So summer was over, and our second autumn and winter was beginning. But we were now more inured to the trials of patience attendant on this life, and time passed quickly. Besides, I myself was now taken up with new plans and preparations. Allusion has several times been made to the fact that we had, during the course of the summer, got everything into readiness for the possibility of having to make our way home across the ice. Six double kayaks had been built, the hand-sledges were in good order, and careful calculation had been made of the amount of food, clothing, fuel, etc., that it would be necessary to carry. But I had also quietly begun to make preparations for my own meditated expedition north. In August, as already mentioned, I had begun to work at a single kayak, the framework made of bamboo. I had said nothing about my plan yet, except a few words to Sverdrup; it was impossible to tell how far north the drift would take us, and so many things might happen before spring.

In the meantime life on board went on as usual. There were the regular observations and all sorts of occupations, and I myself was not so absorbed in my plans that I did not find time for other things too. Thus I see from my diary that in the end of August and in September I must have been very proud of a new invention that I made for the galley. All last year we had cooked on a particular kind of copper range, heated by petroleum lamps. It was quite satisfactory, except that it burned several quarts of petroleum a day. I could not help fearing sometimes that our lighting supply might run short, if the expedition lasted longer than was expected, and always wondered if it would not be possible to construct an apparatus that would burn coal-oil—“black-oil,” as we call it on board—of which we had 20 tons, originally intended for the engine. And I succeeded in making such an apparatus. On August 30th I write: “Have tried my newly invented coal-oil apparatus for heating the range, and it is beyond expectation successful. It is splendid that we shall be able to burn coal-oil in the galley. Now there is no fear of our having to cry ourselves blind for lack of light by-and-by. This adds more than 4000 gallons to our stock of oil; and we can keep all our fine petroleum now for lighting purposes, and have lamps for many a year, even if we are a little extravagant. The 20 tons of coal-oil ought to keep the range going for 4 years, I think.

“The contrivance is as simple as possible. From a reservoir of oil a pipe leads down and into the fireplace; the oil drips down from the end of this pipe into an iron bowl, and is here sucked up by a sheet of asbestos, or by coal ashes. The flow of oil from the pipe is regulated by a fine valve cock. To insure a good draught, I bring a ventilating pipe from outside right by the range door. Air is pressed through this by a large wind-sail on deck, and blows straight on to the iron bowl, where the oil burns briskly with a clear, white flame. Whoever lights the fire in the morning has only to go on deck and see that the wind-sail is set to the wind, to open the ventilator, to turn the cock so that the oil runs properly, and then set it burning with a scrap of paper. It looks after itself, and the water is boiling in twenty minutes or half an hour. One could not have anything much easier than this, it seems to me. But of course in our, as in other communities, it is difficult to introduce reforms; everything new is looked upon with suspicion.”

Somewhat later I write of the same apparatus: “We are now using the galley again, with the coal-oil fire; the moving down took place the day before yesterday,1 and the fire was used yesterday. It works capitally; a three-foot wind is enough to give a splendid draught. The day before yesterday, when I was sitting with some of the others in the saloon in the afternoon, I heard a dull report out in the galley, and said at once that it sounded like an explosion. Presently Pettersen2 stuck a head in at the door as black as a sweep’s, great lumps of soot all over it, and said that the stove had exploded right into his face; he was only going to look if it was burning rightly, and the whole fiendish thing flew out at him. A stream of words not unmingled with oaths flowed like peas out of a sack, while the rest of us yelled with laughter. In the galley it was easy to see that something had happened; the walls were covered with soot in lumps and stripes pointing towards the fireplace. The explanation of the accident was simple enough. The draught had been insufficient, and a quantity of gas had formed which had not been able to burn until air was let in by Pettersen opening the door.

“This is a good beginning. I told Pettersen in the evening that I would do the cooking myself next day, when the real trial was to be made. But he would not hear of such a thing; he said ‘I was not to think that he minded a trifle like that; I might trust to its being all right’—and it was all right. From that day I heard nothing but praise of the new apparatus, and it was used until the Fram was out in the open sea again.

