Farthest North Volume II Part 12

THE NEW YEAR, 1896

"Wednesday, January 1, 1896. -41.5 C. (42.2 below zero, Fahr.). So a new year has come, the year of joy and home-coming. In bright moonlight 1895 departed, and in bright moonlight 1896 begins; but it is bitterly cold, the coldest days we have yet known here. I felt it, too, yesterday, when all my finger-tips were frost-bitten. I thought I had done with all that last spring.

"Friday, January 3d. Morning. It is still clear and cold out-of-doors; I can hear reports from the glacier. It lies up there on the crest of the mountain like a mighty ice-giant peering down at us through the clefts. It spreads its giant body all over the land, and stretches out its limbs on all sides into the sea. But whenever it turns cold--colder than it has. .h.i.therto been--it writhes horribly, and crevice after crevice appears in the huge body; there is a noise like the discharge of guns, and the sky and the earth tremble so that I can feel the ground that I am lying on quake. One is almost afraid that it will some day come rolling over upon one. [65]

"Johansen is asleep, and making the hut resound. I am glad his mother cannot see him now. She would certainly pity her boy, so black and grimy and ragged as he is, with sooty streaks all over his face. But wait, only wait! She shall have him again, safe and sound and fresh and rosy.

"Wednesday, January 8th. Last night the wind blew the sledge to which our thermometer was hanging out over the slope. Stormy weather outside--furious weather, almost taking away your breath if you put your head out. We lie here trying to sleep--sleep the time away. But we cannot always do it. Oh, those long sleepless nights when you turn from side to side, kick your feet to put a little warmth into them, and wish for only one thing in the world--sleep! The thoughts are constantly busy with everything at home, but the long, heavy body lies here trying in vain to find an endurable position among the rough stones. However, time crawls on, and now little Liv's birthday has come. She is three years old to-day, and must be a big girl now. Poor little thing! You don't miss your father now, and next birthday I shall be with you, I hope. What good friends we shall be! You shall ride a-c.o.c.khorse, and I will tell you stories from the north about bears, foxes, walruses, and all the strange animals up there in the ice. No, I can't bear to think of it.

"Sat.u.r.day, February 1st. Here I am down with the rheumatism. Outside it is growing gradually lighter day by day; the sky above the glaciers in the south grows redder, until at last one day the sun will rise above the crest, and our last winter night be past. Spring is coming! I have often thought spring sad. Was it because it vanished so quickly, because it carried promises that summer never fulfilled? But there is no sadness in this spring; its promises will be kept; it would be too cruel if they were not."

It was a strange existence, lying thus in a hut underground the whole winter through, without a thing to turn one's hand to. How we longed for a book! How delightful our life on board the Fram appeared, when we had the whole library to fall back upon! We would often tell each other how beautiful this sort of life would have been, after all, if we had only had anything to read. Johansen always spoke with a sigh of Heyse's novels; he had specially liked those on board, and he had not been able to finish the last one he was reading. The little readable matter which was to be found in our navigation-table and almanac I had read so many times already that I knew it almost by heart--all about the Norwegian royal family, all about persons apparently drowned, and all about self-help for fishermen. Yet it was always a comfort to see these books; the sight of the printed letters gave one a feeling that there was, after all, a little bit of the civilized man left. All that we really had to talk about had long ago been thoroughly thrashed out, and, indeed, there were not many thoughts of common interest that we had not exchanged. The chief pleasure left to us was to picture to each other how we should make up next winter at home for everything we had missed during our sojourn here. We felt that we should have learned for good and all to set store by all the good things of life, such as food, drink, clothes, shoes, house, home, good neighbors, and all the rest of it. Frequently we occupied ourselves, too, in calculating how far the Fram could have drifted, and whether there was any possibility of her getting home to Norway before us. It seemed a safe a.s.sumption that she might drift out into the sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland next summer or autumn, and probability seemed to point to her being in Norway in August or September. But there was just the possibility that she might arrive earlier in the summer; or, on the other hand, we might not reach home until later in the autumn. This was the great question to which we could give no certain answer, and we reflected with sorrow that she might perhaps get home first. What would our friends then think about us? Scarcely any one would have the least hope of seeing us again, not even our comrades on board the Fram. It seemed to us, however, that this could scarcely happen; we could not but reach home in July, and it was hardly to be expected that the Fram could be free from the ice so early in the summer.

