; it would hardly have been better at home; for some of us it would perhaps have been worse. And we looked like fatted pigs; one or two even began to cultivate a double chin and a corporation. As a rule, stories and jokes circulated at table along with the bock-beer.A smoke in the galley of the “Fram”A smoke in the galley of the “Fram”Henriksen Sverdrup BlessingAfter dinner the smokers of our company would march off, well fed and contented, into the galley, which was smoking-room as well as kitchen, tobacco being tabooed in the cabins except on festive occasions. Out there they had a good smoke and chat; many a story was told, and not seldom some warm dispute arose. Afterwards came, for most of us, a short siesta. Then each went to his work again until we were summoned to supper at 6 o’clock, when the regulation day’s work was done. Supper was almost the same as breakfast, except that tea was always the beverage. Afterwards there was again smoking in the galley, while the saloon was transformed into a silent reading-room. Good use was made of the valuable library presented to the expedition by generous publishers and other friends. If the kind donors could have seen us away up there, sitting round thetable at night with heads buried in books or collections of illustrations, and could have understood howinvaluablethese companions were to us, they would have felt rewarded by the knowledge that they had conferred a real boon—that they had materially assisted in making theFramthe little oasis that it was in this vast ice desert. About half-past seven or eight cards or other games were brought out, and we played well on into the night, seated in groups round the saloon table. One or other of us might go to the organ, and, with the assistanceof the crank-handle, perform some of our beautiful pieces, or Johansen would bring out the accordion and play many a fine tune. His crowning efforts were “Oh, Susanna!” and “Napoleon’s March Across the Alps in an Open Boat.” About midnight we turned in, and then the night watch was set. Each man went on for an hour. Their most trying work on watch seems to have been writing their diaries and looking out, when the dogs barked, for any signs of bears at hand. Besides this, every two hours or four hours the watch had to go aloft or on to the ice to take the meteorological observations.I believe I may safely say that on the whole the time passed pleasantly and imperceptibly, and that we throve in virtue of the regular habits imposed upon us.My notes from day to day will give the best idea of our life, in all its monotony. They are not great events that are here recorded, but in their very bareness they give a true picture. Such, and no other, was our life. I shall give some quotations direct from my diary:“The saloon was converted into a reading-room”“The saloon was converted into a reading-room”“Tuesday, September 26th. Beautiful weather. The sun stands much lower now; it was 9° above the horizon at midday. Winter is rapidly approaching; there are 14½° of frost this evening, but we do not feel it cold. To-day’s observations unfortunately show no particular drift northward; according to them we are still in 78° 50′ north latitude. I wandered about over the floe towards evening. Nothing more wonderfully beautifulcan exist than the Arctic night. It is dreamland, painted in the imagination’s most delicate tints; it is color etherealized. One shade melts into the other, so that you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins, and yet they are all there. No forms—it is all faint, dreamy color music, a far-away, long-drawn-out melody on muted strings. Is not all life’s beauty high, and delicate, and pure like this night? Give it brighter colors, and it is no longer so beautiful. The sky is like an enormous cupola, blue at the zenith, shading down into green, and then into lilac and violet at the edges. Over the ice-fields there are cold violet-blue shadows,with lighter pink tints where a ridge here and there catches the last reflection of the vanished day. Up in the blue of the cupola shine the stars, speaking peace, as they always do, those unchanging friends. In the south stands a large red-yellow moon, encircled by a yellow ring and light golden clouds floating on the blue background. Presently the aurora borealis shakes over the vault of heaven its veil of glittering silver—changing now to yellow, now to green, now to red. It spreads, it contracts again, in restless change; next it breaks into waving, many-folded bands of shining silver, over which shoot billows of glittering rays, and then the glory vanishes. Presently it shimmers in tongues of flame over the very zenith, and then again it shoots a bright ray right up from the horizon, until the whole melts away in the moonlight, and it is as though one heard the sigh of a departing spirit. Here and there are left a few waving streamers of light, vague as a foreboding—they are the dust from the aurora’s glittering cloak. But now it is growing again; new lightnings shoot up, and the endless game begins afresh. And all the time this utter stillness, impressive as the symphony of infinitude. I have never been able to grasp the fact that this earth will some day be spent and desolate and empty. To what end, in that case, all this beauty, with not a creature to rejoice in it? Now I begin to divine it.Thisis the coming earth—here are beauty and death. But to what purpose? Ah, what is the purpose of allthese spheres? Read the answer, if you can, in the starry blue firmament.“Wednesday, September 27th. Gray weather and strong wind from the south-southwest. Nordahl, who is cook to-day, had to haul up some salt meat which, rolled in a sack, had been steeping for two days in the sea. As soon as he got hold of it he called out, horrified, that it was crawling with animals. He let go the sack and jumped away from it, the animals scattering round in every direction. They proved to be sandhoppers, orAmphipoda,which had eaten their way into the meat. There were pints of them, both inside and outside of the sack. A pleasant discovery; there will be no need to starve when such food is to be had by hanging a sack in the water.“Bentzen is the wag of the party; he is always playing some practical joke. Just now one of the men came rushing up and stood respectfully waiting for me to speak to him. It was Bentzen that had told him I wanted him. It won’t be long before he has thought of some new trick.Scott-Hansen and Johansen inspecting the barometersScott-Hansen and Johansen inspecting the barometers(From a photograph)“Thursday, September 28th. Snowfall with wind. To-day the dogs’ hour of release has come. Until now their life on board has been really a melancholy one. They have been tied up ever since we left Khabarova. The stormy seas have broken over them, and they have been rolled here and there in the water on the deck; they have half hanged themselves in their leashes, howlingmiserably; they have had the hose played over them every time the deck was washed; they have been sea-sick; in bad as in good weather they have had to lie on the spot hard fate had chained them to, without more exercise than going backward and forward the length of their chains. It is thus you are treated, you splendid animals, who are to be our stay in the hour of need! When that time comes, you will, for a while at least, have the place of honor. When they were let loose there was a perfect storm of jubilation. They rolled in the snow, washed and rubbed themselves, and rushed about the ice in wild joy, barking loudly. Our floe, a short time ago so lonesome and forlorn, was quite a cheerful sight with this sudden population; the silence of ages was broken.”It was our intention after this to tie up the dogs on the ice.“Friday, September 29th. Dr. Blessing’s birthday, in honor of which we of course had a fête, our first great one on board. There was a double occasion for it. Our midday observation showed us to be in latitude 79° 5′ north; so we had passed one more degree. We had no fewer than five courses at dinner, and a more than usually elaborate concert during the meal. Here follows a copy of the printed menu:’FRAM’Menu. September29, 1893Soupe à la julienne avec des macaroni-dumplings.Potage de poison (sic) avec des pommes de terre.Pudding de Nordahl.Glacé du Greenland.De la table bière de la Ringnæes.Marmalade intacte.MUSIC À DINÉ (sic)1. Valse Myosotic.2. Menuette de Don Juan de Mozart.3. Les Troubadours.4. College Hornpipe.5. Die letzte Rose de Martha.6. Ein flotter Studio Marsch de Phil. Farbach.7. Valse de Lagune de Strauss.8. Le Chanson du Nord (Du gamla, du friska....).9. Hoch Habsburg Marsch de Kral.10. Josse Karads Polska.11. Vårt Land, vårt Land.12. Le Chanson de Chaseuse.13. Les Roses, Valse de Métra.14. Fischers Hornpipe.15. Traum-Valse de Millocher.16. Hemlandssång. ‘A le misérable.’17. Diamanten und Perlen.18. Marsch de ‘Det lustiga Kriget.’19. Valse de ‘DetlustigaKriget.’20. Prière du Freischütz.I hope my readers will admit that this was quite a fine entertainment to be given in latitude 79° north; but of such we had many on board theFramat still higher latitudes.Dr. Blessing in his cabinDr. Blessing in his cabin(From a photograph)“Coffee and sweets were served after dinner; and after a better supper than usual came strawberry and lemon ice (aliasgranitta) and limejuice toddy, without alcohol. The health of the hero of the day was first proposed ‘in a few well-chosen words’; and then we drank a bumper to the seventy-ninth degree, which we were sure was only the first of many degrees to be conquered in the same way.“Saturday, September 30th. I am not satisfied that theFram’spresent position is a good one for the winter. The great floe on the port side to which we are moored sends out an ugly projection about amidships, which might give her a bad squeeze in case of the ice packing. We therefore began to-day to warp her backward into better ice. It is by no means quick work. The comparatively open channel around us is now covered with tolerably thick ice, which has to be hewn and broken in pieces with axes, ice-staves, and walrus-spears. Then the capstan is manned, and we heave her through the broken floe foot by foot. The temperature this evening is -12.6° C. A wonderful sunset.“Sunday, October 1st. Wind from the W.S.W. and weather mild. We are taking a day of rest, which means eating, sleeping, smoking, and reading.“Monday, October 2d. Warped the ship farther astern, until we found a good berth for her out in the middle of the newly frozen pool. On the port side we have our big floe, with the dogs’ camp—thirty-five blackdogs tied up on the white ice. This floe turns a low, and by no means threatening, edge towards us. We have good low ice on the starboard too; and between the ship and the floes we have on both sides the newly frozen surface ice, which has, in the process of warping, also got packed in under the ship’s bottom, so that she lies in a good bed.“As Sverdrup, Juell, and I were sitting in the chart-room in the afternoon, splicing rope for the sounding-line, Peter1rushed in shouting, ‘A bear! a bear!’ I snatched up my rifle and tore out. ‘Where is it?’ ‘There, near the tent, on the starboard side; it came right up to it, and had almost got hold of them!’“And there it was, big and yellow, snuffing away at the tent gear. Hansen, Blessing, and Johansen were running at the top of their speed towards the ship. On to the ice I jumped, and off I went, broke through, stumbled, fell, and up again. The bear in the meantime had done sniffing, and had probably determined that an iron spade, an ice-staff, an axe, some tent-pegs, and a canvas tent were too indigestible food even for a bear’s stomach. Anyhow, it was following with mighty strides in the track of the fugitives. It caught sight of me and stopped, astonished, as if it were thinking, ‘What sort of insect canthatbe?’ I went on to within easy range; it stood still, looking hard at me. At last it turned its head alittle, and I gave it a ball in the neck. Without moving a limb, it sank slowly to the ice. I now let loose some of the dogs, to accustom them to this sort of sport, but they showed a lamentable want of interest in it; and ‘Kvik,’ on whom all our hope in the matter of bear-hunting rested, bristled up and approached the dead animal very slowly and carefully, with her tail between her legs—a sorry spectacle.“I must now give the story of the others who made the bear’s acquaintance first. Hansen had to-day begun to set up his observatory tent a little ahead of the ship, on the starboard bow. In the afternoon he got Blessing and Johansen to help him. While they were hard at work they caught sight of the bear not far from them, just off the bow of theFram.“‘Hush! Keep quiet, in case we frighten him,’ says Hansen.“‘Yes, yes!’ And they crouch together and look at him.“‘I think I’d better try to slip on board and announce him,’ says Blessing.“‘I think you should,’ says Hansen.“And off steals Blessing on tiptoe, so as not to frighten the bear. By this time Bruin has seen and scented them, and comes jogging along, following his nose, towards them.“Hansen now began to get over his fear of startling him. The bear caught sight of Blessing slinking off to theship and set after him. Blessing also was now much less concerned than he had been as to the bear’s nerves. He stopped, uncertain what to do; but a moment’s reflection brought him to the conclusion that it was pleasanter to be three than one just then, and he went back to the others faster than he had gone from them. The bear followed at a good rate. Hansen did not like the look of things, and thought the time had come to try a dodge he had seen recommended in a book. He raised himself to his full height, flung his arms about, and yelled with all the power of his lungs, ably assisted by the others. But the bear came on quite undisturbed. The situation was becoming critical. Each snatched up his weapon—Hansen an ice-staff, Johansen an axe, and Blessing nothing. They screamed with all their strength, ‘Bear! bear!’ and set off for the ship as hard as they could tear. But the bear held on his steady course to the tent, and examined everything there before (as we have seen) he went after them.“It was a lean he-bear. The only thing that was found in its stomach when it was opened was a piece of paper, with the names ‘Lütken and Mohn.’ This was the wrapping-paper of a ‘ski’ light, and had been left by one of us somewhere on the ice. After this day some of the members of the expedition would hardly leave the ship without being armed to the teeth.“I let loose some of the dogs”“I let loose some of the dogs”“Wednesday, October 4th. Northwesterly wind yesterday and to-day. Yesterday we had -16°, and to-day-14° C. I have worked all day at soundings and got to about 800 fathoms depth. The bottom samples consisted of a layer of gray clay 4 to 4½ inches thick, and below that brown clay or mud. The temperature was, strangely enough, just above freezing-point (+0.18° C.) at the bottom, and just below freezing-point (-0.4° C.) 75 fathoms up. This rather disposes of the story of a shallow polar basin and of the extreme coldness of the water of the Arctic Ocean.“While we were hauling up the line in the afternoon the ice cracked a little astern of theFram, and the crack increased in breadth so quickly that three of us, who had to go out to save the ice-anchors, were obliged to make a bridge over it with a long board to get back to the ship again. Later in the evening there was some packing in the ice, and several new passages opened out behind this first one.“Thursday, October 5th. As I was dressing this morning, just before breakfast, the mate rushed down to tell me a bear was in sight. I was soon on deck and saw him coming from the south, to the lee of us. He was still a good way off, but stopped and looked about. Presently he lay down, and Henriksen and I started off across the ice, and were lucky enough to send a bullet into his breast at about 310 yards, just as he was moving off.“We are making everything snug for the winter and for the ice-pressure. This afternoon we took up therudder. Beautiful weather, but cold, -18° C. at 8P.M.The result of the medical inspection to-day was the discovery that we still have bugs on board; and I do not know what we are to do. We have no steam now, and must fix our hopes on the cold.“I must confess that this discovery made me feel quite ill. If bugs got into our winter furs the thing was hopeless. So the next day there was a regular feast of purification, according to the most rigid antiseptic prescriptions. Each man had to deliver up his old clothes, every stitch of them, wash himself, and dress in new ones from top to toe. All the old clothes, fur rugs, and such things, were carefully carried up on to the deck, and kept there the whole winter. This was more than even these animals could stand; 53° C. of cold proved to be too much for them, and we saw no more of them. As the bug is made to say in the popular rhyme:“‘Put me in the boiling pot, and shut me down tight;But don’t leave me out on a cold winter night!’“Friday, October 6th. Cold, down to 11° below zero (Fahr.). To-day we have begun to rig up the windmill. The ice has been packing to the north of theFram’sstern. As the dogs will freeze if they are kept tied up and get no exercise, we let them loose this afternoon, and are going to try if we can leave them so. Of course they at once began to fight, and some poor creatures limped away from the battle-field scratched and torn.But otherwise great joy prevailed; they leaped, and ran, and rolled themselves in the snow. Brilliant aurora in the evening.The men who were afraid of frightening the bear. “Off steals Blessing on tiptoe”The men who were afraid of frightening the bear. “Off steals Blessing on tiptoe”(Drawn by A. Bloch)“Saturday, October 7th. Still cold, with the same northerly wind we have had all these last days. I am afraid we are drifting far south now. A few days ago we were, according to the observations, in 78° 47′ north latitude. That was 16′ south in less than a week. This is too much; but we must make it up again; wemustget north. It means going away from home now, but soon it will mean going nearer home. What depth of beauty, with an undercurrent of endless sadness, there is in these dreamily glowing evenings! The vanished sun has left its track of melancholy flame. Nature’s music, which fills all space, is instinct with sorrow that all this beauty should be spread out day after day, week after week, year after year, over a dead world. Why? Sunsets are always sad at home too. This thought makes the sight seem doubly precious here and doubly sad. There is red burning blood in the west against the cold snow—and to think that this is the sea, stiffened in chains, in death, and that the sun will soon leave us, and we shall be in the dark alone! ‘And the earth was without form and void;’ is this the sea that is to come?“Sunday, October 8th. Beautiful weather. Made a snow-shoe expedition westward, all the dogs following. The running was a little spoiled by the brine, which soaks up through the snow from the surface of the ice—flat, newly frozen ice, with older, uneven blocks breaking through it. I seated myself on a snow hummock far away out; the dogs crowded round to be patted. My eye wandered over the great snow plain, endless and solitary—nothing but snow, snow everywhere.“The observations to-day gave us an unpleasant surprise; we are now down in 78° 35′ north latitude; but there is a simple enough explanation of this when one thinks of all the northerly and northwesterly wind we have had lately, with open water not far to the south of us. As soon as everything is frozen we must go north again; there can be no question of that; but none the less this state of matters is unpleasant. I find some comfort in the fact that we have also drifted a little east, so that at all events we have kept with the wind and are not drifting down westward.“Monday, October 9th. I was feverish both during last night and to-day. Goodness knows what is the meaning of such nonsense. When I was taking water samples in the morning I discovered that the water-lifter suddenly stopped at the depth of a little less than 80 fathoms. It was really the bottom. So we have drifted south again to the shallow water. We let the weight lie at the bottom for a little, and saw by the line that for the moment we were drifting north. This was some small comfort, anyhow.“All at once in the afternoon, as we were sitting idly chattering, a deafening noise began, and the whole shipshook. This was the first ice-pressure. Every one rushed on deck to look. TheFrambehaved beautifully, as I had expected she would. On pushed the ice with steady pressure, but down under us it had to go, and we were slowly lifted up. These ‘squeezings’ continued off and on all the afternoon, and were sometimes so strong that theFramwas lifted several feet; but then the ice could no longer bear her, and she broke it below her. Towards evening the whole slackened again, till we lay in a good-sized piece of open water, and had hurriedly to moor her to our old floe, or we should have drifted off. There seems to be a good deal of movement in the ice here. Peter has just been telling us that he hears the dull booming of strong pressures not far off.“Tuesday, October 10th. The ice continues disturbed.