“Thursday, September 6th. 81° 13.7' north latitude. Have I been married five years to-day? Last year this was a day of victory—when the ice-fetters burst at Taimur Island—but there is no thought of victory now; we are not so far north as I had expected; the northwest wind has come again, and we are drifting south. And yet the future does not seem to me so long and so dark as it sometimes has done. Next September 6th ... can it be possible that then every fetter will have burst, and we shall be sitting together talking of this time in the far north and of all the longing, as of something that once was and that will never be again? The long, long night is past; the morning is just breaking, and a glorious new day lies before us. And what is there against this happening next year? Why should not this winter carry the Fram west to some place north of Franz Josef Land?... and then my time has come, and off I go with dogs and sledges—to the north. My heart beats with joy at the very thought of it. The winter shall be spent in making every preparation for that expedition, and it will pass quickly.

“I have already spent much time on these preparations. I think of everything that must be taken, and how it is to be arranged, and the more I look at the thing from all points of view, the more firmly convinced do I become that the attempt will be successful, if only the Fram can get north in reasonable time, not too late in the spring. If she could just reach 84° or 85°, then I should be off in the end of February or the first days of March, as soon as the daylight comes, after the long winter night, and the whole would go like a dance. Only four or five months, and the time for action will have come again. What joy! When I look out over the ice now it is as if my muscles quivered with longing to be striding off over it in real earnest—fatigue and privation will then be a delight. It may seem foolish that I should be determined to go off on this expedition, when, perhaps, I might do more important work quietly here on board. But the daily observations will be carried on exactly the same.

“I have celebrated the day by arranging my workroom for the winter. I have put in a petroleum stove, and expect that this will make it warm enough even in the coldest weather, with the snowballs that I intend to build round the outside of it, and a good roof-covering of snow. At least, double the amount of work will be done if this cabin can be used in winter, and I can sit up here instead of in the midst of the racket below. I have such comfortable times of it now, in peace and quietness, letting my thoughts take their way unchecked.

“Sunday, September 9th. 81° 4' north latitude. The midnight sun disappeared some days ago, and already the sun sets in the northwest; it is gone by 10 o’clock in the evening, and there is once more a glow over the eternal white. Winter is coming fast.

“Another peaceful Sunday, with rest from work, and a little reading. Out snow-shoeing to-day I crossed several frozen-over lanes, and very slight packing has begun here and there. I was stopped at last by a broad open lane lying pretty nearly north and south; at places it was 400 to 500 yards across, and I saw no end to it either north or south. The surface was good; one got along quickly, with no exertion at all when it was in the direction of the wind.

“This is undeniably a monotonous life. Sometimes it feels to me like a long dark night, my life’s ‘Ragnarok,’3 dividing it into two.... ‘The sun is darkened, the summers with it, all weather is weighty with woe’; snow covers the earth, the wind whistles over the endless plains, and for three years this winter lasts, till comes the time for the great battle, and ‘men tramp Hel’s way.’ There is a hard struggle between life and death; but after that comes the reign of peace. The earth rises from the sea again, and decks itself anew with verdure. ‘Torrents roar, eagles hover over them, watching for fish among the rocks,’ and then ‘Valhalla,’ fairer than the sun, and long length of happy days.

“Pettersen, who is cook this week, came in here this evening, as usual, to get the bill of fare for next day. When his business was done, he stood for a minute, and then said that he had had such a strange dream last night; he had wanted to be taken as cook with a new expedition, but Dr. Nansen wouldn’t have him.

“‘And why not?’

“‘Well, this was how it was: I dreamed that Dr. Nansen was going off across the ice to the Pole with four men, and I asked to be taken, but you said that you didn’t need a cook on this expedition, and I thought that was queer enough, for you would surely want food on this trip as well. It seemed to me that you had ordered the ship to meet you at some other place; anyhow, you were not coming back here, but to some other land. It’s strange that one can lie and rake up such a lot of nonsense in one’s sleep.’

“‘That was perhaps not such very great nonsense, Pettersen; it is quite possible that we might have to make such an expedition; but if we did, we should certainly not come back to the Fram.’

“‘Well, if that happened, I would ask to go, sure enough; for it’s just what I should like. I’m no great snow-shoer, but I would manage to keep up somehow.’

“‘That’s all very well; but there’s a great deal of weary hard work on a journey like that; you needn’t think it’s all pleasure.’

“‘No, no one would expect that; but it would be all right if I might only go.’

