THE AMUNDSEN-ELLSWORTH POLAR FLIGHT

Solong as the human ear can hark back to the breaking of waves over deep seas; so long as the human eye can follow the gleam of the Northern Lights over the silent snow fields; then so long, no doubt, will the lure of the unknown draw restless souls into those great Arctic wastes.

I sit here about to set down a brief record of our late Polar experience, and I stop to try to recall when it was that my imagination was first captured by the lure of the Arctic. I must have been very young, because I cannot now recall when first it was. Doubtless somewhere in my ancestry there was a restless wanderer with an unappeasable desire to attain the furthest north. And, not attaining it, he passed it on with other sins and virtues to torment his descendants.

The large blank spaces surrounding the North Pole have been a challenge to the daring since charts first were made. For nearly four generations that mysterious plain has been the ultimate quest of numberless adventurers.

Before this adventure of ours explorers had depended upon ships and dogs. Andrée and Wellmann planned to reach the Pole with balloons, but theirswere hardly more than plans. Andrée met with disaster soon after leaving Spitzbergen. Wellmann’s expedition never left the ground.

What days they were—those ship and dog days! What small returns came to those men for their vast spending of energy and toil and gold! I am filled with admiration for the courage and the hardihood of the men who cut adrift from civilization and set out with dogs or on foot over the tractless ice fields of the Far North. All honor to them! Yet now what utter neglect it seems of the resources of modern science!

No doubt the men who have been through it best realize what a hopeless, heart-breaking quest it was. Peary’s land base at Camp Columbia was only 413 miles from the Pole; yet it took him twenty-three years to traverse that 413 miles.

LINCOLN ELLSWORTH AND N 24 JUST BEFORE THE START

Curiously enough, Peary was the first man with whom I ever discussed the matter of using an airplane for polar work. That was shortly before his death, and he was enthusiastic about the project. Eight years later, in 1924, Captain Amundsen arrived in New York. He had already announced his belief that the Polar Sea could be crossed in a plane, and for those eight years my mind had not freed itself of the idea. We had a long talk and, as the result, I brought Amundsen and my father together. My father, too, became enthusiastic and agreed to buy us two flying boats. Thus the adventure began.

THE POLAR SEA FROM THE SKY

The island of Spitzbergen, lying just halfway between Norway and the North Pole, is ideally situated to serve as a base for Polar exploration. Besides its nearness to the Pole—ten degrees, or 600 nautical miles—a warm current, an offshoot of the Gulf Stream, follows along the western and northern coasts of the island, and has the effect of producing ice-free waters at the highest latitude in the world. These were the principal reasons which prompted Captain Amundsen and myself to choose Spitzbergen as a base for our aeroplane flight to the Pole.

We wanted to be on the ground early in the spring and to make our flight before the summer fogs should enshroud the Polar pack and hide from view any possible landing place beneath us, for it was our intention to descend at the Pole for observations. From April 19th to August 24th (127 days) the sun never sets in the latitude of King’s Bay, Spitzbergen, where we had established our base. Here one may find growing during the long summer days 110 distinct species of flowering plants and grasses. But from October 26th to February 17th is another story; the long Arctic winter is at hand and the sun never shows above the horizon. Many houses have been built along the Spitzbergen coast during the last twenty years by mining companies who annually ship about 300,000 tons of coal, and King’s Bay boasts of being the most northerly habitation in the world.

May 21st, 1925, was the day we had long awaited, when, with our two Dornier-Wal flying boats we are ready to take off from the ice at King’s Bay to start into the Unknown. We are carrying 7,800 pounds of dead weight in each plane. As this is 1,200 pounds above the estimated maximum lift, we are compelled to leave behind our radio equipment, which would mean an additional 300 pounds. Our provisions are sufficient to last one month, at the rate of two pounds per day per man. The daily ration list per man is:

At 4:15P.M.all is ready for the start. The 450 H. P. Rolls-Royce motors are turned over for warming up. At five o’clock the full horse power is turned on. We move. The N 25 has Captain Amundsen as navigator. Riiser-Larsen is his pilot, and Feucht mechanic. I am navigator of N 24, with Dietrichson for pilot, and Omdal my mechanic. Six men in all.

