WE SAY GOOD-BYE TO THE "FRAM"
At last by midday on March 14th we finally left the Fram to the noise
of a thundering salute. For the third time farewells and mutual good
wishes were exchanged. Some of our comrades came a little way with us,
but Sverdrup soon turned back in order to be on board for dinner at
1 o'clock. It was on the top of a hummock that we two said good-bye
to each other; the Fram was lying behind us, and I can remember how I
stood watching him as he strode easily homeward on his snow-shoes. I
half wished I could turn back with him and find myself again in the
warm saloon; I knew only too well that a life of toil lay before us,
and that it would be many a long day before we should again sleep and
eat under a comfortable roof; but that that time was going to be so
long as it really proved to be, none of us then had any idea. We all
thought that either the expedition would succeed, and that we should
return home that same year, or--that it would not succeed.
A little while after Sverdrup had left us, Mogstad also found it
necessary to turn back. He had thought of going with us till the next
day, but his heavy wolfskin trousers were, as he un-euphemistically
expressed it, "almost full of sweat, and he must go back to the fire
on board to get dry." Hansen, Henriksen, and Pettersen were then the
only ones left, and they labored along, each with his load on his
back. It was difficult for them to keep up with us on the flat ice,
so quickly did we go; but when we came to pressure-ridges we were
brought to a standstill and the sledges had to be helped over. At one
place the ridge was so bad that we had to carry the sledges a long
way. When, after considerable trouble, we had managed to get over
it, Peter shook his head reflectively, and said to Johansen that we
should meet plenty more of the same kind, and have enough hard work
before we had eaten sufficient of the loads to make the sledges run
lightly. Just here we came upon a long stretch of bad ice, and Peter
became more and more concerned for our future; but towards evening
matters improved, and we advanced more rapidly. When we stopped at
6 o'clock the odometer registered a good 7 miles, which was not so
bad for a first day's work. We had a cheerful evening in our tent,
which was just about big enough to hold all five. Pettersen, who had
exerted himself and become over-heated on the way, shivered and groaned
while the dogs were being tied up and fed, and the tent pitched. He,
however, found existence considerably brighter when he sat inside it,
in his warm wolfskin clothes, with a pot of smoking chocolate before
him, a big lump of butter in one hand and a biscuit in the other, and
exclaimed, "Now I am living like a prince!" He thereafter discoursed
at length on the exalting thought that he was sitting in a tent in
the middle of the Polar Sea. Poor fellow, he had begged and prayed to
be allowed to come with us on this expedition; he would cook for us
and make himself generally useful, both as a tinsmith and blacksmith;
and then, he said, three would be company. I regretted that I could
not take more than one companion, and he had been in the depths of
woe for several days, but now found comfort in the fact that he had,
at any rate, come part of the way with us, and was out on this great
desert sea, for, as he said, "not many people have done that."
The others had no sleeping-bag with them, so they made themselves a
cozy little hut of snow, into which they crawled in their wolfskin
garments, and had a tolerably good night. I was awake early the next
morning; but when I crept out of the tent I found that somebody else
was on his legs before me, and this was Pettersen, who, awakened by
the cold, was now walking up and down to warm his stiffened limbs. He
had tried it now, he said; he never should have thought it possible
to sleep in the snow, but it had not been half bad. He would not
quite admit that he had been cold, and that that was the reason why
he had turned out so early. Then we had our last pleasant breakfast
together, got the sledges ready, harnessed the dogs, shook hands
with our companions, and, without many words being uttered on either
side, started out into solitude. Peter shook his head sorrowfully
as we went off. I turned round when we had gone some little way,
and saw his figure on the top of the hummock; he was still looking
after us. His thoughts were probably sad; perhaps he believed that
he had spoken to us for the last time.