“‘But there might be worse than hardships, Pettersen. It would more than likely mean risking your life.’

“‘I don’t care for that either. A man has got to die sometime.’

“‘Yes, but you don’t want to shorten your life.’

“‘Oh, I would take my chance of that. You can lose your life at home, too, though, perhaps, not quite so easily as here. But if a man was always to be thinking about that he would never do anything.’

“‘That’s true. Anyhow, he would not need to come on an expedition like this. But remember that a journey northward over the ice would be no child’s play.’

“‘No, I know that well enough, but if it was with you I shouldn’t be afraid. It would never do if we had to manage alone. We’d be sure to go wrong; but it’s quite a different thing, you see, when there is one to lead that you know has been through it all before.’

“It is extraordinary the blind faith such men have in their leader! I believe they would set off without a moment’s reflection if they were asked to join in an expedition to the Pole now, with black winter at the door. It is grand as long as the faith lasts, but God be merciful to him on the day that it fails!

“Saturday, September 15th. This evening we have seen the moon again for the first time—beautiful full moon—and a few stars were also visible in the night sky, which is still quite light.

“Notices were posted up to-day in several places. They ran as follows:

“Some of these regulations may seem to infringe on the principle of equality which I have been so anxious to maintain; but these seem to me the best arrangements I can make to insure the good of all—and that must come before everything else.

“Friday, September 21st. We have had tremendously strong wind from the northwest and north for some days, with a velocity at times of 39 and 42 feet. During this time we must have drifted a good way south. ‘The Radical Right’ had got hold of the helm, said Amundsen; but their time in power was short; for it fell calm yesterday, and now we are going north again, and it looks as if the ‘Left’ were to have a spell at the helm, to repair the wrongs done by the ‘Right.’

“Kennels for the dogs have been built this week—a row of splendid ice-houses along the port side of the ship; four dogs in each house; good warm winter quarters. In the meantime our eight little pups are thriving on board; they have a grand world to wander round—the whole fore-deck, with an awning over it. You can hear their little barks and yelps as they rush about among shavings, hand-sledges, the steam-winch, mill-axle, and other odds and ends. They play a little and they fight a little, and forward under the forecastle they have their bed among the shavings—a very cozy corner, where ‘Kvik’ lies stretched out like a lioness in all her majesty. There they tumble over each other in a heap round her, sleep, yawn, eat, and pull each other’s tails. It is a picture of home and peace here near the Pole which one could watch by the hour.

“Life goes its regular, even, uneventful way, quiet as the ice itself; and yet it is wonderful how quickly the time passes. The equinox has come, the nights are beginning to turn dark, and at noon the sun is only 9 degrees above the horizon. I pass the day busily here in the work cabin, and often feel as if I were sitting in my study at home, with all the comforts of civilization round me. If it were not for the separation, one could be as well off here as there. Sometimes I forget where I am. Not infrequently in the evening, when I have been sitting absorbed in work, I have jumped up to listen when the dogs barked, thinking to myself, who can be coming? Then I remember that I am not at home, but drifting out in the middle of the frozen Polar Sea, at the commencement of the second long Arctic night.

“The temperature has been down to 1.4° Fahr. below zero (-17° C.) to-day; winter is coming on fast. There is little drift just now, and yet we are in good spirits. It was the same last autumn equinox; but how many disappointments we have had since then! How terrible it was in the later autumn when every calculation seemed to fail, as we drifted farther and farther south! Not one bright spot on our horizon! But such a time will never come again. There may still be great relapses; there may be slow progress for a time; but there is no doubt as to the future; we see it dawning bright in the west, beyond the Arctic night.

“Sunday, September 23d. It was a year yesterday since we made fast for the first time to the great hummock in the ice. Hansen improved the occasion by making a chart of our drift for the year. It does not look so very bad, though the distance is not great; the direction is almost exactly what I had expected. But more of this to-morrow; it is so late that I cannot write about it now. The nights are turning darker and darker; winter is settling down upon us.