But where were we? And how great was the distance we had to travel? Over and over again I reckoned out our observations of the autumn and summer and spring, but the whole matter was a perpetual puzzle. It seemed clear, indeed, that we must be lying somewhere far to the west, perhaps off the west coast of Franz Josef Land, a little north of Cape Lofley, as I had conjectured in the autumn. But, if that were so, what could the lands be which we had seen to the northward? And what was the land to which we had first come? From the first group of islands, which I had called White Land (Hvidtenland), to where we now lie, we had pa.s.sed about 7 of longitude--that our observations proved conclusively. But if we were now in the longitude of Cape Fligely these islands must lie on a meridian so far east that it would fall between King Oscar's Land and Crown Prince Rudolf Land; and yet we had been much farther east and had seen nothing of these lands. How was this to be explained? And, furthermore, the land we saw had disappeared to the southward; and we saw no indication of islands farther east. No, we could not have been near any known land; we must be upon some island lying farther west, in the strait between Franz Josef Land and Spitzbergen; and we could not but think of the hitherto so enigmatic Gillies Land. But this, too, seemed difficult to explain; for it was hard to understand how, in this comparatively narrow strait, such an extensive ma.s.s of land as this could find room without coming so near the Northeast Land of Spitzbergen that it could easily be seen from it. No other conclusion, however seemed at all plausible. We had long ago given up the idea that our watches could be even approximately right; for in that case, as already mentioned, we must have come right across Payer's Wilczek Land and Dove Glacier without having noticed them. This theory was consequently excluded. There were other things, too, that greatly puzzled me. If we were on a new land, near Spitzbergen, why were the rosy gulls never seen there, while we had found them in flocks here to the north? And then there was the great variation of the compa.s.s. Unfortunately, I had no chart of the variations with me, and I could not remember where the zero meridian of variation lay--the boundary-line between easterly and westerly variation. I thought, however, that it lay somewhere near the Northeast Land; and here we had still a variation of about 20. The whole thing was, and remained, an insoluble riddle.

As the daylight began to lengthen later in the spring, I made a discovery which had the effect of still more hopelessly bewildering us. At two points on the horizon, about W.S.W., I fancied that I could see land looming in the air. The appearance recurred again and again, and at last I was quite certain that it really was land; but it must be very far away--at least 69 miles, I thought. [66] If it had been difficult to find room between Franz Josef Land and Northeast Land for the islands we had hitherto seen, it was more difficult still to find room for these new ones. Could it be the Northeast Land itself? This seemed scarcely credible. This land must lie in about 81 or so northward, while the Northeast Land does not reach much north of 80. But at least these islands must be pretty near Northeast Land, and if we once reached them, we could not have much farther to go, and would perhaps find open water all the way to the Tromso sloop, on which our fancy had now dwelt for over a year, and which was to take us home.

The thought of all the good things we should find on board that sloop was what comforted us whenever the time hung unendurably heavy on our hands. Our life was not, indeed, altogether luxurious. How we longed for a change in the uniformity of our diet! If only we could have had a little sugar and farinaceous food, in addition to all the excellent meat we had, we could have lived like princes. Our thoughts dwelt longingly on great platters full of cakes, not to mention bread and potatoes. How we would make up for lost time when we got back! And we would begin as soon as we got on board that Tromso sloop. Would they have potatoes on board? Would they have fresh bread? At worst, even hard ship's bread would not be so bad, especially if we could get it fried in sugar and b.u.t.ter. But better even than food would be the clean clothes we could put on. And then books--only to think of books! Ugh, the clothes we lived in were horrible! and when we wanted to enjoy a really delightful hour we would set to work imagining a great, bright, clean shop, where the walls were hung with nothing but new, clean, soft woollen clothes, from which we could pick out everything we wanted. Only to think of shirts, vests, drawers, soft and warm woollen trousers, deliciously comfortable jerseys, and then clean woollen stockings and warm felt slippers--could anything more delightful be imagined? And then a Turkish bath! We would sit up side by side in our sleeping-bag for hours at a time and talk of all these things. They seemed almost unimaginable. Fancy being able to throw away all the heavy, oily rags we had to live in, glued as they were to our bodies! Our legs suffered most; for there our trousers stuck fast to our knees, so that when we moved they abraded and tore the skin inside our thighs till it was all raw and bleeding. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping these sores from becoming altogether too ingrained with fat and dirt, and had to be perpetually washing them with moss, or a rag from one of the bandages in our medicine-bag, and a little water, which I warmed in a cup over the lamp. I have never before understood what a magnificent invention soap really is. We made all sorts of attempts to wash the worst of the dirt away; but they were all equally unsuccessful. Water had no effect upon all this grease; it was better to scour one's self with moss and sand. We could find plenty of sand in the walls of the hut, when we hacked the ice off them. The best method, however, was to get our hands thoroughly lubricated with warm bear's blood and train-oil, and then scrub it off again with moss. They thus became as white and soft as the hands of the most delicate lady, and we could scarcely believe that they belonged to our own bodies. When there was none of this toilet preparation to be had, we found the next best plan was to sc.r.a.pe our skin with a knife.

