Chelyuskin reaches the cape—The Laptefs—Deschnef's voyage through Bering Strait—NordenskiÖld's voyages to the Yenesei—The Siberian tundra—The voyage of the Vega—NordenskiÖld rounds Cape Chelyuskin—Endeavour to reach the Siberian Islands—Liakhoff's discovery—The Vega passes the Cape North of Captain Cook—Frozen in within six miles of Cape Serdze Kamen—Completes the North-east Passage—Nansen's voyage—The Fram—Her drift in the ice—Nansen and Johansen start for the Pole—They reach 86° 13´ 6?—Their journey to Frederick Jackson Island—The meeting with Jackson—Sverdrup's voyage to Spitsbergen.

The tundras and shores of Siberia abound with obstacles to exploration, and yet a third of the threshold of the Polar regions has been surveyed along their line. No spot remains unvisited on the northern margin of the Asiatic mainland, the northernmost point of which is Cape Chelyuskin in 77° 36·8´, so that the Arctic Circle sweeps inland for 770 miles to the south of it—in other words the cape is practically half-way between the Circle and the Pole.

It was chiefly from the land that the northern coast-line was surveyed by the Russians, whose Arctic work has been immense and thorough, though not marked by any striking discoveries. Cape Chelyuskin was first reached, in May, 1742, by the explorer whose name it bears, after a sledge journey from the Chatanga, he being at the time second in command to Khariton Laptef, whose first expedition in 1739 ended in the loss of his ship three hundred miles from his winter quarters, to which he had to travel on foot, losing twelve men by cold and exhaustion on the way. Within the preceding four years the survey of the coast west of it had been completed in four stages—from Archangel to Yalmal (that is Land's End); from Yalmal to the Obi; from the Obi to the Yenesei; from the Yenesei to Cape Sterlegof. In 1735 Pronchistschef, from the Lena, failed to round Cape Chelyuskin from the east, and returned to the Olenek to die but two days before his young wife, who was his companion on his perilous voyage. Two years afterwards Dmitri Laptef began his explorations east of the Lena which took him to Cape Baranoff, thus joining up to the discoveries of the sable-hunters made a century before, including those of Deschnef, who, in 1648, sailed from the Kolyma to Kamchatka and went through Bering Strait more than thirty years before Bering was born. Thus the route of the North-east Passage was known, although no man had travelled the whole way either by land or sea, before the task was undertaken by NordenskiÖld.

To begin with, NordenskiÖld made two voyages to the Yenesei. In the first voyage he left Tromsoe in the Proeven on the 14th of June, 1875, and reached what he named Dickson Harbour at the mouth of the Yenesei on the 15th of August. Sending back the Proeven, which returned through Matyushin Shar, he, with Lundstrom the botanist and Stuxberg the zoologist, and three walrus-hunters, embarked in a boat they had brought out with them and proceeded up the estuary into the river; and during the first six hundred miles they landed only twice. On the last day of the month they caught up a steamer on which they became passengers.

"We were yet," says NordenskiÖld, "far to the north of the Arctic Circle, and as many perhaps imagine that the little-known region we were now travelling through, the Siberian tundra, is a desert wilderness covered either by ice and snow, or by an exceedingly scanty moss vegetation, it perhaps may not be out of place to say that this is by no means the case. On the contrary, we saw snow during our journey up the Yenesei only at one place, in a deep valley cleft some fathoms in breadth, and the vegetation, especially on the islands which are overflowed during the spring floods, is distinguished by a luxuriance to which I have seldom seen anything comparable. Already had the fertility of the soil and the immeasurable extent and richness in grass of the pastures drawn forth from one of our walrus-hunters, a middle-aged man who is owner of a little patch of ground among the fells of Northern Norway, a cry of envy at the splendid land our Lord had given the Russian, and of astonishment that no creature pastured, no scythe mowed, the grass. Daily and hourly we heard the same cry repeated, and even in louder tones, when some weeks after we came to the grand old forests between Yeneseisk and Turuchansk, or to the nearly uninhabited plains on the other side of Krasnojarsk covered with deep black earth, equal without doubt in fertility to the best parts of Scania, and in extent surpassing the whole Scandinavian peninsula. This judgment formed on the spot by a genuine though illiterate agriculturist is not without interest in forming an idea of the future importance of Siberia."