The first two hours of our flight, after leaving Amsterdam Islands, we ran into a heavy bank of fog and rose 1,000 meters to clear it. This ascent was glorified by as beautiful a natural phenomenon as I have ever seen. Looking down into the mist, we saw adouble halo in the middle of which the sun cast a perfect shadow of our plane. Evanescent and phantom-like, these two multicolored halos beckoned us enticingly into the Unknown. I recalled the ancient legend which says that the rainbow is a token that man shall not perish by water. The fog lasted until midway between latitudes eighty-two and eighty-three. Through rifts in the mist we caught glimpses of the open sea. This lasted for an hour; then, after another hour, the ocean showed, strewn with small ice floes, which indicated the fringe of the Polar pack. Then, to quote Captain Amundsen, “suddenly the mist disappeared and the entire panorama of Polar ice stretched away before our eyes—the most spectacular sheet of snow and ice ever seen by man from an aerial perspective.” From our altitude we could overlook sixty or seventy miles in any direction. The far-flung expanse was strikingly beautiful in its simplicity. There was nothing to break the deadly monotony of snow and ice but a network of narrow cracks, or “leads,” which scarred this white surface and was the only indication to an aerial observer of the ceaseless movement of the Polar pack. We had crossed the threshold into the Unknown! I was thrilled at the thought that never before had man lost himself with such speed—75 miles per hour—into unknown space. The silence of ages was now being broken for the first time by the roar of our motors.We were but gnats in an immense void. We had lost all contacts with civilization. Time and distance suddenly seemed to count for nothing. What lay ahead was all that mattered now.

“Something hidden. Go and find it.Go and look behind the Ranges—Something lost behind the Ranges,Lost and waiting for you. Go!”

“Something hidden. Go and find it.

Go and look behind the Ranges—

Something lost behind the Ranges,

Lost and waiting for you. Go!”

On we sped for eight hours, till the sun had shifted from the west to a point directly ahead of us. By all rights we should now be at the Pole, for our dead reckoning shows that we have traveled just one thousand kilometers (six hundred miles), at seventy-five miles per hour, but shortly after leaving Amsterdam Islands we had run into a heavy northeast wind, which had been steadily driving us westward. Our fuel supply was now about half exhausted, and at this juncture, strangely enough, just ahead of us was the first open lead of water that was large enough for an aeroplane to land in that we had encountered on our whole journey north. There was nothing left now but to descend for observations to learn where we were. As Captain Amundsen’s plane started to circle for a landing, his rear motor backfired and stopped, so that he finally disappeared among a lot of ice hummocks, with only one motor going.

This was at 1A.M.on the morning of May 22nd.

The lead ran east and west, meeting our course at right angles. It was an awful-looking hole. We circled for about ten minutes, looking for enough open water to land in. The lead was choked up with a chaotic mass of floating ice floes, and it looked as if some one had started to dynamite the ice pack. Ice blocks standing on edge or piled high on top of one another, hummocks and pressure-ridges, was all that greeted our eyes. It was like trying to land in the Grand Canyon.

We came down in a little lagoon among the ice-floes, taxied over to a huge ice-cake, and, anchoring our plane to it, jumped out with our sextant and artificial horizon to find out where we were. Not knowing what to expect, I carried my rifle, but after our long flight I was a bit unsteady on my legs, tumbled down into the deep snow, and choked up the barrel. Our eyes were bloodshot and we were almost stone-deaf after listening to the unceasing roar of our motors for eight hours, and the stillness seemed intensified.

Looking around on landing, I had the feeling that nothing but death could be at home in this part of the world and that there could not possibly be any life in such an environment, when I was surprised to see a seal pop up his head beside the plane. I am sure he was as surprised as we were, for he raised himself half out of the water to inspect us and seemed not atall afraid to approach, as he came almost up to us. We had no thought of taking his life, for we expected to be off and on our way again towards the Pole after our observation. His curiosity satisfied, he disappeared, and we never saw another sign of life in those waters during our entire stay in the ice.

Our observations showed that we had come down in Lat. 87° 44′ N., Long. 10° 20′ West. As our flight meridian was 12° East, where we landed was, therefore, 22° 20′ off our course. This westerly drift had cost us nearly a degree in latitude and enough extra fuel to have carried us to the Pole. As it was, we were just 136 nautical miles from it. At the altitude at which we had been flying just before descending, our visible horizon was forty-six miles; which means that we had been able to see ahead as far as Lat. 88° 30′ N., or to within just ninety miles of the North Pole. We had left civilization, and eight hours later we were able to view the earth within ninety miles of the goal that it had taken Peary twenty-three years to reach. Truly “the efforts of one generation may become the commonplace of the next.”