“Wednesday, October 11th. The bad news was brought this afternoon that ‘Job’ is dead, torn in pieces by the other dogs. He was found a good way from the ship, ‘Old Suggen’ lying watching the corpse, so that no other dog could get to it. They are wretches, these dogs; no day passes without a fight. In the day-time one of us is generally at hand to stop it, but at night they seldom fail to tear and bite one of their comrades. Poor ‘Barabbas’ is almost frightened out of his wits. He stays on board now, and dares not venture on the ice, because he knows the other monsters would set onhim. There is not a trace of chivalry about these curs. When there is a fight, the whole pack rush like wild beasts on the loser. But is it not, perhaps, the law of nature that the strong, and not the weak, should be protected? Have not we human beings, perhaps, been trying to turn nature topsy-turvy by protecting and doing our best to keep life in all the weak?Dogs chained on the iceDogs chained on the ice“The ice is restless, and has pressed a good deal to-day again. It begins with a gentle crack and moan along the side of the ship, which gradually sounds louder in every key. Now it is a high plaintive tone, now it is a grumble, now it is a snarl, and the ship gives a start up. The noise steadily grows till it is like all thepipes of an organ; the ship trembles and shakes, and rises by fits and starts, or is sometimes gently lifted. There is a pleasant, comfortable feeling in sitting listening to all this uproar and knowing the strength of our ship. Many a one would have been crushed long ago. But outside the ice is ground against our ship’s sides, the piles of broken-up floe are forced under her heavy, invulnerable hull, and we lie as if in a bed. Soon the noise begins to die down; the ship sinks into its old position again, and presently all is silent as before. In several places round us the ice is piled up, at one spot to a considerable height. Towards evening there was a slackening, and we lay again in a large, open pool.“Thursday, October 12th. In the morning we and our floe were drifting on blue water in the middle of a large, open lane, which stretched far to the north, and in the north the atmosphere at the horizon was dark and blue. As far as we could see from the crow’s-nest with the small field-glass, there was no end to the open water, with only single pieces of ice sticking up in it here and there. These are extraordinary changes. I wondered if we should prepare to go ahead. But they had long ago taken the machinery to pieces for the winter, so that it would be a matter of time to get it ready for use again. Perhaps it would be best to wait a little. Clear weather, with sunshine—a beautiful, inspiriting winter day—but the same northerly wind. Took soundings, and found 50 fathoms of water (90 metres). Weare drifting slowly southward. Towards evening the ice packed together again with much force; but theFramcan hold her own. In the afternoon I fished in a depth of about 27 fathoms (50 metres) with Murray’s silk net,2and had a good take, especially of small crustaceans (Copepoda,Ostracoda,Amphipoda, etc.) and of a little Arctic worm (Spadella) that swims about in the sea. It is horribly difficult to manage a little fishing here. No sooner have you found an opening to slip your tackle through than it begins to close again, and you have to haul up as hard as you can, so as not to get the line nipped and lose everything. It is a pity, for there are interesting hauls to be made. One sees phosphorescence3in the water here whenever there is the smallest opening in the ice. There is by no means such a scarcity of animal life as one might expect.We lay in open waterWe lay in open water(From a photograph)“Friday, October 13th. Now we are in the very midst of what the prophets would have had us dread so much. The ice is pressing and packing round us with a noise like thunder. It is piling itself up into long walls, and heaps high enough to reach a good way up theFram’srigging; in fact, it is trying its very utmost to grind theFraminto powder. But here we sit quite tranquil, noteven going up to look at all the hurly-burly, but just chatting and laughing as usual. Last night there was tremendous pressure round our old dog-floe. The ice had towered up higher than the highest point of the floe and hustled down upon it. It had quite spoiled a well, where we till now had found good drinking-water, filling it with brine. Furthermore, it had cast itself over our stern ice-anchor and part of the steel cable which held it, burying them so effectually that we had afterwards to cut the cable. Then it covered our planks and sledges, which stood on the ice. Before long the dogs were in danger, and the watch had to turn out all hands to save them. At last the floe split in two. This morning the ice was one scene of melancholy confusion, gleaming in the most glorious sunshine. Piled up all round us were high, steep ice walls. Strangely enough, we had lain on the very verge of the worst confusion, and had escaped with the loss of an ice-anchor, a piece of steel cable, a few planks and other bits of wood, and half of a Samoyede sledge, all of which might have been saved if we had looked after them in time. But the men have grown so indifferent to the pressure now that they do not even go up to look, let it thunder ever so hard. They feel that the ship can stand it, and so long as that is the case there is nothing to hurt except the ice itself.“In the morning the pressure slackened again, and we were soon lying in a large piece of open water, as wedid yesterday. To-day, again, this stretched far away towards the northern horizon, where the same dark atmosphere indicated some extent of open water. I now gave the order to put the engine together again; they told me it could be done in a day and a half or at most two days. We must go north and see what there is up there. I think it possible that it may be the boundary between the ice-drift theJeannettewas in and the pack we are now drifting south with—or can it be land?“We had kept company quite long enough with the old, now broken-up floe, so worked ourselves a little way astern after dinner, as the ice was beginning to draw together. Towards evening the pressure began again in earnest, and was especially bad round the remains of our old floe, so that I believe we may congratulate ourselves on having left it. It is evident that the pressure here stands in connection with, is perhaps caused by, the tidal wave. It occurs with the greatest regularity. The ice slackens twice and packs twice in 24 hours. The pressure has happened about 4, 5, and 6 o’clock in the morning, and almost at exactly the same hour in the afternoon, and in between we have always lain for some part of the time in open water. The very great pressure just now is probably due to the spring-tide; we had new moon on the 9th, which was the first day of the pressure.Then it was just after mid-day when we noticed it, but it has been later every day, and now it is at 8P.M.”The theory of the ice-pressure being caused to a considerable extent by the tidal wave has been advanced repeatedly by Arctic explorers. During theFram’sdrifting we had better opportunity than most of them to study this phenomenon, and our experience seems to leave no doubt that over a wide region the tide produces movement and pressure of the ice. It occurs especially at the time of the spring-tides, and more at new moon than at full moon. During the intervening periods there was, as a rule, little or no trace of pressure. But these tidal pressures did not occur during the whole time of our drifting. We noticed them especially the first autumn, while we were in the neighborhood of the open sea north of Siberia, and the last year, when theFramwas drawing near the open Atlantic Ocean; they were less noticeable while we were in the polar basin. Pressure occurs here more irregularly, and is mainly caused by the wind driving the ice. When one pictures to one’s self these enormous ice-masses, drifting in a certain direction, suddenly meeting hinderances—for example, ice-masses drifting from the opposite direction, owing to a change of wind in some more or less distant quarter—it is easy to understand the tremendous pressure that must result.Such an ice conflict is undeniably a stupendous spectacle. One feels one’s self to be in the presence of titanic forces, and it is easy to understand howtimid souls may be overawed and feel as if nothing could stand before it. For when the packing begins in earnest it seems as though there could be no spot on the earth’s surface left unshaken. First you hear a sound like the thundering rumbling of an earthquake far away on the great waste; then you hear it in several places, always coming nearer and nearer. The silent ice world re-echoes with thunders; nature’s giants are awakening to the battle. The ice cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up; and all of a sudden you too find yourself in the midst of the struggle. There are howlings and thunderings round you; you feel the ice trembling, and hear it rumbling under your feet; there is no peace anywhere. In the semi-darkness you can see it piling and tossing itself up into high ridges nearer and nearer you—floes 10, 12, 15 feet thick, broken, and flung on the top of each other as if they were feather-weights. They are quite near you now, and you jump away to save your life. But the ice splits in front of you, a black gulf opens, and water streams up. You turn in another direction, but there through the dark you can just see a new ridge of moving ice-blocks coming towards you. You try another direction, but there it is the same. All round there is thundering and roaring, as of some enormous waterfall, with explosions like cannon salvoes. Still nearer you it comes. The floe you are standing on gets smaller and smaller; water pours over it; there can be no escape except by scrambling over the rolling ice-blocks to get tothe other side of the pack. But now the disturbance begins to calm down. The noise passes on, and is lost by degrees in the distance.This is what goes on away there in the north month after month and year after year. The ice is split and piled up into mounds, which extend in every direction. If one could get a bird’s-eye view of the ice-fields, they would seem to be cut up into squares or meshes by a network of these packed ridges, or pressure-dikes, as we called them, because they reminded us so much of snow-covered stone dikes at home, such as, in many parts of the country, are used to enclose fields. At first sight these pressure-ridges appeared to be scattered about in all possible directions, but on closer inspection I was sure that I discovered certain directions which they tended to take, and especially that they were apt to run at right angles to the course of the pressure which produced them. In the accounts of Arctic expeditions one often reads descriptions of pressure-ridges or pressure-hummocks as high as 50 feet. These are fairy tales. The authors of such fantastic descriptions cannot have taken the trouble to measure. During the whole period of our drifting and of our travels over the ice-fields in the far north I only once saw a hummock of a greater height than 23 feet. Unfortunately, I had not the opportunity of measuring this one, but I believe I may say with certainty that it was very nearly 30 feet high. All the highest blocks I measured—and they were many—had a height of 18 to 23 feet; and I can maintain with certainty that the packing of sea ice to a height of over 25 feet is a very rare exception.4“Saturday, October 14th. To-day we have got on the rudder; the engine is pretty well in order, and we are clear to start north when the ice opens to-morrow morning. It is still slackening and packing quite regularly twice a day, so that we can calculate on it beforehand. To-day we had the same open channel to the north, and beyond it open sea as far as our view extended. What can this mean? This evening the pressure has been pretty violent. The floes were packed up against theFramon the port side, and were once or twice on the point of toppling over the rail. The ice, however,broke below; they tumbled back again, and had to go under us after all. It is not thick ice, and cannot do much damage; but the force is something enormous. On the masses come incessantly without a pause; they look irresistible; but slowly and surely they are crushed against theFram’ssides. Now (8.30P.M.) the pressure has at last stopped. Clear evening, sparkling stars, and flaming northern lights.”I had finished writing my diary, gone to bed, andwas lying reading, inThe Origin of Species, about the struggle for existence, when I heard the dogs out on the ice making more noise than usual. I called into the saloon that some one ought to go up and see if it was bears they were barking at. Hansen went, and came back immediately, saying that he believed he had seen some large animal out in the dark. “Go and shoot it, then.” That he was quite ready to do, and went up again at once, accompanied by some of the others. A shot went off on deck above my head, then another; shot followed shot, nine in all. Johansen and Henriksen rushed down for more cartridges, and declared that the creature was shot, it was roaring so horribly; but so far they had only indistinctly seen a large grayish-white mass out there in the dark, moving about among the dogs. Now they were going on to the ice after it. Four of them set off, and not far away they really did find a dead bear, with marks of two shots. It was a young one. The old one must be at hand, and the dogs were still barking loudly. Now they all felt sure that they had seen two together, and that the other also must be badly wounded. Johansen and Henriksen heard it groaning in the distance when they were out on the ice again afterwards to fetch a knife they had left lying where the dead one had lain. The creature had been dragged on board and skinned at once, before it had time to stiffen in the cold.“Sunday, October 15th. To our surprise, the icedid not slacken away much during last night after the violent pressure; and, what was worse, there was no indication of slackening in the morning, now that we were quite ready to go. Slight signs of it showed themselves a little later, upon which I gave orders to get up steam; and while this was being done I took a stroll on the ice, to look for traces of yesterday evening. I found tracks not only of the bear that had been killed and of a larger one that might be the mother, but of a third, which must have been badly wounded, as it had sometimes dragged itself on its hind quarters, and had left a broad track of blood. After following the traces for a good way and discovering that I had no weapon to despatch the animal with but my own fists, I thought it would be as well to return to the ship to get a gun and companions who would help to drag the bear back. I had also some small hope that in the meantime the ice might have slackened, so that, in place of going after game, we might go north with theFram. But no such luck! So I put on my snow-shoes and set off after our bear, some of the dogs with me, and one or two men following. At some distance we came to the place where it had spent the night—poor beast, a ghastly night! Here I also saw tracks of the mother. One shudders to think of her watching over her poor young one, which must have had its back shot through. Soon we came up to the cripple, dragging itself away from us over the ice as best it could.Seeing no other way of escape, it threw itself into a small water opening and dived time after time. While we were putting a noose on a rope the dogs rushed round the hole as if they had gone mad, and it was difficult to keep them from jumping into the water after the bear. At last we were ready, and the next time the creature came up it got a noose round one paw and a ball in the head. While the others drew it to the ship, I followed the mother’s tracks for some way, but could not find her. I had soon to turn back to see if there was no prospect of moving theFram; but I found that the ice had packed together again a little at the very time when we could generally calculate on its slackening. In the afternoon Hansen and I went off once more after the bear. We saw, as I expected, that she had come back, and had followed her daughter’s funeral procession for some way, but then she had gone off east, and as it grew dark we lost her tracks in some newly packed ice. We have only one matter for regret in connection with this bear episode, and that is the disappearance of two dogs—‘Narrifas’ and ‘Fox.’ Probably they went off in terror on the first appearance of the three bears. They may have been hurt, but I have seen nothing to suggest this. The ice is quiet this evening also, only a little pressure about 7 o’clock.“Monday, October 16th. Ice quiet and close. Observations on the 12th placed us in 78° 5′ north latitude.Steadily southward. This is almost depressing. The two runaways returned this morning.“Tuesday, October 17th. Continuous movement in the ice. It slackened a little again during the night; some way off to starboard there was a large opening. Shortly after midnight there was strong pressure, and between 11 and 12 A.M. came a tremendous squeeze; since then it has slackened again a little.“Wednesday, October 18th. When the meteorologist, Johansen, was on deck this morning reading the thermometers, he noticed that the dogs, which are now tied up on board, were barking loudly down at something on the ice. He bent over the rail astern, near the rudder, and saw the back of a bear below him, close in at the ship’s side. Off he went for a gun, and the animal fell with a couple of shots. We saw afterwards by its tracks that it had inspected all the heaps of sweepings round the ship.“A little later in the morning I went for a stroll on the ice. Hansen and Johansen were busy with some magnetic observations to the south of the ship. It was beautiful sunshiny weather. I was standing beside an open pool a little way ahead, examining the formation and growth of the new ice, when I heard a gun go off on board. I turned, and just caught a glimpse of a bear making off towards the hummocks. It was Henriksen who had seen it from the deck coming marching towards the ship. When it was a few paces off it saw Hansenand Johansen, and made straight for them. By this time Henriksen had got his gun, but it missed fire several times. He has an unfortunate liking for smearing the lock so well with vaseline that the spring works as if it lay in soft soap. At last it went off, and the ball went through the bear’s back and breast in a slanting direction. The animal stood up on its hind-legs, fought the air with its fore-paws, then flung itself forward and sprang off, to fall after about 30 steps; the ball had grazed the heart. It was not till the shot went off that Hansen saw the bear, and then he rushed up and put two revolver-balls into its head. It was a large bear, the largest we had got yet.“About midday I was in the crow’s-nest. In spite of the clear weather I could not discover land on any side. The opening far to the north has quite disappeared; but during the night a large new one has formed quite close to us. It stretches both north and south, and has now a covering of ice. The pressure is chiefly confined to the edges of this opening, and can be traced in walls of packed ice as far as the horizon in both directions. To the east the ice is quite unbroken and flat. We have lain just in the worst pressure.“Thursday, October 19th. The ice again slackened a little last night. In the morning I attempted a drive with six of the dogs. When I had managed to harness them to the Samoyede sledge, had seated myself on it, and called ‘Pr-r-r-r, pr-r-r-r!’ they went off in quite goodstyle over the ice. But it was not long before we came to some high pack-ice and had to turn. This was hardly done before they were off back to the ship at lightning speed, and they were not to be got away from it again. Round and round it they went, from refuse-heap to refuse-heap. If I started at the gangway on the starboard side, and tried by thrashing them to drive them out over the ice, round the stern they flew to the gangway on the port side. I tugged, swore, and tried everything I could think of, but all to no purpose. I got out and tried to hold the sledge back, but was pulled off my feet, and dragged merrily over the ice in my smooth sealskin breeches, on back, stomach, side—just as it happened. When I managed to stop them at some pieces of pack-ice or a dust-heap, round they went again to the starboard gangway, with me dangling behind, swearing madly that I would break every bone in their bodies when I got at them. This game went on till they probably tired of it, and thought they might as well go my way for a change. So now they went off beautifully across the flat floe until I stopped for a moment’s breathing space. But at the first movement I made in the sledge they were off again, tearing wildly back the way we had come. I held on convulsively, pulled, raged, and used the whip; but the more I lashed the faster they went on their own way. At last I got them stopped by sticking my legs down into the snow between the sledge-shafts, and driving a strong seal-hook into it as well. But while I was off my guardfor a moment they gave a tug. I lay with my hinder-part where my legs had been, and we went on at lightning speed—that substantial part of my body leaving a deep track in the snow. This sort of thing went on time after time. I lost the board I should have sat on, then the whip, then my gloves, then my cap—these losses not improvingmy temper. Once or twice I ran round in front of the dogs, and tried to force them to turn by lashing at them with the whip. They jumped to both sides and only tore on the faster; the reins got twisted round my ankles, and I was thrown flat on the sledge, and they went on more wildly than ever. This was my first experience in dog driving on my own account, and I will not pretend that I was proud of it. I inwardly congratulated myself that my feats had been unobserved.