“Tuesday, September 25th. I have been looking more carefully at the calculation of our last year’s drift. If we reckon from the place where we were shut in on the 22d of September last year to our position on the 22d of September this year, the distance we have drifted is 189 miles, equal to 3° 9' latitude. Reckoning from the same place, but to the farthest north point we reached in summer (July 16th), makes the drift 225 miles, or 3° 46'. But if we reckon from our most southern point in the autumn of last year (November 7th) to our most northern point this summer, then the drift is 305 miles, or 5° 5'. We got fully 4° north, from 77° 43' to 81° 53'. To give the course of the drift is a difficult task in these latitudes, as there is a perceptible deviation of the compass with every degree of longitude as one passes east or west; the change, of course, given in degrees will be almost exactly the same as the number of degrees of longitude that have been passed. Our average course will be about N. 36° W. The direction of our drift is consequently a much more northerly one than the Jeannette’s was, and this is just what we expected; ours cuts hers at an angle of 59°. The line of this year’s drift continued will cut the northeast island of Spitzbergen, and take us as far north as 84° 7', in 75° east longitude, somewhere N.N.E. of Franz Josef Land. The distance by this course to the Northeast Island is 827 miles. Should we continue to progress only at the rate of 189 miles a year it would take us 4.4 years to do this distance. But assuming our progress to be at the rate of 305 miles a year, we shall do it in 2.7 years. That we should drift at least as quickly as this seems probable, because we can hardly now be driven back as we were in October last year, when we had the open water to the south and the great mass of ice to the north of us.

“The past summer seems to me to have proved that while the ice is very unwilling to go back south, it is most ready to go northwest as soon as there is ever so little easterly, not to mention southerly, wind. I therefore believe, as I always have believed, that the drift will become faster as we get farther northwest, and the probability is that the Fram will reach Norway in two years, the expedition having lasted its full three years, as I somehow had a feeling that it would. As our drift is 59° more northerly than the Jeannette’s, and as Franz Josef Land must force the ice north (taking for granted that all that comes from this great basin goes round to the north of Franz Josef Land), it is probable that our course will become more northerly the farther on we go, until we are past Franz Josef Land, and that we shall consequently reach a higher latitude than our drift so far would indicate. I hope 85° at least. Everything has come right so far; the direction of our drift is exactly parallel with the course which I conjectured to have been taken by the floe with the Jeannette relics, and which I pricked out on the chart prepared for my London Address.4 This course touched about 87½° north latitude. I have no right to expect a more northerly drift than parallel to this, and have no right to be anything but happy if I get as far. Our aim, as I have so often tried to make clear, is not so much to reach the point in which the earth’s axis terminates, as to traverse and explore the unknown Polar Sea; and yet I should like to get to the Pole, too, and hope that it will be possible to do so, if only we can reach 84° or 85° by March. And why should we not?

“Thursday, September 27th. Have determined that, beginning from to-morrow, every man is to go out snow-shoeing two hours daily, from 11 to 1, so long as the daylight lasts. It is necessary. If anything happened that obliged us to make our way home over the ice, I am afraid some of the company would be a terrible hinderance to us, unpractised as they are now. Several of them are first-rate snow-shoers, but five or six of them would soon be feeling the pleasures of learning; if they had to go out on a long course, and without snow-shoes, it would be all over with us.

“After this we used to go out regularly in a body. Besides being good exercise, it was also a great pleasure; every one seemed to thrive on it, and they all became accustomed to the use of the shoes on this ground, even though they often got them broken in the unevennesses of the pressure-ridges; we just patched and riveted them together to break them again.

“Monday, October 1st. We tried a hand-sledge to-day with a load of 250 pounds. It went along easily, and yet was hard to draw, because the snow-shoes were apt to slip to the side on the sort of surface we had. I almost believe that Indian snow-shoes would be better on this ground, where there are so many knobs and smooth hillocks to draw the sledges over. When Amundsen first began to pull the sledge he thought it was nothing at all; but when he had gone on for a time he fell into a fit of deep and evidently sad thought, and went silently home. When he got on board he confided to the others that if a man had to draw a load like that he might just as well lie down at once—it would come to the same thing in the end. That is how practice is apt to go. In the afternoon I yoked three dogs to the same little sledge with the 250-pound load, and they drew it along as if it were nothing at all.