When we had finished taking our observation, we began to wonder where N 25 was. We crawled up on all the high hummocks near by and with our field-glasses searched the horizon. Dietrichson remarked that perhaps Amundsen had gone on to the Pole. “It would be just like him,” he said. It was not untilnoon, however, of the 22nd that we spotted them from an especially high hill of ice. The N 25 lay with her nose pointing into the air at an angle of forty-five degrees, among a lot of rough hummocks and against a huge cake of old blue Arctic ice about forty feet thick, three miles away. It was a rough-looking country, and the position of the N 25 was terrible to behold. To us it looked as though she had crashed into this ice.

We of the N 24 were not in too good shape where we were. We had torn the nails loose on the bottom of our plane, when we took off from King’s Bay, so that she was leaking badly; in fact, the water was now above the bottom of the petrol tanks. Also, our forward motor was disabled. In short, we were badly wrecked. Things looked so hopeless to us at that moment that it seemed as though the impossible would have to happen ever to get us out. No words so well express our mental attitude at that time as the following lines of Swinburne’s:

“From hopes cut down across a world of fears,We gaze with eyes too passionate for tears,Where Faith abides, though Hope be put to flight.”

“From hopes cut down across a world of fears,

We gaze with eyes too passionate for tears,

Where Faith abides, though Hope be put to flight.”

That first day, while Dietrichson and I had tried to reach the N 25, Omdal had been trying to repair the motor. We dragged our canvas canoe up over hummocksand tumbled into icy crevasses until we were thoroughly exhausted. The snow was over two to three feet deep all over the ice, and we floundered through it, never knowing what we were going to step on next. Twice Dietrichson went down between the floes and only by hanging onto the canoe was he able to save himself from sinking. After half a mile of this we were forced to give up and return.

We pitched our tent on top of the ice floe, moved all our equipment out of the plane into it, and tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. But there was no sleep for us and very little rest during the next five days. Omdal was continually working on the motor, while Dietrichson and I took turns at the pump. Only by the most incessant pumping were we able to keep the water down below the gasoline tanks.

Although we had located the N 25, they did not see us till the afternoon of the second day, which was May 23rd. We had taken the small inflated balloons, which the meteorologist had given us with which to obtain data regarding the upper air strata, and after tying pieces of flannel to them set them loose. We hoped that the wind would drift them over to N 25 and so indicate to them in which direction to look for us. But the wind blew them in the wrong direction, or else they drifted too low and got tangled up in the rough ice.

Through all that first day the wind was blowing from the north and we could see quite a few patches of open water. On the second day the wind shifted to the south and the ice began to close in on us. It was as though we were in the grasp of a gigantic claw that was slowly but surely contracting. We had a feeling that soon we would be crushed.

On the third day, May 24th, the temperature was -11.5 c., and we had trouble with our pump freezing. The two planes were now slowly drifting together, and we established a line of communication, so that we knew each other’s positions pretty well. It is tedious work, semaphoring, for it requires two men: one with the flag, and the other with a pair of field-glasses to read the signals. It took us a whole hour merely to signal our positions, after which we must wait for their return signals and then reply to them.

On this day, after an exchange of signals, we decided to try to reach Amundsen. We packed our canvas canoe, put it on our sledge, and started across what looked to us like mountainous hummocks. After only going a few hundred yards we had to give up. The labor was too exhausting. With no sleep for three days, and only liquid food, our strength was not what it should have been. Leaving our canvas canoe, we now made up our packs of fifty pounds each, and pushed on. We may or we may not return to our plane again.

According to my diary we traveled the first two miles in two hours and fifteen minutes, when we came upon a large lead that separated us from the N 25 and which we could see no way to cross. We talked to them by signal and they advised our returning. So, after a seven-hour trip, we returned to our sinking plane, having covered perhaps five and one half miles in about the same length of time it had taken us to fly from Spitzbergen to Lat. 87.44. Arriving at our plane, we pitched camp again and cooked a heavy pemmican soup over our Primus stove. Dietrichson gave us a surprise by producing a small tin of George Washington coffee. We took some of the pure alcohol carried for the Primus stove and put it into the coffee, and with pipes lighted felt more or less happy.