It really looked as if we were now frozen in for good, and I did not expect to get theFramout of the ice till we were on the other side of the Pole, nearing the Atlantic Ocean. Autumn was already well advanced; the sun stood lower in the heavens day by day, and the temperature sank steadily. The long night of winter was approaching—that dreaded night. There was nothing to be done except prepare ourselves for it, and by degrees we converted our ship, as well as we could, into comfortable winter quarters; while at the same time we took every precaution to assure her against the destructive influences of cold, drift-ice, and the other forces of nature to which it was prophesied that we must succumb. The rudder was hauled up, so that it might not be destroyed by the pressure of the ice. We had intended to do the same with the screw; but as it, with its iron case, would certainly help to strengthen the stern, and especially the rudder-stock, we let it remain in its place. We had a good deal of work with the engine, too; each separate part was taken out, oiled, and laidaway for the winter; slide-valves, pistons, shafts, were examined and thoroughly cleaned. All this was done with the very greatest care. Amundsen looked after that engine as if it had been his own child; late and early he was down tending it lovingly; and we used to tease him about it, to see the defiant look come into his eyes and hear him say: “It’s all very well for you to talk, but there’s not such another engine in the world, and it would be a sin and a shame not to take good care of it.” Assuredly he left nothing undone. I don’t suppose a day passed, winter or summer, all these three years, that he did not go down and caress it, and do something or other for it.