“Tuesday October 2d. Beautiful weather, but coldish; 49° Fahr. of frost (-27° C.) during the night, which is a good deal for October, surely. It will be a cold winter if it goes on at the same rate. But what do we care whether there are 90° of frost or 120°? A good snow-shoeing excursion to-day. They are all becoming most expert now; but darkness will be on us presently, and then there will be no more of it. It is a pity; this exercise is so good for us—we must think of something to take its place.

“I have a feeling now as if this were to be my last winter on board. Will it really come to my going off north in spring? The experiment in drawing a loaded hand-sledge over this ice was certainly anything but promising; and if the dogs should not hold out, or should be of less use than we expect; and if we should come to worse ice instead of better—well, we should only have ourselves to trust to. But if we can just get so far on with the Fram that the distance left to be covered is at all a reasonable one, I believe that it is my duty to make the venture, and I cannot imagine any difficulty that will not be overcome when our choice lies between death—and onward and home!

“Thursday, October 4th. The ice is rather impassable in places, but there are particular lanes or tracts; taking it altogether, it is in good condition for sledging and snow-shoeing, though the surface is rather soft, so that the dogs sink in a little. This is probably chiefly owing to there having been no strong winds of late, so that the snow has not been well packed together.

“Life goes on in the regular routine; there is always some little piece of work turning up to be done. Yesterday the breaking in of the young dogs began.5 It was just the three—‘Barbara,’ ‘Freia,’ and ‘Susine.’ ‘Gulabrand’ is such a miserable, thin wretch that he is escaping for the present. They were unmanageable at first, and rushed about in all directions; but in a little while they drew like old dogs, and were altogether better than we expected. ‘Kvik,’ of course, set them a noble example. It fell to Mogstad’s lot to begin the training, as it was his week for looking after the dogs. This duty is taken in turns now, each man has his week of attending to them both morning and afternoon.

“It seems to me that a very satisfactory state of feeling prevails on board at present, when we are just entering on our second Arctic night, which we hope is to be a longer, and probably also a colder, one than any people before us have experienced. There is appreciably less light every day; soon there will be none; but the good spirits do not wane with the light. It seems to me that we are more uniformly cheerful than we have ever been. What the reason of this is I cannot tell; perhaps just custom. But certainly, too, we are well off—in clover, as the saying is. We are drifting gently, but it is to be hoped surely, on through the dark unknown Nivlheim, where terrified fancy has pictured all possible horrors. Yet we are living a life of luxury and plenty, surrounded by all the comforts of civilization. I think we shall be better off this winter than last.

“The firing apparatus in the galley is working splendidly, and the cook himself is now of opinion that it is an invention which approaches perfection. So we shall burn nothing but coal-oil there now; it warms the place well, and a good deal of the heat comes up here into the work-room, where I sometimes sit and perspire until I have to take off one garment after another, although the window is open, and there are 30 odd degrees of cold outside. I have calculated that the petroleum which this enables us to keep for lighting purposes only will last at least 10 years, though we burn it freely 300 days in the year. At present we are not using petroleum lamps at the rate assumed in my calculation, because we frequently have electric light; and then even here summer comes once a year, or, at any rate, something which we must call summer. Even allowing for accidents, such as the possibility of a tank springing a leak and the oil running out, there is still no reason whatever for being sparing of light, and every man can have as much as he wants. What this means can best be appreciated by one who for a whole year has felt the stings of conscience every time he went to work or read alone in his cabin, and burned a lamp that was not absolutely necessary, because he could have used the general one in the saloon.

“As yet the coals are not being touched, except for the stove in the saloon, where they are to be allowed to burn as much as they like this winter. The quantity thus consumed will be a trifle in comparison with our store of about 100 tons, for which we cannot well have any other use until the Fram once more forces her way out of the ice on the other side. Another thing that is of no little help in keeping us warm and comfortable is the awning that is now stretched over the ship.6 The only part I have left open is the stern, abaft the bridge, so as to be able to see round over the ice from there.

“Personally, I must say that things are going well with me; much better than I could have expected. Time is a good teacher; that devouring longing does not gnaw so hard as it did. Is it apathy beginning? Shall I feel nothing at all by the time ten years have passed? Oh! sometimes it comes on with all its old strength, as if it would tear me in pieces! But this is a splendid school of patience. Much good it does to sit wondering whether they are alive or dead at home; it only almost drives one mad.