As we smoked in silence, each with his own thoughts, Dietrichson suddenly clasped his hands to his eyes, exclaiming: “Something is the matter with my eyes!” He was snow-blind, but never having experienced this before, did not know what had happened to him. We had been careful to wear our snow-glasses during most of the journey, but perhaps not quite careful enough. After bandaging Dietrichson’s eyes, Omdal and I put him to bed and then continued with our smoking and thoughts. It seems strange, when I think back now, that during those days nothing that happened greatly surprised us. Everything that happened was accepted as part ofthe day’s work. This is an interesting sidelight on man’s adaptability to his environment.

All our energies were now being bent in getting the N 24 up onto the ice floe, for we knew she would be crushed if we left her in the lead. The whole cake we were on was only about 200 meters in diameter, and there was only one level stretch on it of eighty meters. It was laborious work for Dietrichson and myself to try to clear the soggy wet snow, for all we had to work with was one clumsy home-made wooden shovel and our ice-anchor. As I would loosen the snow by picking at it with the anchor, Dietrichson would shovel it away.

Looking through our glasses at N 25, we could see the propellers going, and Amundsen pulling up and down on the wings, trying to loosen the plane from the ice, but she did not budge. On the morning of May 26th, Amundsen signaled to us that if we couldn’t save our plane to come over and help them. We had so far succeeded in getting the nose of our plane up onto the ice-cake, but with only one engine working it was impossible to do more. Anyway, she was safe now from sinking, but not from being crushed, should the ice press in on her. During the five days of our separation the ice had so shifted that the two planes were now plainly in sight of each other and only half a mile apart. During all that time the ice had been in continual movement, so that now all the heavy icehad moved out from between the two camps. We signaled to the N 25 that we were coming, and making up loads of eighty pounds per man, we started across the freshly frozen lead that separated us from our companions. We were well aware of the chances we were taking, crossing this new ice, but we saw no other alternative. Wemustget over to N 25 with all possible speed if we were ever to get back again to civilization.

With our feet shoved loosely into our skis, for we never fastened them on here for fear of getting tangled up, should we fall into the sea, we shuffled along, slowly feeling our way over the thin ice. Omdal was in the lead, myself and Dietrichson—who had recovered from his slight attack of snowblindness the next day—following in that order. Suddenly I heard Dietrichson yelling behind me, and before I knew what it was all about Omdal ahead of me cried out also and disappeared as though the ice beneath him had suddenly opened and swallowed him. The ice under me started to sag, and I quickly jumped sideways to avoid the same fate that had overtaken my companions. There just happened to be some old ice beside me and that was what saved me. Lying down on my stomach, partly on this ledge of old ice, and partly out on the new ice, I reached the skis out and pulled Dietrichson over to where I could grab his pack and partly pull him out onto the firmer ice,where he lay panting and exhausted. Then I turned my attention to Omdal. Only his pallid face showed above the water. It is strange, when I think that both these Norwegians had been conversing almost wholly in their native tongue, that Omdal was now crying in English, “I’m gone! I’m gone!”—and he was almost gone too. The only thing that kept him from going way under was the fact that he kept digging his fingers into the ice. I reached him just in time to pull him over to the firmer ice. I reached him just before he sank and held him by his pack until Dietrichson could crawl over to me and hold him up, while I cut off the pack. It took all the remaining strength of the two of us to drag Omdal up onto the old ice.

Our companions could not reach us, neither could they see us, as a few old ice hummocks of great size stood directly in front of N 25. They could do nothing but listen to the agonizing cries of their fellow-men in distress. We finally succeeded in getting over to our companions, who gave us dry clothes and hot chocolate, and we were soon all right again, except for Omdal’s swollen and lacerated hands. Both men had lost their skis. In view of the probability of being forced to tramp to Greenland, four hundred miles away, the loss of these skis seemed a calamity.

I was surprised at the change only five days had wrought in Captain Amundsen. He seemed to meto have aged ten years. We now joined with our companions in the work of freeing the N 25 from her precarious position. As stated before, when Captain Amundsen’s plane had started to come down into the lead, his rear motor back-fired, and he was forced to land with only one motor working, which accounted for the position which we now found N 25 in. She lay half on and half off an ice floe; her nose was up on the cake and her tail down in the sea. Coming down thus had reduced her speed and saved her from crashing into the cake of old blue ice, which was directly ahead. It seemed amazing that whereas five days ago the N 25 had found enough open water to land in, now there was not enough to be seen anywhere sufficient to launch a rowboat in. She was tightly locked in the grip of the shifting ice.