If it was difficult to get our own bodies clean, it was a sheer impossibility as regards our clothes. We tried all possible ways; we washed them both in Eskimo fashion and in our own; but neither was of much avail. We boiled our shirts in the pot hour after hour, but took them out only to find them just as full of grease as when we put them in. Then we took to wringing the train-oil out of them. This was a little better; but the only thing that produced any real effect was to boil them, and then sc.r.a.pe them with a knife while they were still warm. By holding them in our teeth and our left hand and stretching them out, while we sc.r.a.ped them all over with the right hand, we managed to get amazing quant.i.ties of fat out of them; and we could almost have believed that they were quite clean when we put them on again after they were dry. The fat which we sc.r.a.ped off was, of course, a welcome addition to our fuel.

In the meanwhile our hair and beard grew entirely wild. It is true we had scissors and could have cut them; but as our supply of clothes was by no means too lavish, we thought it kept us a little warmer to have all this hair, which began to flow down over our shoulders. But it was coal-black like our faces, and we thought our teeth and the whites of our eyes shone with an uncanny whiteness, now that we could see each other again in the daylight of the spring. On the whole, however, we were so accustomed to each other's appearance that we really found nothing remarkable about it; and not until we fell in with other people and found that they were precisely of that opinion did we begin to recognize that our outer man was, perhaps, open to criticism.

It was a strange life, and in many ways it put our patience to a severe test; but it was not so unendurable as one might suppose. We at any rate thought that, all things considered, we were fairly well off. Our spirits were good the whole time; we looked serenely towards the future, and rejoiced in the thought of all the delights it had in store for us. We did not even have recourse to quarrelling to while away the time. After our return, Johansen was once asked how we two had got on during the winter, and whether we had managed not to fall out with each other; for it is said to be a severe test for two men to live so long together in perfect isolation. "Oh no," he answered, "we didn't quarrel; the only thing was that I had the bad habit of snoring in my sleep, and then Nansen used to kick me in the back." I cannot deny that this is the case; I gave him many a well-meant kick, but fortunately he only shook himself a little and slept calmly on.

Thus did our time pa.s.s. We did our best to sleep away as much as possible of it. We carried this art to a high pitch of perfection, and could sometimes put in as much as 20 hours' sleep in the 24. If any one still holds to the old superst.i.tion that scurvy is due to lack of exercise, he may look upon us as living evidences to the contrary; for all the time our health was excellent. As the light now began to return with the spring, however, we were more inclined to go out. Besides, it was not always so cold now, and we had to restrict our sleep a little. Then, too, the time for our departure was approaching, and we had plenty to occupy us in the way of preparation and so forth.

"Tuesday, February 25th. Lovely weather to be out in to-day; it is as though spring were beginning. We have seen the first birds--first a flock of half a score of little auks (Mergulus alle), then a flock of four; they came from the south along the land, evidently through the sound in the southeast, and disappeared behind the mountain crest to the northwest of us. Once more we heard their cheerful twittering, and it roused a responsive echo in the soul. A little later we heard it again, and then it seemed as if they were perched on the mountain above us. It was the first greeting from life. Blessed birds, how welcome you are!

"It was quite like a spring evening at home; the sun's red glow faded little by little into golden clouds, and the moon rose. I went up and down outside, and dreamt I was in Norway on a spring evening.

"Wednesday, February 26th. To-day we ought to have had the sun again, but the sky was cloudy.

"Friday, February 28th. I have discovered that it is possible to get 12 threads out of a bit of twine, and am as happy as a king. We have thread enough now, and our wind clothes shall be whole once more. It is possible, too, to ravel out the canvas in the bags, and use it for thread.

"Sat.u.r.day, February 29th. The sun high above the glacier to-day. We must begin to economize in train-oil in earnest now if we are to get away from here, or there will be too little blubber for the journey.

"Wednesday, March 4th. When Johansen went out this morning the mountain above us was covered with little auks, which flew twittering from crest to crest, and sat all over the glacier. When we went out again later on they were gone.

"Friday, March 6th. We are faring badly now. We have to sleep in the dark to save oil, and can only cook once a day.

"Sunday, March 8th. Shot a bear. Johansen saw ten flocks of little auks flying up the sound this morning.