“All the same, I never grow quite reconciled to this life. It is really neither life nor death, but a state between the two. It means never being at rest about anything or in any place—a constant waiting for what is coming; a waiting in which, perhaps, the best years of one’s manhood will pass. It is like what a young boy sometimes feels when he goes on his first voyage. The life on board is hateful to him; he suffers cruelly from all the torments of sea-sickness; and being shut in within the narrow walls of the ship is worse than prison; but it is something that has to be gone through. Beyond it all lies the south, the land of his youthful dreams, tempting with its sunny smile. In time he arises, half dead. Does he find his south? How often it is but a barren desert he is cast ashore on!

“Sunday, October 7th. It has cleared up this evening, and there is a starry sky and aurora borealis. It is a little change from the constant cloudy weather, with frequent snow-showers, which we have had these last days.

“Thoughts come and thoughts go. I cannot forget, and I cannot sleep. Everything is still; all are asleep. I only hear the quiet step of the watch on deck; the wind rustling in the rigging and the canvas, and the clock gently hacking the time in pieces there on the wall. If I go on deck there is black night, stars sparkling high overhead, and faint aurora flickering across the gloomy vault, and out in the darkness I can see the glimmer of the great monotonous plain of the ice: it is all so inexpressibly forlorn, so far, far removed from the noise and unrest of men and all their striving. What is life thus isolated? A strange, aimless process; and man a machine which eats, sleeps, awakes; eats and sleeps again, dreams dreams, but never lives. Or is life really nothing else? And is it just one more phase of the eternal martyrdom, a new mistake of the erring human soul, this banishing of one’s self to the hopeless wilderness, only to long there for what one has left behind? Am I a coward? Am I afraid of death? Oh, no! but in these nights such longing can come over one for all beauty, for that which is contained in a single word, and the soul flees from this interminable and rigid world of ice. When one thinks how short life is, and that one came away from it all of one’s own free will, and remembers, too, that another is suffering the pain of constant anxiety—‘true, true till death.’ ‘O mankind, thy ways are passing strange! We are but as flakes of foam, helplessly driven over the tossing sea.’

“Wednesday, October 10th. Exactly 33 years old, then. There is nothing to be said to that, except that life is moving on, and will never turn back. They have all been touchingly nice to me to-day, and we have held fÊte. They surprised me in the morning by having the saloon ornamented with flags. They had hung the ‘Union’ above Sverdrup’s place.7 We accused Amundsen of having done this, but he would not confess to it. Above my door and on over Hansen’s they had the pennant with Fram in big letters. It looked most festive when I came into the saloon, and they all stood up and wished me ‘Many happy returns.’ When I went on deck the flag was waving from the mizzenmast-head.

“We took a snow-shoeing excursion south in the morning. It was windy, bitter weather; I have not felt so cold for long. The thermometer is down to 24° Fahr. below zero (-31° C.) this evening; this is certainly the coldest birthday I have had yet. A sumptuous dinner: 1. Fish-pudding. 2. Sausages and tongue, with potatoes, haricot beans, and pease. 3. Preserved strawberries, with rice and cream; Crown extract of malt. Then, to every one’s surprise, our doctor began to take out of the pocket of the overcoat he always wears remarkable-looking little glasses—medicine-glasses, measuring-glasses, test-glasses—one for each man, and lastly a whole bottle of Lysholmer liqueur—real native Lysholmer—which awakened general enthusiasm. Two drams of that per man was not so bad, besides a quarter of a bottle of extract of malt. Coffee after dinner, with a surprise in the shape of apple-cake, baked by our excellent cook, Pettersen, formerly smith and engineer. Then I had to produce my cigars, which were also much enjoyed; and of course we kept holiday all the afternoon. At supper there was another surprise—a large birthday cake from the same baker, with the inscription ‘T. L. M. D.’ (Til lykke med dagen, the Norwegian equivalent for ‘Wishing a happy birthday’), ‘10.10.94.’ In the evening came pineapples, figs, and sweets. Many a worse birthday might be spent in lower latitudes than 81°. The evening is passing with all kinds of merriment; every one is in good spirits; the saloon resounds with laughter—how many a merry meeting it has been the scene of!