N 25 ABOVE THE POLAR PACK JUST BEFORE LANDING AT 87° 44′

A most orderly routine was being enforced at Amundsen’s camp. Regular hours for everything—to work, sleep, eat, smoke and talk; no need to warn these men, as so many explorers had been compelled to do, not to give one another the story of their lives, lest boredom come. These Norwegians have their long periods of silence in which the glance of an eye or the movement of a hand takes the place of conversation. This, no doubt, accounts for the wonderful harmony that existed during the whole twenty-five days of our imprisonment in the ice. One might expect confusion and disorganization under the conditionsconfronting us. But it was just the reverse. We did everything as if we had oceans of time in which to do it. It was this calm, cool, and unhurried way of doing things which kept our spirits up and eventually got us out of a desperate situation. No one ever got depressed or blue.

N 24 AND OUR ARCTIC HOME

We elected Omdal our cook. Although we felt better nourished and stronger after our noon cup of pemmican broth, it was always our morning and evening cup of chocolate that we looked forward to most. How warming and cheering that hot draught was! Captain Amundsen remarked that the only time we were happy up there was when either the hot chocolate was going down our throats, or else when we were rolled up in our reindeer sleeping bags. The rest of the time we were more or less miserable, but never do I remember a time when we ever lost faith! The after-compartment of our plane—a gaunt hole—served as kitchen, dining-room and sleeping-quarters, but it was draughty and uncomfortable, and it seemed always a relief to get out into the open again after our meals. The cold duralumin metal overhead was coated with hoarfrost which turned into a steady drip as the heat from our little Primus stove, together with that from our steaming chocolate, started to warm up the cabin. Feucht always sat opposite me—I say sat, but he squatted—we all squatted on the bottom of the plane with our chocolate on ourknees. I remember how I used to covertly watch him eating his three oatmeal wafers and drinking his chocolate. I always tried to hold mine back so as not to finish before him. I had the strange illusion that if I finished first it was because he was getting more to eat than I. I particularly recall one occasion, two weeks later, after we had cut our rations in half, when I purposely hid my last biscuit in the folds of my parka, and the satisfaction it gave me to draw it out and eat it after Feucht had laid his cup aside. It was the stirring of those primitive instincts which, hidden beneath the veneer of our civilization, lie ever ready to assert themselves upon reversion to primitive conditions. We smoked a pipe apiece of tobacco after each meal, but unfortunately we had taken only a few days’ supply of smoking stuff. When that went, we had to resort to Riiser-Larsen’s private stock of rank, black chewing twist. It took a real hero to smoke that tobacco after moistening it so as to make it burn slower and thus hold out longer. It always gave us violent hiccoughs.

We were compelled to give up our civilized habits of washing or changing our clothes. It was too cold to undress, and we could not spare the fuel to heat any water after our necessary cooking was done.

During all our stay in the ice I never saw Captain Amundsen take a drink of water. I was always thirsty after the pemmican, and when I called forwater, he said he could not understand how I could drink so much water.

Captain Amundsen and I slept together in the pilot’s cockpit, which we covered over with canvas to darken it at night. I was never able to get used to the monotony of continuous daylight and found it very wearing. With the exception of Riiser-Larsen the rest of the men slept on their skis stretched across the rear-compartment to keep them off the metal bottom. Riiser-Larsen had the tail all to himself, into which he was compelled to crawl on hands and knees.

It took us a whole day to construct a slip and work our plane up onto the ice-cake. The work was exhausting on our slim rations, and, besides, we had only the crudest of implements with which to work: three wooden shovels, a two-pound pocket safety-ax, and an ice anchor. Through hopeless necessity we lashed our sheath-knives to the end of our ski-sticks, with which we slashed at the ice. It is remarkable, when one considers the scant diet and the work we accomplished with these implements! Captain Amundsen conservatively estimates that we moved three hundred tons of ice during the twenty-five days of our imprisonment up there in order to free our plane.

The floe we were on measured 300 meters in diameter, but we needed a 400-meter course from which to take off. Our best chance, of course, would be to take off in open water, but the wind continued to blowfrom the south, and the south wind did not make for open water.

Riiser-Larsen was tireless in his search for an ice floe of the right dimensions. While the rest of us were relaxing, he was generally to be seen on the skyline searching with that tireless energy that was so characteristic of him. Silent and resourceful, he was the rock on which we were building our hopes.