We found large expanses of flat ice, and covered the ground quickly,
farther and farther away from our comrades, into the unknown, where
we two alone and the dogs were to wander for months. The Fram's
rigging had disappeared long ago behind the margin of the ice. We
often came on piled-up ridges and uneven ice, where the sledges had
to be helped and sometimes carried over. It often happened, too,
that they capsized altogether, and it was only by dint of strenuous
hauling that we righted them again. Somewhat exhausted by all this
hard work, we stopped finally at 6 o'clock in the evening, and had
then gone about 9 miles during the day. They were not quite the
marches I had reckoned on, but we hoped that by degrees the sledges
would become lighter and the ice better to travel over. The latter,
too, seems to have been the case at first. On Sunday, March 17th, I
say in my diary: "The ice appears to be more even the farther north
we get; came across a lane, however, yesterday which necessitated
a long detour. [10] At half-past six we had done about 9 miles. As
we had just reached a good camping-ground, and the dogs were tired,
we stopped. Lowest temperature last night, -45° Fahr. (-42.8° C.)."
The ice continued to become more even during the following days, and
our marches often amounted to 14 miles or more in the day. Now and
then a misfortune might happen which detained us, as, for instance,
one day a sharp spike of ice which was standing up cut a hole in a sack
of fish flour, and all the delicious food ran out. It took us more
than an hour to collect it all again and repair the damages. Then
the odometer got broken through being jammed in some uneven ice,
and it took some hours to mend it by a process of lashing. But on
we went northward, often over great, wide ice-plains which seemed
as if they must stretch right to the Pole. Sometimes it happened
that we passed through places where the ice was "unusually massive,
with high hummocks, so that it looked like undulating country covered
with snow." This was undoubtedly very old ice, which had drifted in
the Polar Sea for a long time on its way from the Siberian Sea to
the east coast of Greenland, and which had been subjected year after
year to severe pressure. High hummocks and mounds are thus formed,
which summer after summer are partially melted by the rays of the
sun, and again in the winters covered with great drifts of snow, so
that they assume forms which resemble ice-hills rather than piles of
sea-ice resulting from upheaval.
Wednesday, March 20th, my diary says: "Beautiful weather for travelling
in, with fine sunsets; but somewhat cold, particularly in the bag,
at nights (it was -41.8° and -43.6° Fahr., or -41° and -42° C.). The
ice appears to be getting more even the farther we advance, and in
some places it is like travelling over 'inland ice.' If this goes
on the whole thing will be done in no time." That day we lost our
odometer, and as we did not find it out till some time afterwards,
and I did not know how far we might have to go back, I thought it was
not worth while to return and look for. It was the cause, however,
of our only being able subsequently to guess approximately at the
distance we had gone during the day. We had another mishap, too,
that day. This was that one of the dogs (it was "Livjægeren") had
become so ill that he could not be driven any longer, and we had to
let him go loose. It was late in the day before we discovered that he
was not with us; he had stopped behind at our camping-ground when we
broke up in the morning, and I had to go back after him on snow-shoes,
which caused a long delay.
"Thursday, March 21st. Nine in the morning, -43.6° Fahr., or -42°
C. (Minimum in the night, -47.2° Fahr., or -44° C.) Clear, as it has
been every day. Beautiful, bright weather; glorious for travelling
in, but somewhat cold at nights, with the quicksilver continually
frozen. Patching Finn shoes in this temperature inside the tent,
with one's nose slowly freezing away, is not all pure enjoyment.
"Friday, March 22d. Splendid ice for getting over; things go better
and better. Wide expanses, with a few pressure-ridges now and then,
but passable everywhere. Kept at it yesterday from about half-past
eleven in the morning to half-past eight at night; did a good 21 miles,
I hope. We should be in latitude 85°. The only disagreeable thing
about it now is the cold. Our clothes are transformed more and more
into a cuirass of ice during the day, and wet bandages at night. The
blankets likewise. The sleeping-bag gets heavier and heavier from the
moisture which freezes on the hair inside. The same clear, settled
weather every day. We are both longing now for a change; a few clouds
and a little more mildness would be welcome." The temperature in the
night, -44.8° Fahr. (-42.7° C.). By an observation which I took later
in the forenoon, our latitude that day proved to be 85° 9' N.