"Tuesday, March 10th. That bear the day before yesterday came in the nick of time, and an amusing fellow he was, too. We were very badly off both for blubber and meat, but most for blubber, and we were longing for a bear; we thought it must be about time for them to come again now. I had just spent Sunday morning in mending my wind trousers and patching my 'komager,' so as to be all ready if a bear should come. Johansen, whose cooking week it was, had been sewing a little too, and was just cleaning up the hut for Sunday and taking out some bone and meat--he had taken it as far as the pa.s.sage. But no sooner had he raised the skin over the opening out there than I heard him come tumbling head foremost in again over the bone heap and say, 'There's a bear standing just outside the door.' He s.n.a.t.c.hed his gun down from where it hung under the roof and again put his head into the pa.s.sage, but drew it quickly back, saying, 'He is standing close by, and must be thinking about coming in.' He managed to draw aside a corner of the door-skin, just enough to give him elbow-room to shoot; but it was not altogether easy. The pa.s.sage was narrow enough before, and now, in addition, it was full of all the backbones and sc.r.a.ps of meat. I saw him once lift the gun to his shoulder as he lay crouched together, but take it down again; he had forgotten to c.o.c.k it, and the bear had moved a little away, so that he only saw its muzzle and paws. But now it began sc.r.a.ping down in the pa.s.sage with one paw, as if it wanted to come in, and Johansen thought he must fire, even if he could not see. He put out his gun, pointing the barrel at the upper edge of the opening; he thought the shot must go right into the bear's breast, and so he fired. I heard a dull growl and the crunching of the snow under heavy footsteps, which went up towards the talus. Johansen loaded again, and put his head out at the opening. He said he saw it going up there, and that it didn't seem up to much, and forthwith he rushed after it. I, meanwhile, was lying head foremost in the bag, hunting for a sock which I could not find. At last, after a long search, I found it--on the floor, of course. Then I, too, was ready; and well equipped with gun, cartridges, knife, and file (to sharpen the seal-knife), I followed. I had my wind trousers on, too; they had been hanging unused all through the winter's cold, for want of thread to mend them with, but now, when the temperature was only -2C. (28.4 Fahr.), they of course had to come out. I followed the tracks; they went westward and northward along the sh.o.r.e. After a little while I at last met Johansen, who said that the bear lay farther on; he had at last got up to it, and finished it with a shot in the back. While he returned to fetch the sledges I went on to begin skinning. It was not to be done quite so quickly, however. As I approached the place where I thought it must be lying, I caught sight of the 'dead bear'

far ahead, trotting pretty briskly along the sh.o.r.e. Now and then it stopped to look round at me. I ran out on to the ice, to get outside it, if possible, and drive it back, so that we should not have so far to drag it. When I had kept on at this for some time, and was about on a level with it, it began clambering up the glacier and under some ragged rock. I had not reckoned on a 'dead bear' being able to do this, and the only thing was to stop it as soon as possible; but just as I got within range it disappeared over the crest. Soon I saw it again, a good deal higher up, and far out of range. It was craning its neck to see if I were following. I went up some way after it, but as it went on along the mountain more quickly than I could follow it in the deep snow, under which, moreover, there were crevices into which I kept falling up to my waist, I preferred to clamber down on to the fjord-ice again. In a little while the bear emerged from beneath a perpendicular cliff with a precipitous bit of talus beneath it. Here it began to crawl carefully along at the very top of the talus. I was now afraid of its lying down in a place like this, where we could not get at it, and even though the range was long I felt I must fire and see if I could not make it fall over. It did not look as if it had too firm a footing up there. It was blowing like anything here under the cliff, and I saw that the bear had to lie flat down and hold on with its claws when the worst gusts came, and then, too, it had only three paws to hold on with; the right fore-leg had been broken. I went up to a big stone at the lower edge of the talus, took good aim, and fired. I saw the bullet strike the snow just beneath it, but, whether it was. .h.i.t or not, it started up and tried to jump over a drift, but slipped, and rolled over. It tried several times to stop itself, but went on, until at last it found its feet and began to crawl slowly up again. Meanwhile I had loaded again, and the range was now shorter. I fired once more. It stood still a moment, then slipped farther and farther down the drift, at first slowly, then quicker and quicker rolling over and over. I thought it was coming straight towards me, but comforted myself with the thought that the stone I was standing behind was a good solid one. I squatted down and quickly put a fresh cartridge into my gun. The bear had now arrived at the talus below the drift; it came tearing down, together with stones and lumps of snow, in a series of leaps, each longer than the last. It was a strange sight, this great white body flying through the air, and turning somersault after somersault, as if it had been a piece of wood. At last it took one tremendous leap, and landed against an enormous stone. There was a regular crash, and there it lay close beside me; a few spasms pa.s.sed through it, and all was over. It was an uncommonly large he-bear, with a beautiful thick fur, which one might well wish to have at home; but the best thing of all was that it was very fat. It was so windy that the gusts were apt to blow you over if you were not prepared for them; but with the air so mild as it was, wind did not matter much; it would not have been such bad work to skin it had it not been that it was lying in a hollow and was so big that one man could not stir it. After a time, however, Johansen came, and at last we had got it dismembered, and had dragged it down to the ice and piled it on the sledge. We had not gone far, however, before we found that it would be too heavy for us to draw all at once against this wind and for such a distance. We laid half of it in a heap on the ice and spread the skin over it, intending to fetch it in a day or two; and even then we had difficulty enough in fighting on against the wind in the dark, so that it was late at night before we got home. But it was long since we had so much enjoyed our home-coming and being able to lie down in our bag and sup off fresh meat and hot soup."