We cleared up in the hold to make room for a joiner’s workshop down there; our mechanical workshop we had in the engine-room. The smithy was at first on deck, and afterwards on the ice; tinsmith’s work was done chiefly in the chart-room; shoemaker’s and sailmaker’s, and various odd sorts of work, in the saloon. And all these occupations were carried on with interest and activity during the rest of the expedition. There was nothing, from the most delicate instruments down to wooden shoes and axe-handles, that could not be made on board theFram. When we were found to be short of sounding-line, a grand rope-walk was constructed on the ice. It proved to be a very profitable undertaking, and was well patronized.

The smithy on the “Fram”The smithy on the “Fram”(From a photograph)

The smithy on the “Fram”

(From a photograph)

Presently we began putting up the windmill whichwas to drive the dynamo and produce the electric light. While the ship was going, the dynamo was driven by the engine, but for a long time past we had had to be contented with petroleum lamps in our dark cabins. The windmill was erected on the port side of the fore-deck, between the main-hatch and the rail. It took several weeks to get this important appliance into working order.

As mentioned on page 71, we had also brought with us a “horse-mill” for driving the dynamo. I had thought that it might be of service in giving us exercise whenever there was no other physical work for us. But this time never came, and so the “horse-mill” was never used. There was always something to occupy us; and it was not difficult to find work for each man that gave him sufficient exercise, and so much distraction that the time did not seem to him unbearably long.

There was the care of the ship and rigging, the inspection of sails, ropes, etc., etc.; there were provisions of all kinds to be got out from the cases down in the hold, and handed over to the cook; there was ice—good, pure, fresh-water ice—to be found and carried to the galley to be melted for cooking, drinking, and washing water. Then, as already mentioned, there was always something doing in the various workshops. Now “Smith Lars” had to straighten the long-boat davits, which had been twisted by the waves in the Kara Sea; now it was a hook, a knife, a bear-trap, or somethingelse to be forged. The tinsmith, again “Smith Lars,” had to solder together a great tin pail for the ice-melting in the galley. The mechanician, Amundsen, would have an order for some instrument or other—perhaps a new current-gauge. The watchmaker, Mogstad, would have a thermograph to examine and clean, or a new spring to put into a watch. The sailmaker might have an order for a quantity of dog-harness. Then each man had to be his own shoemaker—make himself canvas boots with thick, warm, wooden soles, according to Sverdrup’s newest pattern. Presently there would come an order to mechanician Amundsen for a supply of new zinc music-sheets for the organ—these being a brand-new invention of the leader of the expedition. The electrician would have to examine and clean the accumulator batteries, which were in danger of freezing. When at last the windmill was ready, it had to be attended to, turned according to the wind, etc. And when the wind was too strong some one had to climb up and reef the mill sails, which was not a pleasant occupation in this winter cold, and involved much breathing on fingers and rubbing of the tip of the nose.

It happened now and then, too, that the ship required to be pumped. This became less and less necessary as the water froze round her and in the interstices in her sides. The pumps, therefore, were not touched from December, 1893, till July, 1895. The only noticeable leakage during that time was in the engine-room, but it was nothingof any consequence: just a few buckets of ice that had to be hewn away every month from the bottom of the ship and hoisted up.