In fact, Siberia is particularly rich in mineral and agricultural wealth, and this voyage, which opened up the route to and from Europe by the natural outlets to the north, was of such commercial promise that the explorer received for it the special thanks of the Russian Government. As, however, there were people who looked upon it as an exceptional voyage in an exceptional year, NordenskiÖld next season took another voyage to the river, this time in the Ymer, carrying the first instalment of merchandise so as to begin the trade; and he was followed in a few weeks by Captain Joseph Wiggins, in the Thames, whose subsequent voyages made the northern route well known.

Assured by the experience gained in these voyages that the North-east Passage was possible to a steam vessel of moderate size, NordenskiÖld, in 1878, was enabled to fit out the Vega, and sailed from Tromsoe on the 31st of July. Three other vessels accompanied her, two bound for the Yenesei, one for the Lena, the rendezvous being Khabarova. All went well. On the 9th of August the Fraser and Express proceeded up the Yenesei to discharge their cargoes and return to Europe in safety; next day the Vega and Lena left for the eastward, and, after some risky navigation among islands and through fog, lay for four days in Actinia Haven, between Taimyr Island and the mainland, vainly waiting for clear weather. Pushing on through fitful fog they sighted a promontory in the north-east gleaming in the sunshine, and rounding its western horn anchored in a bay open to the north and free from ice at the extremity of Cape Chelyuskin. With the rounding of the most northerly point of the Old World the first object of the expedition had been attained. The salute fired in honour of the event having frightened away the only polar bear who had stood watching the ship from the western horn, some of the party landed, the botanists to discover that all the plants of the peninsula had apparently been stopped on the outermost promontory when trying to migrate further north. The flora was not extensive—a few luxuriant lichens and twenty-three flowering plants, eight of them saxifrages, most of them with a tendency to form semi-globular tufts; the fauna consisted of the bear, a few seals, a walrus, two shoals of white whales, some ducks and geese, and a number of sandpipers. Not so long a list as was obtained at other landings, but by no means a bad one for the half-way house to the Pole.

After passing the cape the course was laid for the New Siberian Islands, but ice prevented progress in their direction beyond 77° 45´, the highest north of the voyage, and the ship had to work her way out by the route she went in, thus losing a day, which had serious consequences, though it proved the correctness of NordenskiÖld's theory that the water delivered by the Siberian rivers is, for a few months, of sufficiently high temperature to give a clear passage to vessels content to keep near the coast. On reaching the mouth of the Lena the ships parted company, Captain Johannsen taking the smaller steamer up the river as intended and bringing the news of the rounding of Cape Chelyuskin and the promise of the North-east Passage being accomplished in one season, which was not destined to be fulfilled.

Another attempt was then made by the Vega to reach the islands to the north, but after sighting the two most westerly of the group the shallow sea was too crowded with rotten ice, and an idea of landing on Liakhoff Island having to be given up for the same reason, the course was altered so as to take the ship round Svjatoi Nos (the Holy Cape), where in April, 1770, Liakhoff had noticed the mighty crowd of reindeer going south. Justly considering they must have come over the ice from some northern land, he went back on their tracks in a dog-sledge, discovering two of the most southerly islands, and obtaining from Catherine the Second as a reward the monopoly of hunting the foxes and collecting the ivory there from the fossil mammoths he found in abundance.

Forced to keep to the channel along the coast, which daily became narrower, the Vega reached Cape Chelagskoi, and when off this promontory NordenskiÖld saw the first natives during his voyage. Two boats built of skin almost exactly similar to the oomiaks, or women's boats, used by the Eskimos, came out to the ship, the men, women, and children in them intimating by shouts and gestures that they wished to come on board. The Vega was brought-to that they might do so, but as none of the Chukches could speak Russian and none of the Swedes knew Chukche, the interview was not so satisfactory as expected, though the universal language of pantomime with presents ensured a favourable termination.