We lived on that bear for six weeks.

"When Johansen was out this morning at six, he thought he saw little auks in millions flying up the sound. When we went out at two in the afternoon there was an unceasing pa.s.sage of flock after flock out to sea, and this continued until late in the afternoon. I saw two guillemots (Uria grylle), too, fly over our heads. They are the first we have seen. [67]

"Wednesday, March 25th. There is the same dark water-sky behind the promontory in the southwest, stretching thence westward almost to the extreme west. It has been there all through this mild weather, with southwesterly wind, from the very beginning of the month. There seems to be always open water there, for no sooner is the sky overcast than the reflection of water appears in that quarter.

"Thursday, April 2d. As I awoke at about eight this evening (our morning happened to fall in the evening to-day), we heard an animal rustling about outside and gnawing at something. We did not take much notice of it, thinking it was a fox, busy as usual with some meat up on the roof; and if it did seem to be making rather more noise than we had of late been accustomed to hear from foxes, yet it was scarcely noise enough to come from a bear. We did not take into consideration that the snow was not so cold and crackling now as it had been earlier in the winter. When Johansen went out to read the thermometer, he saw that it was a bear that had been there. It had gone round the hut, but had evidently not liked all the bears' carca.s.ses, and had not ventured past them up to the walrus blubber on the roof. At the opening of the pa.s.sage and the chimney it had sniffed hard, doubtless enjoying the delicious scent of burnt blubber and live human flesh. Then it had dragged a walrus hide that was lying outside a little way off and sc.r.a.ped the blubber off it. It had come from the ice obliquely up the hill following the scent, had then followed our footsteps from the hut to the place where we get salt-water, and had thence gone farther out over the ice until it had got scent of the walrus carca.s.ses out there, and was going towards them when Johansen caught sight of it. There it set to work to gnaw. As my gun was not fit to use at the moment, I took Johansen's and went alone. The bear was so busy gnawing and tearing pieces off the carca.s.s that I could get close up to it from behind without troubling about cover. Wishing to try how near I could get, I went on, and it was not until I was so near that I could almost touch it with the muzzle of my gun that it heard my steps, so busy had it been. It started round, gazed defiantly and astonished at me, and I saluted it with a charge right in its face. It threw up its head, sneezed, and blew blood out over the snow as it turned round again and galloped away. I was going to load again, but the cartridge jammed, and it was only by using my knife that I got it out. While I was doing this the bear had bethought himself, stopped, turned towards me, and snorted angrily, as he made up his mind to set upon me. He then went up on to a piece of ice close by, placed himself in an att.i.tude of defence, and stretched out his neck towards me, while the blood poured from his mouth and nostrils. The ball had gone right through his head, but without touching the brain. At last I had put another cartridge in, but had to give him five shots before I finally killed him. At each shot he fell, but got up again. I was not accustomed to the sights on Johansen's gun, and shot rather too high with it. At last I grew angry, rushed up to him, and finished him off."

We were beginning to be well supplied with blubber and meat for the journey south, and were now busy fitting ourselves out. And there was a great deal to be done. We had to begin to make ourselves new clothes out of our blankets; our wind clothes had to be patched and mended; our "komager" had to be soled, and we had to make socks and gloves out of bearskin. Then we had to make a light, good sleeping-bag of bearskin. All this would take time; and from this time we worked industriously at our needle from early morning till late at night. Our hut was suddenly transformed into a busy tailor's and shoemaker's workroom, where we sat side by side in the sleeping-bag upon the stone bed, and sewed and sewed and thought about the home-coming. We got thread by unravelling the cotton canvas of some provision bags. It need hardly be said that we were always talking about the prospects for our journey, and we found great comfort in the persistence of the dark sky in the southwest, which indicated much open water in that direction. I consequently thought we should have good use for our kayaks on the journey to Spitzbergen. I mention this open water several times in my journal. For instance, on April 12th: "Open water from the promontory in the southwest, northward as far as we can see." By this I mean, of course, that there was dark air over the whole horizon in this direction, showing clearly that there was open water there. This could not really surprise us; indeed, we ought to have been prepared for it, since Payer had found open water in the middle of April at a more northerly point on the west coast of Crown Prince Rudolf Land; and this had been continually in my thoughts all through the winter.

Another thing which made us believe in the close vicinity of the sea was that we were daily visited by ivory-gulls and fulmars (Procellaria glacialis), sometimes skuas also. We saw the first ivory-gulls on March 12th; throughout April they became more and more numerous, and soon we had plenty, both of them and of the burgomasters (Larus glaucus), sitting on our roof and round the hut, and drumming and pecking at the bones and remains of bears they found there. During the winter the continual gnawing of the foxes at the meat up there had entertained us, and reminded us that we were not quite forsaken by living things; when half asleep we could often imagine that we were in our beds at home and heard the rats and mice holding their revels in the attic above us. With the coming of daylight the foxes vanished. They now found plenty of little auks up in the clefts of the mountains, and had no longer to depend on our stone-hard frozen bear-meat. But now we had the drumming of the gulls instead; but they did not call up the same illusions, and, when we had them on the roof just over our heads, were often very tiresome, and even disturbed our sleep, so that we had to knock on the roof or go out and frighten them away, which, however, had the desired effect only for a few minutes.