“But when one has said good-night and sits here alone, sadness comes; and if one goes on deck there are the stars high overhead in the clear sky. In the south is a smouldering aurora arch, which from time to time sends up streamers; a constant, restless flickering.

“We have been talking a little about this expedition, Sverdrup and I. When we were out on the ice in the afternoon he suddenly said, ‘Yes, next October you will, perhaps, not be on board the Fram.’ To which I had to answer that, unless the winter turned out badly, I probably should not. But still I cannot believe in this rightly myself.

“Every night I am at home in my dreams, but when the morning breaks I must again, like Helge, gallop back on the pale horse by the way of the reddening dawn, not to the joys of Valhalla, but to the realm of eternal ice.

“Friday, October 12th. A regular storm has been blowing from the E.S.E. since yesterday evening. Last night the mill went to bits; the teeth broke off one of the toothed wheels, which has been considerably worn by a year’s use. The velocity of the wind was over 40 feet this morning, and it is long since I have heard it blow as it is doing this evening. We must be making good progress north just now. Perhaps October is not to be such a bad month as I expected from our experiences of last year. Was out snow-shoeing before dinner. The snow was whistling about my ears. I had not much trouble in getting back; the wind saw to that. A tremendous snow squall is blowing just now. The moon stands low in the southern sky, sending a dull glow through the driving masses. One has to hold on to one’s cap. This is a real dismal polar night, such as one imagines it to one’s self sitting at home far away in the south. But it makes me cheerful to come on deck, for I feel that we are moving onward.

“Saturday, October 13th. Same wind to-day; velocity up to 39 feet and higher, but Hansen has taken an observation this evening in spite of it. He is, as always, a fine, indefatigable fellow. We are going northwest (81° 32' 8 north latitude, 118° 28' east longitude).

“Sunday, October 14th. Still the same storm going on. I am reading of the continual sufferings which the earlier Arctic explorers had to contend with for every degree, even for every minute, of their northward course. It gives me almost a feeling of contempt for us, lying here on sofas, warm and comfortable, passing the time reading and writing and smoking and dreaming, while the storm is tugging and tearing at the rigging above us and the whole sea is one mass of driving snow, through which we are carried degree by degree northward to the goal our predecessors struggled towards, spending their strength in vain. And yet....

“Monday, October 15th. Went snow-shoeing eastward this morning, still against the same wind and the same snowfall. You have to pay careful attention to your course these days, as the ship is not visible any great distance, and if you did not find your way back, well—But the tracks remain pretty distinct, as the snow-crust is blown bare in most places, and the drifting snow does not fasten upon it. We are moving northward, and meanwhile the Arctic night is making its slow and majestic entrance. The sun was low to-day; I did not see it because of banks of cloud in the south; but it still sent its light up over the pale sky. There the full moon is now reigning, bathing the great ice plain and the drifting snow in its bright light. How a night such as this raises one’s thoughts! It does not matter if one has seen the like a thousand times before; it makes the same solemn impression when it comes again; one cannot free one’s mind from its power. It is like entering a still, holy temple, where the spirit of nature hovers through the place on glittering silver beams, and the soul must fall down and adore—adore the infinity of the universe.

“Wednesday, October 17th. We are employed in taking deep-water temperatures. It is a doubtful pleasure at this time of year. Sometimes the water-lifter gets coated with ice, so that it will not close down below in the water, and has, therefore, to hang for ever so long each time; and sometimes it freezes tight during the observation after it is brought up, so that the water will not run out of it into the sample bottles, not to mention all the bother there is getting the apparatus ready to lower. We are lucky if we do not require to take the whole thing into the galley every time to thaw it. It is slow work; the temperatures have sometimes to be read by lantern light. The water samples are not so reliable, because they freeze in the lifter. But the thing can be done, and we must just go on doing it. The same easterly wind is blowing, and we are drifting onward. Our latitude this evening is about 81° 47' N.

“Thursday, October 18th. I continue taking the temperatures of the water, rather a cool amusement with the thermometer down to -29° C. (20.2° Fahr. below zero) and a wind blowing. Your fingers are apt to get a little stiff and numb when you have to manipulate the wet or ice-covered metal screws with bare hands and have to read off the thermometer with a magnifying-glass in order to insure accuracy to the hundredth part of a degree, and then to bottle the samples of water, which you have to keep close against your breast, to prevent the water from freezing. It is a nice business!