On the 12th of September the Vega passed Irkaipii, the Cape North of Captain Cook, and by rounding it NordenskiÖld joined up with the westernmost limit of the Arctic discoveries of the great navigator. Cook tried to weather it in August, 1778, but was turned back by fog and snow, and thinking it was "not consistent with prudence to make any further attempts to find a passage into the Atlantic this year in any direction, so little was the prospect of succeeding," he sailed for Hawaii, where his intention of making the attempt the ensuing summer came to nought owing to his death.

On the 28th of September the Vega's progress for the year was arrested by her being frozen in for the winter on the eastern side of Kolyuchin Bay in the northernmost part of Bering Strait, only six miles of ice barring the way round Cape Serdze Kamen into the open sea. During her detention of two hundred and sixty-four days the scientific investigations of many kinds that were undertaken were of lasting importance, as they had been throughout, and when she was released on the 18th of July, 1879, to come home by way of Yokohama, the collections and records she brought with her were simply enormous. No better work with greater results was done by any Arctic expedition than during this successful voyage, which was too well managed to have much adventure. For it NordenskiÖld very justly claimed the reward of twenty-five thousand guilders offered in 1596 by the States-General of Holland, the endeavour to win which sent out Van Heemskerck, Barents, and Rijp.

We have seen how the Dutchmen built their house at Ice Haven mainly of the driftwood from the Siberian rivers. Similar wood from probably the same source is found on the shores of Greenland and of almost all the northerly islands of the Arctic Ocean. Further, the Greenland flora includes a series of Siberian plants apparently from seeds drifted there by some current. Not only do trees and seeds travel by water from Asia westward to America; at Godthaab, for instance, on the western coast of Greenland, there was found a throwing-stick of a shape and ornamentation used only by the Alaskan Eskimos; and three years after the foundering of the Jeannette to the north of the New Siberian Islands there were found on the south-west coast of Greenland a number of articles in the drift-ice that must have come from the sunken vessel. For these and other reasons it seemed clear to Fridtjof Nansen that a current flowed at some point between the Pole and Franz Josef Land from the Siberian Arctic Sea to the Greenland coast, and so he set to work to organise his daring expedition to strike this current well to the eastward, trusting to its mercies to take him to or near the Pole.

In 1893, when the Fram rounded Cape Chelyuskin, Nansen had found the Kara Sea almost as open as NordenskiÖld had done, but had met with more difficulties among the islands off the Taimyr Peninsula. A famous vessel, the Fram, the first of her kind, built specially for the ice to take her where it listed in the hope that she would drift to discovery like the Tegetthoff, and not to disaster like the Jeannette. The general idea was Nansen's, the carrying out of the idea was Colin Archer's. As Nansen says: "We must gratefully recognise that the success of the expedition was in no small degree due to this man." Plan after plan did he make of the projected ship, model after model did he prepare and abandon before he was satisfied: and never was a ship more honestly built. With her double-ended deck plan, with a side of such curve and slope that under ice pressure she would be lifted instead of crushed between the floes, and with bow, stern, and keel so rounded off that she would slip like an eel from the embrace of the ice, she was of such solidity as to withstand any pressure from any direction. Her stem of three stout oak beams, one inside the other, was four feet in thickness, protected with iron; her rudder-post and propeller-post, two feet across, had on either side a stout oak counter-timber following the curvature upwards and forming a double stern-post, with the planking cased with heavy iron plates; and between these timbers was a well for the screw and another for the rudder, so that each could be hoisted on deck, the rudder with the help of the capstan coming up in a few minutes. Her frames, ten inches thick and twenty-one wide, stood close together, carrying three layers of planking, giving altogether a side of two feet or more of solid wood, so shored and stayed for strength that the hold looked like a thicket of balks, joists, and stanchions. With a length of 128 feet over all, a breadth of thirty-six, a depth of seventeen, and a displacement of 800 tons, she was quite a multum-in-parvo engined with a 220 horse-power triple expansion, so contrived that in case of accident or for any other cause the cylinders could be used singly or two together. Rigged as a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner, with the mainmast much higher than the others—it being unusually high, for the crow's-nest on the main-topmast was 102 feet above the water—she proved equal to the demands on her, though in her case strength and warmth had to be thought of before weatherliness and speed. But her speed was not so poor, for when steaming and sailing after leaving Cape Chelyuskin on the 10th of September she was doing her nine knots.