On the 18th of April, while I was at work on some solar-time observations, I happened to look up, and was surprised to see a bear standing just opposite to me down on the ice by the sh.o.r.e. It must have been standing there a long time, wondering what I was about. I ran to the hut for a gun, but when I returned it took to its heels, and I was not eager to follow it.

"Sunday, April 19th. I was awakened at 7 o'clock this morning by the heavy steps of a bear outside. I wakened Johansen, who struck a light, and I got on my trousers and 'komager' and crept out with loaded gun. During the night a great deal of snow had, as usual, drifted over the skin that covered the opening, and was difficult to break through. At last, by kicking with all my might from below, I managed to knock the snow off, and put my head out into the daylight, which was quite dazzling after the darkness down in the hut. I saw nothing, but knew that the bear must be standing just behind the hut. Then I heard a snorting and blowing, and off went the brute in a clumsy bear's gallop up the slope. I did not know whether to shoot or not, and, to tell the truth, I had little inclination for bear-skinning in this bitter weather; but half at random I sent a shot after it, which of course missed, and I was not sorry. I did not shoot again; the one shot was enough to frighten it, and keep it from coming again for the present; we did not want it, if only it would leave our things in peace. At the cleft to the north it looked back, and then went on. As usual it had come against the wind, and must have scented us far west upon the ice. It had made several tacks to leeward to us, had been at the entrance of the hut, where it had left a visiting-card, and had then gone straight to a mound at the back of us, where there is some walrus blubber, surrounded on all sides by bears' carca.s.ses. These had no terrors for it. The bearskin which covered it, it had dragged a long way, but fortunately it had not succeeded in getting anything eaten before I came.

"Sunday, May 3d. When Johansen came in this morning he said he had seen a bear out on the ice; it was coming in. He went out a little later to look for it, but did not see it; it had probably gone into the bay to the north. We expected a visit from it, however, as the wind was that way; and as we sat later in the day, sewing as hard as we could sew, we heard heavy footsteps on the snow outside. They stopped, went backward and forward a little, and then something was drawn along, and all was quiet. Johansen crept cautiously out with his gun. When he put his head out of the hole, and his eyes had recovered from the first dazzling effects of the daylight, he saw the bear standing gnawing at a bearskin. A bullet through the head killed it on the spot It was a lean little animal, but worth taking, inasmuch as it saved us the trouble of thawing up carca.s.ses in order to cut provisions for our journey off them. Frozen stiff as they now are, we cannot cut them up outside in the cold, but have to bring them into the hut and soften them in the warmth before we can cut anything off them and this takes time. Two bears were here on a visit last night, but they turned back again at the sledge, which is stuck up on end in the moraine to the west of us, to serve as a stand for our thermometer."

As we were breakfasting on May 9th we again heard a bear's footstep outside, and being afraid that it was going to eat up our blubber, we had no other resource than to shoot it. We now had far more meat than we required, and did not care to use more cartridges on these animals for the present; but what grieved us most was the thought of all the beautiful bearskins which we should leave behind us. The time was now drawing near when we should break up our camp, and we worked eagerly at our preparations. Our clothes were now ready. The entry for Tuesday, May 12th, runs thus: "Took leave to-day of my old trousers. I was quite sad at the thought of the good service they had done; but they are now so heavy with oil and dirt that they must be several times their original weight, and, if they were squeezed, oil would ooze out of them." It was undeniably pleasant to put on the new, light, soft trousers of blanket, which were, to some extent, free from grease. As, however, this material was loose in texture, I was afraid it might wear out before we reached Spitzbergen, and we had therefore strengthened it both inside and outside with pieces of an old pair of drawers and of a shirt to protect it from wear.