"Saturday, March 23d. On account of observation, lashing the loads
on the sledges, patching bags, and other occupations of a like kind,
which are no joke in this low temperature, we did not manage to get
off yesterday before 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We stuck to it till
nine in the evening, when we stopped in some of the worst ice we have
seen lately. Our day's march, however, had lain across several large
tracts of level ice, so I think that we made 14 miles or so all the
same. We have the same brilliant sunshine; but yesterday afternoon
the wind from the northeast, which we have had for the last few days,
increased, and made it rather raw.
"We passed over a large frozen pool yesterday evening; it looked
almost like a large lake." It could not have been long since this
was formed, as the ice on it was still quite thin. It is wonderful
that these pools can form up there at that time of the year.
From this time forward there was an end of the flat ice, which it
had been simple enjoyment to travel over; and now we had often great
difficulties to cope with. On Sunday, March 24th, I write: "Ice not
so good; yesterday was a hard day, but we made a few miles--not more,
though, than seven, I am afraid. This continual lifting of the heavily
loaded sledges is calculated to break one's back; but better times
are coming, perhaps. The cold is also appreciable, always the same;
but yesterday it was increased by the admixture of considerable wind
from the northeast. We halted about half-past nine in the evening. It
is perceptible how the days lengthen, and how much later the sun sets;
in a few days' time we shall have the midnight sun.
"We killed 'Livjægeren' yesterday evening, and hard work it was
skinning him." This was the first dog which had to be killed; but
many came afterwards, and it was some of the most disagreeable work
we had on the journey, particularly now at the beginning, when it
was so cold. When this first dog was dismembered and given to the
others, many of them went supperless the whole night in preference
to touching the meat. But as the days went by and they became more
worn out, they learned to appreciate dog's flesh, and later we were
not even so considerate as to skin the butchered animal, but served
it hair and all.
The following day the ice was occasionally somewhat better; but as
a rule it was bad, and we became more and more worn out with the
never-ending work of helping the dogs, righting the sledges every
time they capsized, and hauling them, or carrying them bodily, over
hummocks and inequalities of the ground. Sometimes we were so sleepy in
the evenings that our eyes shut and we fell asleep as we went along. My
head would drop, and I would be awakened by suddenly falling forward on
my snow-shoes. Then we would stop, after having found a camping-ground
behind a hummock or ridge of ice, where there was some shelter from
the wind. While Johansen looked after the dogs, it generally fell to
my lot to pitch the tent, fill the cooker with ice, light the burner,
and start the supper as quickly as possible. This generally consisted
of "lobscouse" one day, made of pemmican and dried potatoes; another
day of a sort of fish rissole substance known as "fiskegratin" in
Norway, and in this case composed of fish-meal, flour, and butter. A
third day it would be pea, bean, or lentil soup, with bread and
pemmican. Johansen preferred the "lobscouse," while I had a weakness
for the "fiskegratin." As time went by, however, he came over to my way
of thinking, and the "fiskegratin" took precedence of everything else.
As soon as Johansen had finished with the dogs, and the different
receptacles containing the ingredients and eatables for breakfast
and supper had been brought in, as well as our bags with private
necessities, the sleeping-bags were spread out, the tent door carefully
shut, and we crept into the bag to thaw our clothes. This was not very
agreeable work. During the course of the day the damp exhalations of
the body had little by little become condensed in our outer garments,
which were now a mass of ice and transformed into complete suits of
ice-armor. They were so hard and stiff that if we had only been able
to get them off they could have stood by themselves, and they crackled
audibly every time we moved. These clothes were so stiff that the arm
of my coat actually rubbed deep sores in my wrists during our marches;
one of these sores--the one on the right hand--got frost-bitten, the
wound grew deeper and deeper, and nearly reached the bone. I tried
to protect it with bandages, but not until late in the summer did it
heal, and I shall probably have the scar for life. When we got into our
sleeping-bags in the evening our clothes began to thaw slowly, and on
this process a considerable amount of physical heat was expended. We
packed ourselves tight into the bag, and lay with our teeth chattering
for an hour, or an hour and a half, before we became aware of a little
of the warmth in our bodies which we so sorely needed. At last our
clothes became wet and pliant, only to freeze again a few minutes after
we had turned out of the bag in the morning. There was no question of
getting these clothes dried on the journey so long as the cold lasted,
as more and more moisture from the body collected in them.