To these varied employments was presently added, as the most important of all, the taking of scientific observations, which gave many of us constant occupation. Those that involved the greatest labor were, of course, the meteorological observations, which were taken every four hours day and night; indeed, for a considerable part of the time, every two hours. They kept one man, sometimes two, at work all day. It was Hansen who had the principal charge of this department, and his regular assistant until March, 1895, was Johansen, whose place was then taken by Nordahl. The night observations were taken by whoever was on watch. About every second day, when the weather was clear, Hansen and his assistant took the astronomical observation which ascertained our position. This was certainly the work which was followed with most interest by all the members of the expedition; and it was not uncommon to see Hansen’s cabin, while he was making his calculations, besieged with idle spectators, waiting to hear the result—whether we had drifted north or south since the last observation, and how far. The state of feeling on board very much depended on these results.

Hansen had also at stated periods to take observations to determine the magnetic constant in this unknown region. These were carried on at first in atent, specially constructed for the purpose, which was soon erected on the ice; but later we built him a large snow hut, as being both more suitable and more comfortable.

The thermometer houseThe thermometer house(From a Photograph)

The thermometer house

(From a Photograph)

For the ship’s doctor there was less occupation. He looked long and vainly for patients, and at last had to give it up and in despair take to doctoring the dogs.Once a month he too had to make his scientific observations, which consisted in the weighing of each man, and the counting of blood corpuscles, and estimating the amount of blood pigment, in order to ascertain the number of red-blood corpuscles and the quantity of red coloring matter (hæmoglobin) in the blood of each. This was also work that was watched with anxious interest, as every man thought he could tell from the result obtained how long it would be before scurvy overtook him.

Among our scientific pursuits may also be mentioned the determining of the temperature of the water and of its degree of saltness at varying depths; the collection and examination of such animals as are to be found in these northern seas; the ascertaining of the amount of electricity in the air; the observation of the formation of the ice, its growth and thickness, and of the temperature of the different layers of ice; the investigation of the currents in the water under it, etc., etc. I had the main charge of this department. There remains to be mentioned the regular observation of the aurora borealis, which we had a splendid opportunity of studying. After I had gone on with it for some time, Blessing undertook this part of my duties; and when I left the ship I made over to him all the other observations that were under my charge. Not an inconsiderable item of our scientific work were the soundings and dredgings. At the greater depths it was such an undertaking that every one hadto assist; and, from the way we were obliged to do it later, one sounding sometimes gave occupation for several days.

One day differed very little from another on board, and the description of one is, in every particular of any importance, a description of all.

We all turned out at eight, and breakfasted on hard bread (both rye and wheat), cheese (Dutch-clove cheese, Cheddar, Gruyère, and Mysost, or goat’s-whey cheese, prepared from dry powder), corned beef or corned mutton, luncheon ham or Chicago tinned tongue or bacon, cod-caviare, anchovy roe; also oatmeal biscuits or English ship-biscuits—with orange marmalade or Frame Food jelly. Three times a week we had fresh-baked bread as well, and often cake of some kind. As for our beverages, we began by having coffee and chocolate day about; but afterwards had coffee only two days a week, tea two, and chocolate three.

Magnetic observationsMagnetic observations(From a photograph)

Magnetic observations

(From a photograph)

After breakfast some men went to attend to the dogs—give them their food, which consisted of half a stockfish or a couple of dog-biscuits each, let them loose, or do whatever else there was to do for them. The others went all to their different tasks. Each took his turn of a week in the galley—helping the cook to wash up, lay the table, and wait. The cook himself had to arrange his bill of fare for dinner immediately after breakfast, and to set about his preparations at once. Some of us would take a turn on the floe to get some fresh air, and to examinethe state of the ice, its pressure, etc. At 1 o’clock all were assembled for dinner, which generally consisted of three courses—soup, meat, and dessert; or, soup, fish, and meat; or, fish, meat, and dessert; or sometimes only fish and meat. With the meat we always had potatoes, and either green vegetables or macaroni. I think we were all agreed that the fare was good; it would hardly have been better at home; for some of us it would perhaps have been worse. And we looked like fatted pigs; one or two even began to cultivate a double chin and a corporation. As a rule, stories and jokes circulated at table along with the bock-beer.

A smoke in the galley of the “Fram”A smoke in the galley of the “Fram”Henriksen Sverdrup Blessing

A smoke in the galley of the “Fram”

Henriksen Sverdrup Blessing

After dinner the smokers of our company would march off, well fed and contented, into the galley, which was smoking-room as well as kitchen, tobacco being tabooed in the cabins except on festive occasions. Out there they had a good smoke and chat; many a story was told, and not seldom some warm dispute arose. Afterwards came, for most of us, a short siesta. Then each went to his work again until we were summoned to supper at 6 o’clock, when the regulation day’s work was done. Supper was almost the same as breakfast, except that tea was always the beverage. Afterwards there was again smoking in the galley, while the saloon was transformed into a silent reading-room. Good use was made of the valuable library presented to the expedition by generous publishers and other friends. If the kind donors could have seen us away up there, sitting round thetable at night with heads buried in books or collections of illustrations, and could have understood howinvaluablethese companions were to us, they would have felt rewarded by the knowledge that they had conferred a real boon—that they had materially assisted in making theFramthe little oasis that it was in this vast ice desert. About half-past seven or eight cards or other games were brought out, and we played well on into the night, seated in groups round the saloon table. One or other of us might go to the organ, and, with the assistanceof the crank-handle, perform some of our beautiful pieces, or Johansen would bring out the accordion and play many a fine tune. His crowning efforts were “Oh, Susanna!” and “Napoleon’s March Across the Alps in an Open Boat.” About midnight we turned in, and then the night watch was set. Each man went on for an hour. Their most trying work on watch seems to have been writing their diaries and looking out, when the dogs barked, for any signs of bears at hand. Besides this, every two hours or four hours the watch had to go aloft or on to the ice to take the meteorological observations.

I believe I may safely say that on the whole the time passed pleasantly and imperceptibly, and that we throve in virtue of the regular habits imposed upon us.

My notes from day to day will give the best idea of our life, in all its monotony. They are not great events that are here recorded, but in their very bareness they give a true picture. Such, and no other, was our life. I shall give some quotations direct from my diary:

“The saloon was converted into a reading-room”“The saloon was converted into a reading-room”

“The saloon was converted into a reading-room”

“Tuesday, September 26th. Beautiful weather. The sun stands much lower now; it was 9° above the horizon at midday. Winter is rapidly approaching; there are 14½° of frost this evening, but we do not feel it cold. To-day’s observations unfortunately show no particular drift northward; according to them we are still in 78° 50′ north latitude. I wandered about over the floe towards evening. Nothing more wonderfully beautifulcan exist than the Arctic night. It is dreamland, painted in the imagination’s most delicate tints; it is color etherealized. One shade melts into the other, so that you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins, and yet they are all there. No forms—it is all faint, dreamy color music, a far-away, long-drawn-out melody on muted strings. Is not all life’s beauty high, and delicate, and pure like this night? Give it brighter colors, and it is no longer so beautiful. The sky is like an enormous cupola, blue at the zenith, shading down into green, and then into lilac and violet at the edges. Over the ice-fields there are cold violet-blue shadows,with lighter pink tints where a ridge here and there catches the last reflection of the vanished day. Up in the blue of the cupola shine the stars, speaking peace, as they always do, those unchanging friends. In the south stands a large red-yellow moon, encircled by a yellow ring and light golden clouds floating on the blue background. Presently the aurora borealis shakes over the vault of heaven its veil of glittering silver—changing now to yellow, now to green, now to red. It spreads, it contracts again, in restless change; next it breaks into waving, many-folded bands of shining silver, over which shoot billows of glittering rays, and then the glory vanishes. Presently it shimmers in tongues of flame over the very zenith, and then again it shoots a bright ray right up from the horizon, until the whole melts away in the moonlight, and it is as though one heard the sigh of a departing spirit. Here and there are left a few waving streamers of light, vague as a foreboding—they are the dust from the aurora’s glittering cloak. But now it is growing again; new lightnings shoot up, and the endless game begins afresh. And all the time this utter stillness, impressive as the symphony of infinitude. I have never been able to grasp the fact that this earth will some day be spent and desolate and empty. To what end, in that case, all this beauty, with not a creature to rejoice in it? Now I begin to divine it.Thisis the coming earth—here are beauty and death. But to what purpose? Ah, what is the purpose of allthese spheres? Read the answer, if you can, in the starry blue firmament.

“Wednesday, September 27th. Gray weather and strong wind from the south-southwest. Nordahl, who is cook to-day, had to haul up some salt meat which, rolled in a sack, had been steeping for two days in the sea. As soon as he got hold of it he called out, horrified, that it was crawling with animals. He let go the sack and jumped away from it, the animals scattering round in every direction. They proved to be sandhoppers, orAmphipoda,which had eaten their way into the meat. There were pints of them, both inside and outside of the sack. A pleasant discovery; there will be no need to starve when such food is to be had by hanging a sack in the water.

“Bentzen is the wag of the party; he is always playing some practical joke. Just now one of the men came rushing up and stood respectfully waiting for me to speak to him. It was Bentzen that had told him I wanted him. It won’t be long before he has thought of some new trick.

Scott-Hansen and Johansen inspecting the barometersScott-Hansen and Johansen inspecting the barometers(From a photograph)

Scott-Hansen and Johansen inspecting the barometers

(From a photograph)

“Thursday, September 28th. Snowfall with wind. To-day the dogs’ hour of release has come. Until now their life on board has been really a melancholy one. They have been tied up ever since we left Khabarova. The stormy seas have broken over them, and they have been rolled here and there in the water on the deck; they have half hanged themselves in their leashes, howlingmiserably; they have had the hose played over them every time the deck was washed; they have been sea-sick; in bad as in good weather they have had to lie on the spot hard fate had chained them to, without more exercise than going backward and forward the length of their chains. It is thus you are treated, you splendid animals, who are to be our stay in the hour of need! When that time comes, you will, for a while at least, have the place of honor. When they were let loose there was a perfect storm of jubilation. They rolled in the snow, washed and rubbed themselves, and rushed about the ice in wild joy, barking loudly. Our floe, a short time ago so lonesome and forlorn, was quite a cheerful sight with this sudden population; the silence of ages was broken.”