While I was taking some observations outside the hut on Sat.u.r.day, May 16th, I saw a bear with quite a small young one out on the ice. I had just taken a turn out there, and they were examining my tracks. The mother went first, going up on to all the hummocks I had been upon, turning round and sniffing and looking at the tracks, and then descending again and going on. The tiny young one trotted along behind, exactly repeating the movements of its mother. At last they grew tired of this, and turned their steps towards the sh.o.r.e, disappearing behind the promontory to the north of us. Shortly after Johansen came out, and I told him about it, and said: "I expect we shall soon see them in the cleft up there, as the wind is that way." I had scarcely said it, when, looking across, we saw them both standing, stretching their necks, sniffing, and looking at us and the hut. We did not want to shoot them, as we had abundance of food; but we thought it would be amusing to go nearer and watch them, and then, if possible, frighten them sufficiently to keep them from visiting us in the night, so that we could sleep in peace. When we approached, the mother snorted angrily, turned several times as if to go, pushing the young one on first, but turned back again to observe us more closely. At last they jogged slowly off, continually hesitating and looking back. When they got down to the sh.o.r.e, they again went quite slowly among the hummocks, and I ran after them. The mother went first, the young one trotting after exactly in her footsteps. I was soon close to them, the mother saw me, started, and tried to get the young one to go with her; but I now discovered that it could run no faster than I could follow it. As soon as the mother saw this, she turned round, snorted, and came storming right at me. I halted, and prepared to shoot in case she should come too near, and in the meantime the little one tramped on as fast as it could. The mother halted at the distance of a few paces from me, snorted and hissed again, looked round at the young one, and when the latter had got a good way on trotted after it. I ran on again and overtook the young one, and again the mother went through the same manoeuvres; she seemed to have the greatest possible desire to strike me to the earth, but then the young one had again got ahead a little, and she did not wait to do it, but trotted after. This was repeated several times, and then they began to clamber up the glacier, the mother in front, the young one after. But the latter did not get on very fast; it trudged along as well as it could in its mother's footprints in the deep snow. It reminded me exactly of a child in trousers, as it clambered up and kept looking round, half frightened, half curious. It was touching to see how incessantly the mother turned round to hasten it on, now and then jogging it with her head, hissing and snorting all the while at me standing quietly below and looking on. When they reached the crest the mother stopped and hissed worse than ever, and when she had let the young one pa.s.s her, they both disappeared over the glacier, and I went back to continue my work.

For the last few weeks a feverish activity had reigned in our hut. We had become more and more impatient to make a start; but there was still a great deal to be done. We realized in bitter earnest that we had no longer the Fram's stores to fall back upon. On board the Fram there might be one or two things lacking; but here we lacked practically everything. What would we not have given even for a single box of dog-biscuits--for ourselves--out of the Fram's abundance? Where were we to find all that we needed? "For a sledge expedition one must lay in light and nourishing provisions, which at the same time afford as much variety as possible; one must have light and warm clothing, strong and practical sledges," etc., etc.--we knew by heart all these maxims of the Arctic text-book. The journey that lay before us, indeed, was not a very great one; the thing was simply to reach Spitzbergen and get on board the sloop; but it was long enough, after all, to make it necessary for us to take certain measures of precaution.

When we dug up the stores which we had buried at the beginning of the winter, and opened the bags, we found that there were some miserable remains of a commissariat which had once, indeed, been good, but was now for the most part mouldy and spoiled by the damp of the previous autumn. Our flour--our precious flour--had got mildewed, and had to be thrown away. The chocolate had been dissolved by the damp, and no longer existed; and the pemmican--well, it had a strange appearance, and when we tasted it--ugh! It too had to be thrown away. There remained a certain quant.i.ty of fish flour, some aleuronate flour, and some damp half-moulded bread, which we carefully boiled in train-oil, partly to dry it, as all damp was expelled by the boiling oil, partly to render it more nutritious by impregnating it with fat. We thought it tasted delightful, and preserved it carefully for festal occasions and times when all other food failed us. Had we been able to dry bear's flesh we should have managed very well; but the weather was too raw and cold, and the strips of flesh we hung up became only half dry. There was nothing for it but to lay in a store of as much cut-up raw flesh and blubber as we could carry with us. Then we filled the three tin boxes that had held our petroleum with train-oil, which we used as fuel. For cooking on the journey we would use the pot belonging to our cooking apparatus; and our lamp we used as a brazier in which to burn blubber and train-oil together. These provisions and this fuel did not const.i.tute a particularly light equipment; but it had this advantage, that we should probably be able to replace what we consumed of it by the way. It was to be hoped that we should find plenty of game.