The day after she had entered the NordenskiÖld Sea came a walrus-hunt, so graphically described by Nansen that we must find room for an extract. "It was," he says, "a lovely morning—fine, still weather; the walruses' guffaw sounded over to us along the clear ice surface. They were lying crowded together on a floe a little to landward of us, blue mountains glittering behind them in the sun. At last the harpoons were sharpened, guns and cartridges ready, and Henriksen, Juell, and I set off. There seemed to be a slight breeze from the south, so we rowed to the north side of the floe, to get to leeward of the animals. From time to time their sentry raised his head, but apparently did not see us. We advanced slowly, and soon were so near that we had to row very cautiously. Juell kept us going, while Henriksen was ready in the bow with a harpoon, and I behind him with a gun. The moment the sentry raised his head the oars stopped, and we stood motionless; when he sank it again, a few more strokes brought us nearer. Body to body they lay, close-packed on a small floe, old and young ones mixed. Enormous masses of flesh they were. Now and again one of the ladies fanned herself by moving one of her flippers backwards and forwards over her body; then she lay quiet again on her back or side. More and more cautiously we drew near. Whilst I sat ready with the gun, Henriksen took a good grip of the harpoon shaft, and as the boat touched the floe he rose, and off flew the harpoon. But it struck too high, glanced off the tough hide, and skipped over the backs of the animals. Now there was a pretty to do! Ten or twelve great weird faces glared upon us at once; the colossal creatures twisted themselves round with incredible celerity, and came waddling with lifted heads and hollow bellowings to the edge of the ice where we lay. It was undeniably an imposing sight; but I laid my gun to my shoulder and fired at one of the biggest heads. The animal staggered and then fell head foremost into the water. Now a ball into another head; this creature fell, too, but was able to fling itself into the sea. And now the whole flock dashed in, and we, as well as they, were hidden in the spray. It had all happened in a few seconds. But up they came again immediately round the boat, the one head bigger and uglier than the other—their young ones close beside them. They stood up in the water, bellowed and roared till the air trembled, threw themselves forward towards us, then rose up again, and new bellowings filled the air. Then they rolled over and disappeared with a splash, then bobbed up again. The water foamed and boiled for yards around—the ice-world that had been so still before seemed in a moment to have been transformed into a raging Bedlam. Any moment we might expect to have a walrus tusk or two through the boat or to be heaved up or capsized. Something of this kind was the very least that could happen after such a terrible commotion. But the hurly-burly went on and nothing came of it."

The Fram had to follow the coast owing to the thick pack barring the way across the sea. The mouth of the Chatanga was passed, then that of the Olenek, and then the influence of the warm water of the Lena being apparent by the clearance of the floes, the course was laid straight for the Pole in open water until 77° 44´ was reached, when, checked by the long compact edge of ice shining through the fog, the route became north-westerly until they stopped for fear they should get near land, which was the very thing they wished to avoid; and on the 25th of September in about 78½° north latitude—north-west of Sannikof Land—they were frozen in.

Preparations for wintering began. The rudder was hauled up, the engine was taken to pieces, each separate part oiled and laid away with the greatest care—for Amundsen looked after it as if it were his own child—a carpenter's shop was started in the hold, a smithy arranged first on deck and then on the ice. But it all had to be replaced, even the engine put together again, for the pack cleared away for a brief period, to return, when again the shiftings were made; and when the windmill was put up to drive the dynamo, the winter installation was in all senses complete.