It was our intention after this to tie up the dogs on the ice.

“Friday, September 29th. Dr. Blessing’s birthday, in honor of which we of course had a fête, our first great one on board. There was a double occasion for it. Our midday observation showed us to be in latitude 79° 5′ north; so we had passed one more degree. We had no fewer than five courses at dinner, and a more than usually elaborate concert during the meal. Here follows a copy of the printed menu:

’FRAM’Menu. September29, 1893Soupe à la julienne avec des macaroni-dumplings.Potage de poison (sic) avec des pommes de terre.Pudding de Nordahl.Glacé du Greenland.De la table bière de la Ringnæes.Marmalade intacte.MUSIC À DINÉ (sic)1. Valse Myosotic.2. Menuette de Don Juan de Mozart.3. Les Troubadours.4. College Hornpipe.5. Die letzte Rose de Martha.6. Ein flotter Studio Marsch de Phil. Farbach.7. Valse de Lagune de Strauss.8. Le Chanson du Nord (Du gamla, du friska....).9. Hoch Habsburg Marsch de Kral.10. Josse Karads Polska.11. Vårt Land, vårt Land.12. Le Chanson de Chaseuse.13. Les Roses, Valse de Métra.14. Fischers Hornpipe.15. Traum-Valse de Millocher.16. Hemlandssång. ‘A le misérable.’17. Diamanten und Perlen.18. Marsch de ‘Det lustiga Kriget.’19. Valse de ‘DetlustigaKriget.’20. Prière du Freischütz.

’FRAM’

Menu. September29, 1893

MUSIC À DINÉ (sic)

I hope my readers will admit that this was quite a fine entertainment to be given in latitude 79° north; but of such we had many on board theFramat still higher latitudes.

Dr. Blessing in his cabinDr. Blessing in his cabin(From a photograph)

Dr. Blessing in his cabin

(From a photograph)

“Coffee and sweets were served after dinner; and after a better supper than usual came strawberry and lemon ice (aliasgranitta) and limejuice toddy, without alcohol. The health of the hero of the day was first proposed ‘in a few well-chosen words’; and then we drank a bumper to the seventy-ninth degree, which we were sure was only the first of many degrees to be conquered in the same way.

“Saturday, September 30th. I am not satisfied that theFram’spresent position is a good one for the winter. The great floe on the port side to which we are moored sends out an ugly projection about amidships, which might give her a bad squeeze in case of the ice packing. We therefore began to-day to warp her backward into better ice. It is by no means quick work. The comparatively open channel around us is now covered with tolerably thick ice, which has to be hewn and broken in pieces with axes, ice-staves, and walrus-spears. Then the capstan is manned, and we heave her through the broken floe foot by foot. The temperature this evening is -12.6° C. A wonderful sunset.

“Sunday, October 1st. Wind from the W.S.W. and weather mild. We are taking a day of rest, which means eating, sleeping, smoking, and reading.

“Monday, October 2d. Warped the ship farther astern, until we found a good berth for her out in the middle of the newly frozen pool. On the port side we have our big floe, with the dogs’ camp—thirty-five blackdogs tied up on the white ice. This floe turns a low, and by no means threatening, edge towards us. We have good low ice on the starboard too; and between the ship and the floes we have on both sides the newly frozen surface ice, which has, in the process of warping, also got packed in under the ship’s bottom, so that she lies in a good bed.

“As Sverdrup, Juell, and I were sitting in the chart-room in the afternoon, splicing rope for the sounding-line, Peter1rushed in shouting, ‘A bear! a bear!’ I snatched up my rifle and tore out. ‘Where is it?’ ‘There, near the tent, on the starboard side; it came right up to it, and had almost got hold of them!’

“And there it was, big and yellow, snuffing away at the tent gear. Hansen, Blessing, and Johansen were running at the top of their speed towards the ship. On to the ice I jumped, and off I went, broke through, stumbled, fell, and up again. The bear in the meantime had done sniffing, and had probably determined that an iron spade, an ice-staff, an axe, some tent-pegs, and a canvas tent were too indigestible food even for a bear’s stomach. Anyhow, it was following with mighty strides in the track of the fugitives. It caught sight of me and stopped, astonished, as if it were thinking, ‘What sort of insect canthatbe?’ I went on to within easy range; it stood still, looking hard at me. At last it turned its head alittle, and I gave it a ball in the neck. Without moving a limb, it sank slowly to the ice. I now let loose some of the dogs, to accustom them to this sort of sport, but they showed a lamentable want of interest in it; and ‘Kvik,’ on whom all our hope in the matter of bear-hunting rested, bristled up and approached the dead animal very slowly and carefully, with her tail between her legs—a sorry spectacle.

“I must now give the story of the others who made the bear’s acquaintance first. Hansen had to-day begun to set up his observatory tent a little ahead of the ship, on the starboard bow. In the afternoon he got Blessing and Johansen to help him. While they were hard at work they caught sight of the bear not far from them, just off the bow of theFram.

“‘Hush! Keep quiet, in case we frighten him,’ says Hansen.

“‘Yes, yes!’ And they crouch together and look at him.

“‘I think I’d better try to slip on board and announce him,’ says Blessing.

“‘I think you should,’ says Hansen.

“And off steals Blessing on tiptoe, so as not to frighten the bear. By this time Bruin has seen and scented them, and comes jogging along, following his nose, towards them.

“Hansen now began to get over his fear of startling him. The bear caught sight of Blessing slinking off to theship and set after him. Blessing also was now much less concerned than he had been as to the bear’s nerves. He stopped, uncertain what to do; but a moment’s reflection brought him to the conclusion that it was pleasanter to be three than one just then, and he went back to the others faster than he had gone from them. The bear followed at a good rate. Hansen did not like the look of things, and thought the time had come to try a dodge he had seen recommended in a book. He raised himself to his full height, flung his arms about, and yelled with all the power of his lungs, ably assisted by the others. But the bear came on quite undisturbed. The situation was becoming critical. Each snatched up his weapon—Hansen an ice-staff, Johansen an axe, and Blessing nothing. They screamed with all their strength, ‘Bear! bear!’ and set off for the ship as hard as they could tear. But the bear held on his steady course to the tent, and examined everything there before (as we have seen) he went after them.

“It was a lean he-bear. The only thing that was found in its stomach when it was opened was a piece of paper, with the names ‘Lütken and Mohn.’ This was the wrapping-paper of a ‘ski’ light, and had been left by one of us somewhere on the ice. After this day some of the members of the expedition would hardly leave the ship without being armed to the teeth.

“I let loose some of the dogs”“I let loose some of the dogs”

“I let loose some of the dogs”

“Wednesday, October 4th. Northwesterly wind yesterday and to-day. Yesterday we had -16°, and to-day-14° C. I have worked all day at soundings and got to about 800 fathoms depth. The bottom samples consisted of a layer of gray clay 4 to 4½ inches thick, and below that brown clay or mud. The temperature was, strangely enough, just above freezing-point (+0.18° C.) at the bottom, and just below freezing-point (-0.4° C.) 75 fathoms up. This rather disposes of the story of a shallow polar basin and of the extreme coldness of the water of the Arctic Ocean.

“While we were hauling up the line in the afternoon the ice cracked a little astern of theFram, and the crack increased in breadth so quickly that three of us, who had to go out to save the ice-anchors, were obliged to make a bridge over it with a long board to get back to the ship again. Later in the evening there was some packing in the ice, and several new passages opened out behind this first one.

“Thursday, October 5th. As I was dressing this morning, just before breakfast, the mate rushed down to tell me a bear was in sight. I was soon on deck and saw him coming from the south, to the lee of us. He was still a good way off, but stopped and looked about. Presently he lay down, and Henriksen and I started off across the ice, and were lucky enough to send a bullet into his breast at about 310 yards, just as he was moving off.

“We are making everything snug for the winter and for the ice-pressure. This afternoon we took up therudder. Beautiful weather, but cold, -18° C. at 8P.M.The result of the medical inspection to-day was the discovery that we still have bugs on board; and I do not know what we are to do. We have no steam now, and must fix our hopes on the cold.

“I must confess that this discovery made me feel quite ill. If bugs got into our winter furs the thing was hopeless. So the next day there was a regular feast of purification, according to the most rigid antiseptic prescriptions. Each man had to deliver up his old clothes, every stitch of them, wash himself, and dress in new ones from top to toe. All the old clothes, fur rugs, and such things, were carefully carried up on to the deck, and kept there the whole winter. This was more than even these animals could stand; 53° C. of cold proved to be too much for them, and we saw no more of them. As the bug is made to say in the popular rhyme:

“‘Put me in the boiling pot, and shut me down tight;But don’t leave me out on a cold winter night!’

“‘Put me in the boiling pot, and shut me down tight;

But don’t leave me out on a cold winter night!’

“Friday, October 6th. Cold, down to 11° below zero (Fahr.). To-day we have begun to rig up the windmill. The ice has been packing to the north of theFram’sstern. As the dogs will freeze if they are kept tied up and get no exercise, we let them loose this afternoon, and are going to try if we can leave them so. Of course they at once began to fight, and some poor creatures limped away from the battle-field scratched and torn.But otherwise great joy prevailed; they leaped, and ran, and rolled themselves in the snow. Brilliant aurora in the evening.

The men who were afraid of frightening the bear. “Off steals Blessing on tiptoe”The men who were afraid of frightening the bear. “Off steals Blessing on tiptoe”(Drawn by A. Bloch)

The men who were afraid of frightening the bear. “Off steals Blessing on tiptoe”

(Drawn by A. Bloch)

“Saturday, October 7th. Still cold, with the same northerly wind we have had all these last days. I am afraid we are drifting far south now. A few days ago we were, according to the observations, in 78° 47′ north latitude. That was 16′ south in less than a week. This is too much; but we must make it up again; wemustget north. It means going away from home now, but soon it will mean going nearer home. What depth of beauty, with an undercurrent of endless sadness, there is in these dreamily glowing evenings! The vanished sun has left its track of melancholy flame. Nature’s music, which fills all space, is instinct with sorrow that all this beauty should be spread out day after day, week after week, year after year, over a dead world. Why? Sunsets are always sad at home too. This thought makes the sight seem doubly precious here and doubly sad. There is red burning blood in the west against the cold snow—and to think that this is the sea, stiffened in chains, in death, and that the sun will soon leave us, and we shall be in the dark alone! ‘And the earth was without form and void;’ is this the sea that is to come?