Our short sledges were a greater trouble to us, for of course we could not get them lengthened now. If we failed to find open water all the way over to Spitzbergen, and were compelled to drag them over the uneven drift-ice, we could scarcely imagine how we should get on with the kayaks lying on these short sledges, without getting them knocked to pieces on hummocks and pressure-ridges; for the kayaks were supported only at the middle, while both ends projected far beyond the sledge, and at the slightest inequality these ends hacked against the ice, and sc.r.a.ped holes in the sail-cloth. We had to protect them well by lashing bearskins under them; and then we had to make the best grips we could contrive out of the scanty wood we had to fix on the sledges. This was no easy matter, for the great point was to make the grips high in order to raise the kayaks as much as possible and keep them clear of the ice; and then they had to be well lashed in order to keep their places. But we had no cord to lash them with, and had to make it for ourselves of raw bearskin or walrus hide, which is not the best possible material for lashings. This difficulty, too, we overcame, and got our kayaks to lie steadily and well. We of course laid the heaviest part of their cargo as much as possible in the middle, so that the ends should not be broken down by the weight. Our own personal equipment was quite as difficult to get in order. I have mentioned that we made ourselves new clothes, and this took a long time, with two such inexpert tailors; but practice made us gradually more skilful, and I think we had good reason to be proud of the results we finally achieved. When we at last put them on, the clothes had quite an imposing appearance--so we thought, at any rate. We saved them up, and kept them hanging as long as possible, in order that they might still be new when we started; Johansen, I believe, did not wear his new coat before we fell in with other people. He declared he must keep it fresh till we arrived in Norway; he could not go about like a pirate when he got among his countrymen again. The poor remains of underclothes that we possessed had, of course, to be thoroughly washed before we started, so that it should be possible to move in them without their rasping too many holes in our skin. The washing we accomplished as above described. Our foot-gear was in anything but a satisfactory condition. Socks, indeed, we could make of bearskin; but the worst of it was that the soles of our "komager" were almost worn out. We managed, however, to make soles of a sort out of walrus hide, by sc.r.a.ping about half its thickness away and then drying it over the lamp. With these soles we mended our "komager," after the fashion of the Finns; we had plenty of "senne" thread (sedge thread), and we managed to get our "komagers"

pretty well water-tight again. Thus, in spite of everything, we were tolerably well off for clothes, though it cannot be said that those we had were remarkable for their cleanliness. To protect us against wind and rain we had still our wind clothes, which we had patched and st.i.tched together as well as we could; but it took a terrible time, for the whole garments now consisted of scarcely anything else but patches and seams, and when you had sewed up a hole at one place they split at another the next time you put them on. The sleeves were particularly bad, and at last I tore both sleeves off my jacket, so that I should not have the annoyance of seeing them perpetually stripped away.

It was very desirable, too, that we should have a tolerably light sleeping-bag. The one we had brought with us no longer existed, as we had made clothes out of the blankets; so the only thing was to try and make as light a bag as possible out of bearskin. By picking out the thinnest skins we possessed, we managed to make one not so much heavier than the reindeer-skin bag which we had taken with us on leaving the Fram. A greater difficulty was to procure a practicable tent. The one we had had was out of the question. It had been worn and torn to pieces on our five months' journey of the year before, and what was left of it the foxes had made an end of, as we had had it lying spread over our meat and blubber heap in the autumn to protect it against the gulls. The foxes had gnawed and torn it in all directions, and had carried off great strips of it, which we found scattered around. We speculated a great deal as to how we could make ourselves a new tent. The only thing we could think of was to put our sledges, with the kayaks upon them, parallel to each other at the distance of about a man's height, then pile snow around them at the sides until they were closed in, lay our snowshoes and bamboo staffs across, and then spread our two sails, laced together, over the whole, so that they should reach the ground on both sides. In this way we managed to make ourselves a quite effective shelter, the kayaks forming the roof ridges, and the sails the side walls of the tent. It was not quite impervious to drifting snow, and we had usually a good deal of trouble in stopping up cracks and openings with our wind clothes and things of that sort.

But the most important part of our equipment was, after all, our firearms, and these, fortunately, we had kept in tolerably good order. We cleaned the rifles thoroughly and rubbed them with train-oil. We had also a little vaseline and gun-oil left for the locks. On taking stock of our ammunition, we found, to our joy, that we still had about 100 rifle cartridges and 110 small-shot cartridges. We had thus enough, if necessary, for several more winters.

CHAPTER IX

THE JOURNEY SOUTHWARD

At last, on Tuesday, May 19th, we were ready for the start. Our sledges stood loaded and lashed. The last thing we did was to photograph our hut, both outside and inside, and to leave in it a short report of our journey. It ran thus:

"Tuesday, May 19, 1896. We were frozen in north of Kotelnoi at about 78 43' north lat.i.tude, September 22, 1893. Drifted northwestward during the following year, as we had expected to do. Johansen and I left the Fram, March 14, 1895, at about 84 4' north lat.i.tude and 103 east longitude, [68] to push on northward. The command of the remainder of the expedition was transferred to Sverdrup. Found no land northward. On April 6, 1895, we had to turn back at 86 14'

north lat.i.tude and about 95 east longitude, the ice having become impa.s.sable. Shaped our course for Cape Fligely; but our watches having stopped, we did not know our longitude with certainty, and arrived on August 6, 1895, at four glacier-covered islands to the north of this line of islands, at about 81 30' north lat.i.tude, and about 7 E. of this place. Reached this place August 26, 1895, and thought it safest to winter here. Lived on bear's flesh. Are starting to-day southwestward along the land, intending to cross over to Spitzbergen at the nearest point. We conjecture that we are on Gillies Land.

"Fridtjof Nansen."