How cold we were as we lay there shivering in the bag, waiting for
the supper to be ready! I, who was cook, was obliged to keep myself
more or less awake to see to the culinary operations, and sometimes
I succeeded. At last the supper was ready, was portioned out, and,
as always, tasted delicious. These occasions were the supreme moments
of our existence--moments to which we looked forward the whole day
long. But sometimes we were so weary that our eyes closed, and we
fell asleep with the food on its way to our mouths. Our hands would
fall back inanimate with the spoons in them and the food fly out on
the bag. After supper we generally permitted ourselves the luxury of
a little extra drink, consisting of water, as hot as we could swallow
it, in which whey-powder had been dissolved. It tasted something like
boiled milk, and we thought it wonderfully comforting; it seemed to
warm us to the very ends of our toes. Then we would creep down into
the bag again, buckle the flap carefully over our heads, lie close
together, and soon sleep the sleep of the just. But even in our dreams
we went on ceaselessly, grinding at the sledges and driving the dogs,
always northward, and I was often awakened by hearing Johansen calling
in his sleep to "Pan," or "Barrabas," or "Klapperslangen": "Get on,
you devil, you! Go on, you brutes! Sass, sass! [11] Now the whole
thing is going over!" and execrations less fit for reproduction,
until I went to sleep again.
In the morning I, as cook, was obliged to turn out to prepare the
breakfast, which took an hour's time. As a rule, it consisted one
morning of chocolate, bread, butter, and pemmican; another of oatmeal
porridge, or a compound of flour, water, and butter, in imitation of
our "butter-porridge" at home. This was washed down with milk, made
of whey-powder and water. The breakfast ready, Johansen was roused;
we sat up in the sleeping-bag, one of the blankets was spread out as
a table-cloth, and we fell to work. We had a comfortable breakfast,
wrote up our diaries, and then had to think about starting. But how
tired we sometimes were, and how often would I not have given anything
to be able to creep to the bottom of the bag again and sleep the
clock round. It seemed to me as if this must be the greatest pleasure
in life, but our business was to fight our way northward--always
northward. We performed our toilets, and then came the going out
into the cold to get the sledges ready, disentangle the dogs' traces,
harness the animals, and get off as quickly as possible. I went first
to find the way through the uneven ice, then came the sledge with my
kayak. The dogs soon learned to follow, but at every unevenness of
the ground they stopped, and if one could not get them all to start
again at the same time by a shout, and so pull the sledge over the
difficulty, one had to go back to beat or help them, according as
circumstances necessitated. Then came Johansen with the two other
sledges, always shouting to the dogs to pull harder, always beating
them, and himself hauling to get the sledges over the terrible ridges
of ice. It was undeniable cruelty to the poor animals from first to
last, and one must often look back on it with horror. It makes me
shudder even now when I think of how we beat them mercilessly with
thick ash sticks when, hardly able to move, they stopped from sheer
exhaustion. It made one's heart bleed to see them, but we turned our
eyes away and hardened ourselves. It was necessary; forward we must go,
and to this end everything else must give place. It is the sad part
of expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better
feelings, until only hard-hearted egoism remains. When I think of all
those splendid animals, toiling for us without a murmur, as long as
they could strain a muscle, never getting any thanks or even so much
as a kind word, daily writhing under the lash until the time came when
they could do no more and death freed them from their pangs--when I
think of how they were left behind, one by one, up there on those
desolate ice-fields, which had been witness to their faithfulness