“Sunday, October 8th. Beautiful weather. Made a snow-shoe expedition westward, all the dogs following. The running was a little spoiled by the brine, which soaks up through the snow from the surface of the ice—flat, newly frozen ice, with older, uneven blocks breaking through it. I seated myself on a snow hummock far away out; the dogs crowded round to be patted. My eye wandered over the great snow plain, endless and solitary—nothing but snow, snow everywhere.

“The observations to-day gave us an unpleasant surprise; we are now down in 78° 35′ north latitude; but there is a simple enough explanation of this when one thinks of all the northerly and northwesterly wind we have had lately, with open water not far to the south of us. As soon as everything is frozen we must go north again; there can be no question of that; but none the less this state of matters is unpleasant. I find some comfort in the fact that we have also drifted a little east, so that at all events we have kept with the wind and are not drifting down westward.

“Monday, October 9th. I was feverish both during last night and to-day. Goodness knows what is the meaning of such nonsense. When I was taking water samples in the morning I discovered that the water-lifter suddenly stopped at the depth of a little less than 80 fathoms. It was really the bottom. So we have drifted south again to the shallow water. We let the weight lie at the bottom for a little, and saw by the line that for the moment we were drifting north. This was some small comfort, anyhow.

“All at once in the afternoon, as we were sitting idly chattering, a deafening noise began, and the whole shipshook. This was the first ice-pressure. Every one rushed on deck to look. TheFrambehaved beautifully, as I had expected she would. On pushed the ice with steady pressure, but down under us it had to go, and we were slowly lifted up. These ‘squeezings’ continued off and on all the afternoon, and were sometimes so strong that theFramwas lifted several feet; but then the ice could no longer bear her, and she broke it below her. Towards evening the whole slackened again, till we lay in a good-sized piece of open water, and had hurriedly to moor her to our old floe, or we should have drifted off. There seems to be a good deal of movement in the ice here. Peter has just been telling us that he hears the dull booming of strong pressures not far off.

“Tuesday, October 10th. The ice continues disturbed.

“Wednesday, October 11th. The bad news was brought this afternoon that ‘Job’ is dead, torn in pieces by the other dogs. He was found a good way from the ship, ‘Old Suggen’ lying watching the corpse, so that no other dog could get to it. They are wretches, these dogs; no day passes without a fight. In the day-time one of us is generally at hand to stop it, but at night they seldom fail to tear and bite one of their comrades. Poor ‘Barabbas’ is almost frightened out of his wits. He stays on board now, and dares not venture on the ice, because he knows the other monsters would set onhim. There is not a trace of chivalry about these curs. When there is a fight, the whole pack rush like wild beasts on the loser. But is it not, perhaps, the law of nature that the strong, and not the weak, should be protected? Have not we human beings, perhaps, been trying to turn nature topsy-turvy by protecting and doing our best to keep life in all the weak?

Dogs chained on the iceDogs chained on the ice

Dogs chained on the ice

“The ice is restless, and has pressed a good deal to-day again. It begins with a gentle crack and moan along the side of the ship, which gradually sounds louder in every key. Now it is a high plaintive tone, now it is a grumble, now it is a snarl, and the ship gives a start up. The noise steadily grows till it is like all thepipes of an organ; the ship trembles and shakes, and rises by fits and starts, or is sometimes gently lifted. There is a pleasant, comfortable feeling in sitting listening to all this uproar and knowing the strength of our ship. Many a one would have been crushed long ago. But outside the ice is ground against our ship’s sides, the piles of broken-up floe are forced under her heavy, invulnerable hull, and we lie as if in a bed. Soon the noise begins to die down; the ship sinks into its old position again, and presently all is silent as before. In several places round us the ice is piled up, at one spot to a considerable height. Towards evening there was a slackening, and we lay again in a large, open pool.

“Thursday, October 12th. In the morning we and our floe were drifting on blue water in the middle of a large, open lane, which stretched far to the north, and in the north the atmosphere at the horizon was dark and blue. As far as we could see from the crow’s-nest with the small field-glass, there was no end to the open water, with only single pieces of ice sticking up in it here and there. These are extraordinary changes. I wondered if we should prepare to go ahead. But they had long ago taken the machinery to pieces for the winter, so that it would be a matter of time to get it ready for use again. Perhaps it would be best to wait a little. Clear weather, with sunshine—a beautiful, inspiriting winter day—but the same northerly wind. Took soundings, and found 50 fathoms of water (90 metres). Weare drifting slowly southward. Towards evening the ice packed together again with much force; but theFramcan hold her own. In the afternoon I fished in a depth of about 27 fathoms (50 metres) with Murray’s silk net,2and had a good take, especially of small crustaceans (Copepoda,Ostracoda,Amphipoda, etc.) and of a little Arctic worm (Spadella) that swims about in the sea. It is horribly difficult to manage a little fishing here. No sooner have you found an opening to slip your tackle through than it begins to close again, and you have to haul up as hard as you can, so as not to get the line nipped and lose everything. It is a pity, for there are interesting hauls to be made. One sees phosphorescence3in the water here whenever there is the smallest opening in the ice. There is by no means such a scarcity of animal life as one might expect.

We lay in open waterWe lay in open water(From a photograph)

We lay in open water

(From a photograph)

“Friday, October 13th. Now we are in the very midst of what the prophets would have had us dread so much. The ice is pressing and packing round us with a noise like thunder. It is piling itself up into long walls, and heaps high enough to reach a good way up theFram’srigging; in fact, it is trying its very utmost to grind theFraminto powder. But here we sit quite tranquil, noteven going up to look at all the hurly-burly, but just chatting and laughing as usual. Last night there was tremendous pressure round our old dog-floe. The ice had towered up higher than the highest point of the floe and hustled down upon it. It had quite spoiled a well, where we till now had found good drinking-water, filling it with brine. Furthermore, it had cast itself over our stern ice-anchor and part of the steel cable which held it, burying them so effectually that we had afterwards to cut the cable. Then it covered our planks and sledges, which stood on the ice. Before long the dogs were in danger, and the watch had to turn out all hands to save them. At last the floe split in two. This morning the ice was one scene of melancholy confusion, gleaming in the most glorious sunshine. Piled up all round us were high, steep ice walls. Strangely enough, we had lain on the very verge of the worst confusion, and had escaped with the loss of an ice-anchor, a piece of steel cable, a few planks and other bits of wood, and half of a Samoyede sledge, all of which might have been saved if we had looked after them in time. But the men have grown so indifferent to the pressure now that they do not even go up to look, let it thunder ever so hard. They feel that the ship can stand it, and so long as that is the case there is nothing to hurt except the ice itself.

“In the morning the pressure slackened again, and we were soon lying in a large piece of open water, as wedid yesterday. To-day, again, this stretched far away towards the northern horizon, where the same dark atmosphere indicated some extent of open water. I now gave the order to put the engine together again; they told me it could be done in a day and a half or at most two days. We must go north and see what there is up there. I think it possible that it may be the boundary between the ice-drift theJeannettewas in and the pack we are now drifting south with—or can it be land?

“We had kept company quite long enough with the old, now broken-up floe, so worked ourselves a little way astern after dinner, as the ice was beginning to draw together. Towards evening the pressure began again in earnest, and was especially bad round the remains of our old floe, so that I believe we may congratulate ourselves on having left it. It is evident that the pressure here stands in connection with, is perhaps caused by, the tidal wave. It occurs with the greatest regularity. The ice slackens twice and packs twice in 24 hours. The pressure has happened about 4, 5, and 6 o’clock in the morning, and almost at exactly the same hour in the afternoon, and in between we have always lain for some part of the time in open water. The very great pressure just now is probably due to the spring-tide; we had new moon on the 9th, which was the first day of the pressure.Then it was just after mid-day when we noticed it, but it has been later every day, and now it is at 8P.M.”

The theory of the ice-pressure being caused to a considerable extent by the tidal wave has been advanced repeatedly by Arctic explorers. During theFram’sdrifting we had better opportunity than most of them to study this phenomenon, and our experience seems to leave no doubt that over a wide region the tide produces movement and pressure of the ice. It occurs especially at the time of the spring-tides, and more at new moon than at full moon. During the intervening periods there was, as a rule, little or no trace of pressure. But these tidal pressures did not occur during the whole time of our drifting. We noticed them especially the first autumn, while we were in the neighborhood of the open sea north of Siberia, and the last year, when theFramwas drawing near the open Atlantic Ocean; they were less noticeable while we were in the polar basin. Pressure occurs here more irregularly, and is mainly caused by the wind driving the ice. When one pictures to one’s self these enormous ice-masses, drifting in a certain direction, suddenly meeting hinderances—for example, ice-masses drifting from the opposite direction, owing to a change of wind in some more or less distant quarter—it is easy to understand the tremendous pressure that must result.

Such an ice conflict is undeniably a stupendous spectacle. One feels one’s self to be in the presence of titanic forces, and it is easy to understand howtimid souls may be overawed and feel as if nothing could stand before it. For when the packing begins in earnest it seems as though there could be no spot on the earth’s surface left unshaken. First you hear a sound like the thundering rumbling of an earthquake far away on the great waste; then you hear it in several places, always coming nearer and nearer. The silent ice world re-echoes with thunders; nature’s giants are awakening to the battle. The ice cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up; and all of a sudden you too find yourself in the midst of the struggle. There are howlings and thunderings round you; you feel the ice trembling, and hear it rumbling under your feet; there is no peace anywhere. In the semi-darkness you can see it piling and tossing itself up into high ridges nearer and nearer you—floes 10, 12, 15 feet thick, broken, and flung on the top of each other as if they were feather-weights. They are quite near you now, and you jump away to save your life. But the ice splits in front of you, a black gulf opens, and water streams up. You turn in another direction, but there through the dark you can just see a new ridge of moving ice-blocks coming towards you. You try another direction, but there it is the same. All round there is thundering and roaring, as of some enormous waterfall, with explosions like cannon salvoes. Still nearer you it comes. The floe you are standing on gets smaller and smaller; water pours over it; there can be no escape except by scrambling over the rolling ice-blocks to get tothe other side of the pack. But now the disturbance begins to calm down. The noise passes on, and is lost by degrees in the distance.