Slowly the Fram drifted in her ice-berth, so slowly that at the end of twelve months she had moved from point to point only 189 miles, having returned no further west than the longitude of the Olenek; her highest north, attained on the 18th of June, being 81° 46´. In the main the drift was north-westerly, but three times it had boxed the compass in irregular loops, the only constant thing about it being that, in no matter what direction she was taken, the bow of the Fram always pointed south. Of grips she had many, some of the pressures were enormous, once they were severe enough to suggest measures for her abandonment, but she survived them all unscathed. Early in the drift it became apparent that the ice was packing twice and slacking twice in every twenty-four hours, and in this sea, as afterwards in the Atlantic area, the influence of the tides, particularly the spring tides, was unmistakable—as it was expected it would be—though in the deep Polar basin the wind had more effect; and, in truth, the wind was a factor throughout in the packing of the ice and in the drift's direction. One thing was clear, that the current was not taking the Fram across the North Pole, but about half-way between it and Spitsbergen; and if the Pole was to be reached some of the expedition must attempt to get there over the ice. This meant leaving the ship, going north, and returning to the nearest known land, for, owing to the irregularity of the drift, it was hopeless to think of again reaching the Fram. During the second winter the route of the ship trended more to the north, and, after a loop all round in January, she reached 84° 4´ on the 14th of March in the longitude of Cape Chelyuskin. Here Nansen and Lieutenant F. H. Johansen, who rather than not join the Fram had shipped in her as stoker, left the ship with three sledges, two kayaks, and twenty-eight dogs to go as far northward as they could, their expectation being that they would reach the Pole in fifty days. Had they remained in the ship until November they would have saved themselves trouble, for, as matters turned out, the embarrassing drift took the Fram within eight miles of the farthest north they attained after twenty-three days of strenuous endeavour.

The ice, fairly easy for a few days, soon became terrible in the difficulties it offered to progress over it, and the continual toil of hauling and carrying the sledges, and righting them when capsized, soon told on the two men to such an extent as to tire them out so thoroughly that sometimes in the evening they fell asleep as they went along. The cold, too, proved singularly searching and severe. During the course of the day the damp exhalations of the body little by little became condensed in their outer garments, which became transformed into suits of ice-armour, so hard that if they could have been got off they could have stood by themselves, and they crackled audibly at every movement. The clothes were so stiff that the sleeve of Nansen's coat rubbed deep sores in his wrist, one of which got frost-bitten, the wound growing deeper and deeper and nearly reaching the bone. "How cold we were," says Nansen, "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 all 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."

The further they went the worse became the conditions. On the 8th of April, with ridge after ridge and nothing but rubble to travel over, the work became so disheartening that Nansen went on ahead on his skis and from the highest hummocks viewed the state of affairs; and as far as the horizon, lay a chaos of such character that progress across was impracticable if he and Johansen were to return alive. Here, then, they stopped, this being their northernmost limit, 128 miles from the Fram, 260 miles from the Pole, latitude 86° 13·6´, longitude 95°.

To reach this point they had been travelling north-westwards for six days, the way due north being impassable; but on turning south they seemed to enter another country; so much did the going improve after the first mile that in three days they covered over forty miles. They were making for Petermann Land, which does not exist, or for the wide-stretching Franz Josef Land, also placed on the maps by Payer, which Jackson had been cutting up into fragments while the Fram was in the ice. Further south difficulties thickened ahead of them till the road became almost as bad as that to the north. Before they reached land the hundred days they had allowed themselves had increased to more than half as many again, their dogs had been killed one by one to yield food for the rest, until only two remained; Nansen was helpless with rheumatism for two days; and Johansen was nearly killed by a bear. Through a chain of disasters caused by storms and fogs and snow and the state of the ice, they threaded their way, sometimes by sledge, sometimes by kayak, through mazes of open channels, leaping from floe to floe and ferrying back to get their baggage over, hundreds of yards on mere brash, dragging the sledges after them in constant fear of their capsizing into the water. Then the ice gave out and, taking to their kayaks, they sailed and paddled to what is now known as Frederick Jackson Island in the north of the Franz Josef Archipelago.