The incessant toil went on. On May 28th the N 25 was safe from the screwing of the pack-ice. On this day we took two soundings, which gave us a depth of 3,750 meters (12,375 feet) of the Polar Sea. This depth corresponds almost exactly to the altitude of Mont Blanc above the village of Chamonix. Up to this time our only thought had been to free the plane and continue on to the Pole, but now, facing the facts as they confronted us, it seemed inadvisable to consider anything else but a return to Spitzbergen. The thermometer during these days registered between -9° c. and -11° c.

On May 29th Dietrichson, Omdal and I, by a circuitous route, were able to reach the N 24 with our canvas canoe and sledge. We must get the remaining gasoline and provisions. Our only hope of reaching Spitzbergen lay in salvaging this fuel from the N 24. We cut out one of the empty tanks, filled it from one of the fresh ones, loaded it in our canoe, put the canoe on the sledge and started back. And nowwe found that a large lead had opened up behind us, over which we were barely able to get across ourselves, so we had to leave the tank and supplies on the further side over night. The next day the lead had closed again and Dietrichson and Omdal succeeded in getting the gasoline over. The light sledge got slightly broken among the rough hummocks, which was an additional catastrophe, in view of the probability of having to walk to Greenland.

We now had 245 liters additional fuel,—1,500 liters altogether,—or a margin of 300 liters on which to make Spitzbergen, provided we could get off immediately.

On May 31st an inventory of our provisions showed that we had on hand:

Our observations for Latitude and Longitude this day showed our position to be 87.32 N. and 7.30 W. It meant that the whole pack had been steadily driftingsoutheast since our arrival. It was at least some consolation to know that we were slowly but surely drifting south, where we knew there was game. How we should have liked to have had that seal we saw the first day! We had seen no life of any description since, neither in the water nor in the air, not even a track on the snow to show that there was another living thing in these latitudes but ourselves. It is a land of misery and death.

With a view to working the longest possible time in an attempt to get the N 25 clear, and at the same time have sufficient provisions left with which to reach Greenland, Captain Amundsen felt that it was necessary to cut down our daily rations to 300 grams per man, or just one half pound per man per day. This amounted to one-half the ration that Peary fed his dogs a day on his journey to the Pole. By thus reducing our rations, he figured that our provisions would last for two months longer.

Captain Amundsen now set June 15th as the date upon which a definite decision must be arrived at. On that date something must be done; so a vote was taken, each man having the option of either starting on foot for Greenland on that date, or else sticking by the plane with the hope of open water coming while watching the food dwindle. There was much divided opinion. It seemed absurd to consider starting out on a long tramp when right by our side was 640 horsepowerlying idle, which could take us back to civilization within eight hours. Captain Amundsen was for staying by the plane. He said that with the coming of summer the leads would open. Riiser-Larsen said he would start walking on June 15th. Feucht said he would not walk a foot and that he would stick by the motors. Omdal said he would do what the majority did, and I said I would prefer to wait until June 14th before making a decision.

My own mind was pretty well made up that if I ever succeeded in traveling 100 miles towards Greenland on foot, I would be doing well. Yet sitting down by the plane and watching the last of the food go was a thing that ran counter to my every impulse. I agreed with Captain Amundsen that I should much prefer to “finish it” on my feet. I think that all really believed that in our worn-out condition, carrying thirty pounds on our backs and dragging a canvas canoe along with which to cross open leads, none of us would be able to reach the Greenland coast.

Most of our doubt regarding the tramp to Greenland, of course, came from our not knowing just how far the bad country that we were in extended. Climb up as high as we could, we were never able to see the end of it. Whether it extended to Greenland or not was the question, and that was what made it so hard for us to decide what course to take.

After our evening cup of chocolate Captain Amundsen and I generally would put on our skis and take a few turns around the ice floe we were on before turning into our sleeping-bags. I usually asked him on these occasions what he thought of the situation. His reply was that things looked pretty bad, but he was quick to add that it had always been his experience in life that when things were blackest, there was generally light ahead.

On May 31st there was eight inches of ice in the lead on the far side of the floe we were on. We decided to try a take-off on this new ice. From our ice-cake down into the lead there was a six-foot drop, so that it was necessary to construct a slip upon which to get our plane down into the lead. We built this slip in accordance with standard road-making principles—first heavy blocks of ice, then filling in on top with smaller pieces, and then tiny lumps and loose snow, on top of which we spread a layer of loose snow which froze into a smooth surface. It took us two days to build this slip and to level off the ice ahead for 500 meters.