and devotion, I have moments of bitter self-reproach. It took us two
alone such a long time to pitch the tent, feed the dogs, cook, etc.,
in the evening, and then break up again and get ready in the morning,
that the days never seemed long enough if we were to do proper day's
marches, and, besides, get the sleep we required at night. But when
the nights became so light, it was not so necessary to keep regular
hours any longer, and we started when we pleased, whether it was night
or day. We stopped, too, when it suited us, and took the sleep which
might be necessary for ourselves and the dogs. I tried to make it a
rule that our marches were to be of nine or ten hours' duration. In
the middle of the day we generally had a rest and something to eat--as
a rule, bread-and-butter, with a little pemmican or liver pâté. These
dinners were a bitter trial. We used to try and find a good sheltered
place, and sometimes even rolled ourselves up in our blankets, but
all the same the wind cut right through us as we sat on the sledges
eating our meal. Sometimes, again, we spread the sleeping-bag out on
the ice, took our food with us, and crept well in, but even then did
not succeed in thawing either it or our clothes. When this was too
much for us we walked up and down to keep ourselves warm, and ate our
food as we walked. Then came the no less bitter task of disentangling
the dogs' traces, and we were glad when we could get off again. In
the afternoon, as a rule, we each had a piece of meat-chocolate.
Most Arctic travellers who have gone sledge journeys have complained
of the so-called Arctic thirst, and it has been considered an almost
unavoidable evil in connection with a long journey across wastes of
snow. It is often increased, too, by the eating of snow. I had prepared
myself for this thirst, from which we had also suffered severely when
crossing Greenland, and had taken with me a couple of india-rubber
flasks, which we filled with water every morning from the cooker, and
which by carrying in the breast could be protected from the cold. To my
great astonishment, however, I soon discovered that the whole day would
often pass by without my as much as tasting the water in my flask. As
time went by, the less need did I feel to drink during the day, and at
last I gave up taking water with me altogether. If a passing feeling
of thirst made itself felt, a piece of fresh ice, of which, as a rule,
there was always some to be found, was sufficient to dispel it. [12]
The reason why we were spared this suffering, which has been one of
the greatest hardships of many sledge expeditions, must be attributed
in a great measure to our admirable cooking apparatus. By the help
of this we were able, with the consumption of a minimum of fuel,
to melt and boil so much water every morning that we could drink all
we wished. There was even some left over, as a rule, which had to be
thrown away. The same thing was generally the case in the evening.
"Friday, March 29th. We are grinding on, but very slowly. The ice is
only tolerable, and not what I expected from the beginning. There are
often great ridges of piled-up ice of dismal aspect, which take up a
great deal of time, as one must go on ahead to find a way, and, as a
rule, make a greater or less detour to get over them. In addition, the
dogs are growing rather slow and slack, and it is almost impossible to
get them on. And then this endless disentangling of the hauling-ropes,
with their infernal twists and knots, which get worse and worse to
undo! The dogs jump over and in between one another incessantly,
and no sooner has one carefully cleared the hauling-ropes than they
are twisted into a veritable skein again. Then one of the sledges is
stopped by a block of ice. The dogs howl impatiently to follow their
companions in front; then one bites through a trace and starts off
on his own account, perhaps followed by one or two others, and these
must be caught and the traces knotted; there is no time to splice them
properly, nor would it be a very congenial task in this cold. So we
go on when the ice is uneven, and every hour and a half, at least,
have to stop and disentangle the traces.