This is what goes on away there in the north month after month and year after year. The ice is split and piled up into mounds, which extend in every direction. If one could get a bird’s-eye view of the ice-fields, they would seem to be cut up into squares or meshes by a network of these packed ridges, or pressure-dikes, as we called them, because they reminded us so much of snow-covered stone dikes at home, such as, in many parts of the country, are used to enclose fields. At first sight these pressure-ridges appeared to be scattered about in all possible directions, but on closer inspection I was sure that I discovered certain directions which they tended to take, and especially that they were apt to run at right angles to the course of the pressure which produced them. In the accounts of Arctic expeditions one often reads descriptions of pressure-ridges or pressure-hummocks as high as 50 feet. These are fairy tales. The authors of such fantastic descriptions cannot have taken the trouble to measure. During the whole period of our drifting and of our travels over the ice-fields in the far north I only once saw a hummock of a greater height than 23 feet. Unfortunately, I had not the opportunity of measuring this one, but I believe I may say with certainty that it was very nearly 30 feet high. All the highest blocks I measured—and they were many—had a height of 18 to 23 feet; and I can maintain with certainty that the packing of sea ice to a height of over 25 feet is a very rare exception.4

“Saturday, October 14th. To-day we have got on the rudder; the engine is pretty well in order, and we are clear to start north when the ice opens to-morrow morning. It is still slackening and packing quite regularly twice a day, so that we can calculate on it beforehand. To-day we had the same open channel to the north, and beyond it open sea as far as our view extended. What can this mean? This evening the pressure has been pretty violent. The floes were packed up against theFramon the port side, and were once or twice on the point of toppling over the rail. The ice, however,broke below; they tumbled back again, and had to go under us after all. It is not thick ice, and cannot do much damage; but the force is something enormous. On the masses come incessantly without a pause; they look irresistible; but slowly and surely they are crushed against theFram’ssides. Now (8.30P.M.) the pressure has at last stopped. Clear evening, sparkling stars, and flaming northern lights.”

I had finished writing my diary, gone to bed, andwas lying reading, inThe Origin of Species, about the struggle for existence, when I heard the dogs out on the ice making more noise than usual. I called into the saloon that some one ought to go up and see if it was bears they were barking at. Hansen went, and came back immediately, saying that he believed he had seen some large animal out in the dark. “Go and shoot it, then.” That he was quite ready to do, and went up again at once, accompanied by some of the others. A shot went off on deck above my head, then another; shot followed shot, nine in all. Johansen and Henriksen rushed down for more cartridges, and declared that the creature was shot, it was roaring so horribly; but so far they had only indistinctly seen a large grayish-white mass out there in the dark, moving about among the dogs. Now they were going on to the ice after it. Four of them set off, and not far away they really did find a dead bear, with marks of two shots. It was a young one. The old one must be at hand, and the dogs were still barking loudly. Now they all felt sure that they had seen two together, and that the other also must be badly wounded. Johansen and Henriksen heard it groaning in the distance when they were out on the ice again afterwards to fetch a knife they had left lying where the dead one had lain. The creature had been dragged on board and skinned at once, before it had time to stiffen in the cold.

“Sunday, October 15th. To our surprise, the icedid not slacken away much during last night after the violent pressure; and, what was worse, there was no indication of slackening in the morning, now that we were quite ready to go. Slight signs of it showed themselves a little later, upon which I gave orders to get up steam; and while this was being done I took a stroll on the ice, to look for traces of yesterday evening. I found tracks not only of the bear that had been killed and of a larger one that might be the mother, but of a third, which must have been badly wounded, as it had sometimes dragged itself on its hind quarters, and had left a broad track of blood. After following the traces for a good way and discovering that I had no weapon to despatch the animal with but my own fists, I thought it would be as well to return to the ship to get a gun and companions who would help to drag the bear back. I had also some small hope that in the meantime the ice might have slackened, so that, in place of going after game, we might go north with theFram. But no such luck! So I put on my snow-shoes and set off after our bear, some of the dogs with me, and one or two men following. At some distance we came to the place where it had spent the night—poor beast, a ghastly night! Here I also saw tracks of the mother. One shudders to think of her watching over her poor young one, which must have had its back shot through. Soon we came up to the cripple, dragging itself away from us over the ice as best it could.Seeing no other way of escape, it threw itself into a small water opening and dived time after time. While we were putting a noose on a rope the dogs rushed round the hole as if they had gone mad, and it was difficult to keep them from jumping into the water after the bear. At last we were ready, and the next time the creature came up it got a noose round one paw and a ball in the head. While the others drew it to the ship, I followed the mother’s tracks for some way, but could not find her. I had soon to turn back to see if there was no prospect of moving theFram; but I found that the ice had packed together again a little at the very time when we could generally calculate on its slackening. In the afternoon Hansen and I went off once more after the bear. We saw, as I expected, that she had come back, and had followed her daughter’s funeral procession for some way, but then she had gone off east, and as it grew dark we lost her tracks in some newly packed ice. We have only one matter for regret in connection with this bear episode, and that is the disappearance of two dogs—‘Narrifas’ and ‘Fox.’ Probably they went off in terror on the first appearance of the three bears. They may have been hurt, but I have seen nothing to suggest this. The ice is quiet this evening also, only a little pressure about 7 o’clock.

“Monday, October 16th. Ice quiet and close. Observations on the 12th placed us in 78° 5′ north latitude.Steadily southward. This is almost depressing. The two runaways returned this morning.

“Tuesday, October 17th. Continuous movement in the ice. It slackened a little again during the night; some way off to starboard there was a large opening. Shortly after midnight there was strong pressure, and between 11 and 12 A.M. came a tremendous squeeze; since then it has slackened again a little.

“Wednesday, October 18th. When the meteorologist, Johansen, was on deck this morning reading the thermometers, he noticed that the dogs, which are now tied up on board, were barking loudly down at something on the ice. He bent over the rail astern, near the rudder, and saw the back of a bear below him, close in at the ship’s side. Off he went for a gun, and the animal fell with a couple of shots. We saw afterwards by its tracks that it had inspected all the heaps of sweepings round the ship.

“A little later in the morning I went for a stroll on the ice. Hansen and Johansen were busy with some magnetic observations to the south of the ship. It was beautiful sunshiny weather. I was standing beside an open pool a little way ahead, examining the formation and growth of the new ice, when I heard a gun go off on board. I turned, and just caught a glimpse of a bear making off towards the hummocks. It was Henriksen who had seen it from the deck coming marching towards the ship. When it was a few paces off it saw Hansenand Johansen, and made straight for them. By this time Henriksen had got his gun, but it missed fire several times. He has an unfortunate liking for smearing the lock so well with vaseline that the spring works as if it lay in soft soap. At last it went off, and the ball went through the bear’s back and breast in a slanting direction. The animal stood up on its hind-legs, fought the air with its fore-paws, then flung itself forward and sprang off, to fall after about 30 steps; the ball had grazed the heart. It was not till the shot went off that Hansen saw the bear, and then he rushed up and put two revolver-balls into its head. It was a large bear, the largest we had got yet.

“About midday I was in the crow’s-nest. In spite of the clear weather I could not discover land on any side. The opening far to the north has quite disappeared; but during the night a large new one has formed quite close to us. It stretches both north and south, and has now a covering of ice. The pressure is chiefly confined to the edges of this opening, and can be traced in walls of packed ice as far as the horizon in both directions. To the east the ice is quite unbroken and flat. We have lain just in the worst pressure.

“Thursday, October 19th. The ice again slackened a little last night. In the morning I attempted a drive with six of the dogs. When I had managed to harness them to the Samoyede sledge, had seated myself on it, and called ‘Pr-r-r-r, pr-r-r-r!’ they went off in quite goodstyle over the ice. But it was not long before we came to some high pack-ice and had to turn. This was hardly done before they were off back to the ship at lightning speed, and they were not to be got away from it again. Round and round it they went, from refuse-heap to refuse-heap. If I started at the gangway on the starboard side, and tried by thrashing them to drive them out over the ice, round the stern they flew to the gangway on the port side. I tugged, swore, and tried everything I could think of, but all to no purpose. I got out and tried to hold the sledge back, but was pulled off my feet, and dragged merrily over the ice in my smooth sealskin breeches, on back, stomach, side—just as it happened. When I managed to stop them at some pieces of pack-ice or a dust-heap, round they went again to the starboard gangway, with me dangling behind, swearing madly that I would break every bone in their bodies when I got at them. This game went on till they probably tired of it, and thought they might as well go my way for a change. So now they went off beautifully across the flat floe until I stopped for a moment’s breathing space. But at the first movement I made in the sledge they were off again, tearing wildly back the way we had come. I held on convulsively, pulled, raged, and used the whip; but the more I lashed the faster they went on their own way. At last I got them stopped by sticking my legs down into the snow between the sledge-shafts, and driving a strong seal-hook into it as well. But while I was off my guardfor a moment they gave a tug. I lay with my hinder-part where my legs had been, and we went on at lightning speed—that substantial part of my body leaving a deep track in the snow. This sort of thing went on time after time. I lost the board I should have sat on, then the whip, then my gloves, then my cap—these losses not improvingmy temper. Once or twice I ran round in front of the dogs, and tried to force them to turn by lashing at them with the whip. They jumped to both sides and only tore on the faster; the reins got twisted round my ankles, and I was thrown flat on the sledge, and they went on more wildly than ever. This was my first experience in dog driving on my own account, and I will not pretend that I was proud of it. I inwardly congratulated myself that my feats had been unobserved.

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