At this time we had established regular nightly patrols, each man taking his turn at patrolling all night around and around the ice floe, on his skis, looking for open water. The mental strain during this period was terrific, for we never knew when the cake we were on might break beneath us.

On June 2nd, at 5P.M., we decided that our slip was worthy a trial. We started up the motors and taxied across the floe and down the slip, but we had built our slip too steep, and, therefore, not having enough speed, the plane simply sagged through the ice and for 1,000 meters we merely plowed through it. We shut off the motors and prepared to spend the night in the lead.

At midnight I was awakened by Captain Amundsen yelling that the plane was being crushed. I could plainly hear the pressure against the metal sides. We lost no time in getting everything out onto some solid ice near by, and by working the plane up and down permitted the incoming ice to close in beneath her from both sides. It was a narrow escape. We had expected the plane to be crushed like an eggshell. Riiser-Larsen’s only comment after the screwing stopped was, “Another chapter to be added to our book!” Before morning our first heavy fog set in. The Arctic summer was upon us. From then on the fog hung like a pall over us and for the remainder of our stay in the Arctic we were never free from it, although we were always able to see the rim of the sun through it and knew that above it the sky was clear and the sun shining brightly, but we could not rise into it. With the coming of the fogs the temperature rose to freezing.

We were gradually working our way over towardswhere the N 24 was lying. During the day we would level off a new course, but there was not sufficient wind in which to rise, and as usual our heavily loaded plane broke through the thinice,—

“Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul.Felt her lift and felt her sag, betted when she’d break;Wondered every time she raced if she’d stand the shock.”

“Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul.

Felt her lift and felt her sag, betted when she’d break;

Wondered every time she raced if she’d stand the shock.”

The N 25 started leaking so badly from the pressure she received the other night that Captain Amundsen and I were obliged to pitch our tent on the floe upon which the N 24 was resting. We were wondering how much more she could stand. N 24 still lay with her nose on the ice floe, as we left her, but she had now listed sideways, so that the tip of one wing was firmly imbedded in the freshly frozen ice around her. During the past few days the ice had been freezing in from both sides, forming a long, narrow lane in front of N 24, but parts of this lane have bent into a curve. It was a narrow, crooked passage, but Riiser-Larsen felt that it offered one more opportunity for a take-off. He taxied N 25 forward, narrowly escaping an accident. As he slowed up to negotiate the curve, the nose broke through the ice with the reduced speed. The plane suddenly stopped and lifted its tail into the air. We jumped out andhacked away the ice until the plane settled on an even keel. We dared not remain where we were because the main body of the pack was fast closing in upon us from both sides.

At two o’clock the next morning we commenced work on an extension of our previous course and continued on throughout the day and on into the following night. It was a tremendous task, as the ice was covered with tightly frozen lumps, old pressure-ridges of uptilted ice cakes. Hacking away with our short-handled pocket-ax and ice anchor was such back-breaking work that we were compelled to work on our knees most of the time. The sweat was rolling down my face and blurred my snow-glasses, so that I was compelled to take them off for a couple of hours. I paid the penalty by becoming snow-blind in one eye. Dietrichson was not so fortunate. He was badly attacked in both eyes, and had to lie in the tent in his sleeping-bag for two days with his eyes bandaged and suffering acutely from the intense inflammation.

We awoke on the morning of June 5th, tired and stiff, to look upon the level track we had so frantically labored to prepare, but saw in its place a jumbled mass of upturned ice blocks. With the destruction of our fourth course our position was now desperate. But we would hang on till the 15th, when the vital decision would have to be made as to whether or not weshould abandon N 25 and make for the Greenland coast while there were yet sufficient provisions left. But we had come here on wings, and I know we all felt only wings could take us back to civilization. If we could only find a floe of sufficient area from which to take off. That was our difficulty.

In the early morning of June 6th Riiser-Larsen and Omdal started out into the heavy fog with the grim determination of men who find themselves in desperate straits, to search for what seemed to us all the unattainable. We saw no more of them till evening. Out of the fog they came, and we knew by their faces, before they uttered a word, that they had good news. Yes, they had found a floe! They had been searching through the fog, stumbling through the rough country. Suddenly the sun broke through and lit up one end of a floe, as Riiser-Larsen puts it, which became our salvation. It was a half mile off, and it would be necessary to build a slip to get out of the lead and bridge two ice cakes before reaching the desired floe.