Here they wintered, quite at a loss at first to know where they were, owing to their watches having run down during a great effort of thirty-six hours at a stretch, so that they did not know their longitude, though they subsequently concluded they must be somewhere on Franz Josef Land within 140 miles of Eira Harbour. They built a hut and altogether lived passably well, there being no lack of food, thanks mainly to the bears, whose visits were embarrassing in their frequency though the visitors were not unwelcome when they came to stay.

On the 19th of May they set out for the south, down British Channel, with their sledges and kayaks, and five days afterwards, when off Cape M'Clintock, while Johansen was busy lashing the sail and mast securely to the deck of his kayak to prevent their being blown away, Nansen went on ahead to look for a camping ground and fell through a crack in the ice which had been hidden by the snow. He tried to get out, but with his skis firmly fastened could not pull them up through the rubble of ice which had fallen into the water on the top of them, and, being harnessed to the sledge, he could not turn round. Fortunately, as he fell, he had dug his staff into the ice on the opposite side of the crack, and holding himself up with its aid, and the arm he had got over the edge of the ice, he waited patiently for Johansen to come and pull him out. When he thought a long time had passed and felt the staff giving way and the water creeping further up his body, he called out but received no answer; and it was not until the water had reached his chest that Johansen came and pulled him out.

For a few days they were storm-bound. On the 3rd of June they started again down the channel, their whereabouts still a mystery to them, nothing in the least like it being on their map. Nine days afterwards, after rounding Cape Barents on Northbrook Island, the kayaks, which had been left moored to the edge of the ice, got adrift. Nansen, running down from the hummock, from which he had been looking round, threw off some of his clothes and sprang into the water. The wind was off the ice, and the kayaks with their high rigging were moving away as fast as he could swim. It seemed more than doubtful if he could reach them. But all their hope was there, all they had was on board; they had not even a knife with them, and whether he sank or turned back amounted to much the same thing. When he tired he turned over and swam on his back, and then he could see Johansen walking restlessly up and down on the ice, unable to do anything, and having the worst time he ever lived through. But the wind lulled, and when Nansen turned over he saw he was nearing the kayaks, and though his limbs were stiffening and losing all feeling, he put all the strength he could into his strokes, and eventually was able to reach them. He tried to pull himself up, but was so stiff with cold that he could not do so. For a moment he thought he was too late; but after a little he managed to swing one leg up on to the edge of the sledge, which lay on the deck, and in this way he scrambled on board. The kayaks were lashed together so as to form a double boat, and the only way in which, owing to his stiffness, he could paddle them was to take one or two strokes on one side and then step into the other kayak and take a few strokes on the other side. The return was consequently slow, but it was a return, though the ice was reached a long way from where the drifting had begun.

Next day but one came another perilous episode. "Towards morning," says Nansen, "we rowed for some time without seeing any walrus, and now felt more secure. Just then we saw a solitary rover pop up a little in front of us. Johansen, who was in front at the time, put in to a sunken ledge of ice; and although I really thought that this was caution carried to excess, I was on the point of following his example. I had not gone so far, however, when suddenly the walrus shot up beside me, threw himself on to the edge of the kayak, took hold further over the deck with one flipper, and as it tried to upset me aimed a blow at the kayak with its tusks. I held on as tightly as possible, so as not to be upset into the water, and struck at the animal's head with the paddle as hard as I could. It took hold of the kayak once more and tilted me up so that the deck was almost under water, then let go and raised itself right up. I seized my gun, but at the same moment it turned round and disappeared as quickly as it had come. The whole thing had happened in a moment, and I was just going to remark to Johansen that we were fortunate in escaping so easily from that adventure, when I noticed that my legs were wet. I listened, and now heard the water trickling into the kayak under me. To turn and run her in on to the sunken ledge of ice was the work of a moment, but I sank there. The thing was to get out and on to the ice, the kayak filling all the time. The edge of the ice was high and loose, but I managed to rise; and Johansen, by tilting the sinking kayak over to starboard, so that the leak came above the water, managed to bring her to a place where the ice was low enough to admit of our drawing her up. All I possessed was floating about inside, soaked through. So here we lie, with all our worldly goods spread out to dry and a kayak that must be mended before we can face the walrus again. It is a good big rent that he has made, at least six inches long; but it is fortunate that it was no worse."