"We started yesterday about half-past eight in the morning, and stopped
about five in the afternoon. After dinner the northeasterly wind,
which we have had the whole time, suddenly became stronger, and the
sky overcast. We welcomed it with joy, for we saw in it the sign of
a probable change of weather and an end to this perpetual cold and
brightness. I do not think we deceived ourselves either. Yesterday
evening the temperature had risen to -29.2° Fahr. (-34° C.), and we
had the best night in the bag we have had for a long time. Just now,
as I am getting the breakfast ready, I see that it is clear again,
and the sun is shining through the tent wall.
"The ice we are now travelling over seems, on the whole, to be old;
but sometimes we come across tracts, of considerable width, of uneven
new ice, which must have been pressed up a considerable time. I cannot
account for it in any other way than by supposing it to be ice from
great open pools which must have formed here at one time. We have
traversed pools of this description, with level ice on them, several
times." That day I took a meridian observation, which, however, did
not make us farther north than 85° 30'. I could not understand this;
thought that we must be in latitude 86°, and, therefore, supposed
there must be something wrong with the observation.
"Saturday, March 30th. Yesterday was Tycho Brahe's day. At first
we found much uneven ice, and had to strike a devious route to
get through it, so that our day's march did not amount to much,
although we kept at it a long time. At the end of it, however, and
after considerable toil, we found ourselves on splendid flat ice,
more level than it had been for a long time. At last, then, we had
come on some more of the good old kind, and could not complain
of some rubble and snow-drifts here and there; but then we were
stopped by some ugly pressure-ridges of the worst kind, formed by the
packing of enormous blocks. The last ridge was the worst of all, and
before it yawned a crack in the thick ice about 12 feet deep. When
the first sledge was going over all the dogs fell in and had to be
hauled up again. One of them--'Klapperslangen'--slipped his harness
and ran away. As the next sledge was going over it fell in bodily,
but happily was not smashed to atoms, as it might have been. We had
to unload it entirely in order to get it up again, and then reload,
all of which took up a great deal of time. Then, too, the dogs had to
be thrown down and dragged up on the other side. With the third sledge
we managed better, and after we had gone a little way farther the
runaway dog came back. At last we reached a camping-ground, pitched
our tent, and found that the thermometer showed -45.4° Fahr. (-43°
C.). Disentangling dog-traces in this temperature with one's bare,
frost-bitten, almost skinless hands is desperate work. But finally we
were in our dear bag, with the 'Primus' singing cozily, when, to crown
our misfortunes, I discovered that it would not burn. I examined it
everywhere, but could find nothing wrong. Johansen had to turn out
and go and fetch the tools and a reserve burner while I studied the
cooker. At last I discovered that some ice had got in under the lid,
and this had caused a leakage. Finally we got it to light, and at 5
o'clock in the morning the pea-soup was ready, and very good it was. At
three in the afternoon I was up again cooking. Thank Heaven, it is warm
and comfortable in the bag, or this sort of life would be intolerable!
"Sunday, March 31st. Yesterday, at last, came the long-wished-for
change of weather, with southerly wind and rising temperature. Early
this morning the thermometer showed -22° Fahr. (-30° C.), regular
summer weather, in fact. It was, therefore, with lightened hearts
that we set off over good ice and with the wind at our backs. On
we went at a very fair pace, and everything was going well, when a
lane suddenly opened just in front of the first sledge. We managed
to get this over by the skin of our teeth; but just as we were going
to cross the lane again after the other sledges, a large piece of ice
broke under Johansen, and he fell in, wetting both legs--a deplorable
incident. While the lane was gradually opening more and more, I went
up and down it to find a way over, but without success. Here we were,
with one man and a sledge on one side, two sledges and a wet man
on the other, with an ever-widening lane between. The kayaks could
not be launched, as, through the frequent capsizing of the sledges,
they had got holes in them, and for the time being were useless. This
was a cheerful prospect for the night, I on one side with the tent,
Johansen, probably frozen stiff, on the other. At last, after a long
detour, I found a way over; and the sledges were conveyed across. It
was out of the question, however, to attempt to go on, as Johansen's
nether extremities were a mass of ice and his overalls so torn that
extensive repairs were necessary."