The main body of the pack was now only ten yards away. Immediately behind the N 25 a huge ice wall was advancing slowly, inch by inch, and fifteen minutes after we started the motors the solid ice closed in over the spot where our plane had lain. We were saved.

We worked our way slowly up to where we meantto build the slip, using a saw to cut out the ice ahead where it was too heavy for the plane to break through. After six hours of steady toil we had constructed our slip and had the plane safe up on floe No. 1. That night of June 6th we slept well, after the extra cup of chocolate that was allowed us to celebrate our narrow escape.

The next morning began the most stupendous task we had yet undertaken: cutting a passage through a huge pressure-ridge,—an ice wall fifteen feet thick which separated floe No. 1 from floe No. 2,—and then bridging between floe No. 1 and floe No. 2 two chasms fifteen feet wide and ten feet deep, separating the two floes from one another. In our weakened condition this was a hard task, but we finished it by the end of the second day. Crossing the bridges between the floes was exciting work. The sustaining capacity of such ice blocks as we could manage to transport and lay in the water could not be great. The heavier blocks which we used for a foundation were floated into place in the sea and left to freeze—as we hoped they would—into a solid mass during the night. When the time came, we must cross at full speed, if we were not to sink into the sea, and then instantly stop on the other side, because we had taken no time to level ahead, so great was our fear that the ice floes might drift apart during the operation of bridging. We made the passages safely andwere at last upon the big floe. In order to take advantage of the south wind, which had continued to blow ever since the day of our landing, we leveled a course across the shortest diameter of this cake, which offered only 300 meters for a take-off. But before we completed our work the wind died down. Nevertheless we made a try, but merely bumped over it and stopped just short of the open lead ahead. Our prospects did not look good. The southerly winds had made the deep snow soft and soggy. But it was a relief to know that we were out of the leads, with our plane safe from the screwing of the pack-ice.

It was June 9th, and now began the long grind of constructing a course upon which our final hopes must rest. If we failed there was nothing left. My diary shows the following entry for June 10th:—“The days go by. For the first time I am beginning to wonder if we must make the great sacrifice for our great adventure. The future looks so hopeless. Summer is on. The snows are getting too soft to travel over and the leads won’t open in this continually shifting ice.”

Riiser-Larsen looked the ground over and decided that we must remove the two and a half feet of snow right down to the solid ice and level a track twelve meters wide and four hundred meters long. It was a heartbreaking task to remove this wet summer snow with only our clumsy wooden shovels. It must be thrown clear an additional six meters to either side,so as not to interfere with the wing stretch. After but a few shovelfuls we stood weak and panting gazing disheartened at the labor ahead.

One problem was how to taxi our plane through the wet snow and get it headed in the right direction. We dug down to the blue ice, and now we were confronted with a new difficulty. The moist fog, which came over us immediately, melted the ice as soon as it was exposed. We found that by working our skis underneath the plane we were able finally to get her to turn, but after splitting a pair of skis we decided to take no more chances that way. In desperation we now tried stamping down the snow with our feet and found that it served the purpose admirably. By the end of our first day of shoveling down to the blue ice, we had succeeded in clearing a distance of only forty meters, while with the new method we were able to make one hundred meters per day. We adopted a regular system in stamping down this snow. Each man marked out a square of his own, and it was up to him to stamp down every inch in this area. We figured that at this rate we would have completed our course in five days.

During the first day’s work we saw our first sign of animal life since the seal popped his head up out of the lead where we first landed. Somebody looked up from his work of shoveling snow to see a little auk flying through the fog overhead. It came outof the north and was headed northwest. Next day two weary geese flopped down beside the plane. They must have thought that dark object looming up through the fog in all that expanse of desolate white looked friendly. They seemed an easy mark for Dietrichson, but the rich prize was too much for his nerves and he missed. The two geese ran over the snow a long distance as if they did not seem anxious to take wing again. They too came from the north and disappeared into the northwest. We wondered if there could be land in that direction. It was an interesting speculation.

On the 14th our course was finished. Then Riiser-Larsen paced it again and was surprised to find that instead of four hundred meters it was five hundred. When he informed Amundsen of this fact, the Captain was quick to remark that one million dollars couldn’t buy that extra hundred meters from him, and we all agreed that it was priceless. And so it proved to be.

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