The kayak was mended, and, after a long rest, it was past noon on the 17th of June when Nansen turned out to prepare breakfast. After doing so he went up on a hummock to look around. Flocks of little auks were flying overhead, and, amid the confused noise of their calls, he heard a couple of barks from a dog. Thinking he was mistaken he waited for a time, and then the barking was unmistakable, bark after bark, one of a deeper tone than the other. He shouted to Johansen, who started up from the sleeping-bag incredulous. The sound ceased, and, breakfast over, Nansen went forth to investigate. Soon he came on the footprints of a dog or wolf, and then, still doubting, he heard a distant yelping that certainly came not from a wolf. Making his way among the hummocks, he heard a shout from a human voice, a strange voice—the first for three years. Running up on to a hummock he shouted with all his might. Back came a shout in reply; and among the hummocks he caught sight of a dog, and further off a man walked into view. The man spoke to the dog in English. Thinking he recognised Jackson, Nansen raised his hat as he met him, and they shook hands heartily.

The contrast could not have been greater. One the well-groomed, civilised European in a check suit and rubber water-boots, the other in dirty rags black with oil and soot, with long matted hair and shaggy beard, and a face in which the complexion was undiscernible through the accumulations which a winter's endeavours, including scrapings with a knife, had failed to remove. As they talked they had turned to go inland. Suddenly Jackson stopped, and, looking the new arrival straight in the face, said—

"Aren't you Nansen?"

"Yes, I am."

"By Jove! I'm damned glad to see you."

And seizing his hand he shook it again, his whole face beaming with a smile of welcome and delight at the unexpected meeting; and needless to say, both Nansen and Johansen received the warmest of welcomes from all at Elmwood. The Windward was then on her way, and when she arrived the two Norsemen from the farthest north went in her to Vardoe, where they landed on the 13th of August.

Meanwhile the Fram had continued her leisurely drift, north-west, south-west, north-west, west, then all round the compass, still with her head pointing south, until on the 15th of November she reached 85° 55·5´ in longitude 66° 31´, thus giving Captain Otto Sverdrup the honour of attaining the highest north in a ship. Another winter was passed in her ice-berth, during which she moved westerly. In February came another complete triangle in her course, after which she went south-west, and on the 16th of May turned due south. Then, in the later days of the month with the southerly drift continuing and open water on ahead, Sverdrup resolved to set her free by mines, and on the 3rd of June, as a result of the blastings, she gave a lurch, settled a little deeper at the stern and moved away from the edge of the ice until the hawsers tautened. But, though she was afloat, the ice around still kept her captive, and in the pool she drifted straight towards Spitsbergen.

Again and again was steam got up and endeavour made to break a way out, but day after day elapsed, and it was not until the 13th of August that she passed through the last floes into open water, and her thirty-five months of imprisonment came to an end. Making for Danes Island in Spitsbergen, she was there boarded by AndrÉe, who was then preparing for his disappearance in the balloon voyage to the Pole. Going on direct to Skjervoe in Norway, Sverdrup landed at two o'clock in the morning to wake up the telegraphist, who told him that Nansen had reached Vardoe a week before and was then at Hammerfest and probably leaving for Tromsoe. For Tromsoe Sverdrup started, after telegraphing to Nansen. And there, at four o'clock in the afternoon of the 25th of August, 1896, Sir George Baden-Powell's yacht Otaria, with Nansen and Johansen on board, glided alongside the Fram, the good little ship looking much weather-beaten though none the worse for such a task of strength and endurance as had been set no other in the story of the sea.