“There was a lovely aurora borealis at 8 o’clock this evening. It wound itself like a fiery serpent in a double coil across the sky. The tail was about 10° above the horizon in the north. Thence it turned off with many windings in an easterly direction, then round again, and westward in the form of an arch from 30° to 40° above the horizon, sinking down again to the west and rolling itself up into a ball, from which several branches spread out over the sky. The arches were in active motion, while pencils of streamers shot out swiftly from the west towards the east, and the whole serpent kept incessantly undulating into fresh curves. Gradually it mounted up over the sky nearly to the zenith, while at the same time the uppermost bend or arch separated into several fainter undulations, the ball in the northeast glowed intensely, and brilliant streamers shot upwards to the zenith from several places in the arches, especially from the ball and from the bend farthest away in the northeast. The illumination was now at its highest, the color being principally a strong yellow, though at some spots it verged towards a yellowish red, while at other places it was a greenish white. When the upper wave reached the zenith the phenomenon lost something of its brilliancy, dispersing little by little, leaving merely a faint indication of an aurora in the southern sky. On coming up again on deck later in the evening, I found nearly the whole of the aurora collected in the southern half of the sky. A low arch, 5° in height, could be seen far down in the south over the dark segment of the horizon. Between this and the zenith were four other vague, wavy arches, the topmost of which passed right across it; here and there vivid streamers shot flaming upward, especially from the undermost arch in the south. No arch was to be seen in the northern part of the sky, only streamers every here and there. To-night, as usual, there are traces of aurora to be seen over the whole sky; light mists or streamers are often plainly visible, and the sky seems to be constantly covered with a luminous veil,8 in which every here and there are dark holes.

“There is scarcely any night, or rather I may safely say there is no night, on which no trace of aurora can be discerned as soon as the sky becomes clear, or even when there is simply a rift in the clouds large enough for it to be seen; and as a rule we have strong light phenomena dancing in ceaseless unrest over the firmament. They mainly appear, however, in the southern part of the sky.

“Friday, October 19th. A fresh breeze from E.S.E. Drifting northward at a good pace. Soon we shall probably have passed the long-looked-for 82°, and that will not be far from 82° 27', when the Fram will be the vessel that will have penetrated farthest to the north on this globe. But the barometer is falling; the wind probably will not remain in that quarter long, but will shift round to the west. I only hope for this once the barometer may prove a false prophet. I have become rather sanguine; things have been going pretty well for so long; and October, a month which last year’s experience had made me dread, has been a month of marked advance, if only it doesn’t end badly.

“The wind to-day, however, was to cost a life. The mill, which had been repaired after the mishap to the cog-wheel the other day, was set going again. In the afternoon a couple of the puppies began fighting over a bone, when one of them fell underneath one of the cog-wheels on the axle of the mill, and was dragged in between it and the deck. Its poor little body nearly made the whole thing come to a standstill; and, unfortunately, no one was on the spot to stop it in time. I heard the noise, and rushed on deck; the puppy had just been drawn out nearly dead; the whole of its stomach was torn open. It gave a faint whine, and was at once put out of its misery. Poor little frolicsome creature! Only a little while ago you were gambolling around, enjoying an innocent romp with your brothers and sisters; then came the thigh-bone of a bear trundling along the deck from the galley; you and the others made a headlong rush for it, and now there you lie, cruelly lacerated and dead as a herring. Fate is inexorable!

“Sunday, October 31st. North latitude 82° 0.2'; east longitude 114° 9'. It is late in the evening, and my head is bewildered, as if I had been indulging in a regular debauch, but it was a debauch of a very innocent nature.

“A grand banquet to-day to celebrate the eighty-second degree of latitude. The observation gave 82° 0.2' last night, and we have now certainly drifted a little farther north. Honey-cakes (gingerbread) were baked for the occasion first-class honey-cakes, too, you may take my word for it; and then, after a refreshing snow-shoe run, came a festal banquet. Notices were stuck up in the saloon requesting the guests to be punctual at dinner-time, for the cook had exerted himself to the utmost of his power. The following deeply felt lines by an anonymous poet also appeared on a placard:

The lyric melancholy which here finds utterance must have been the outcome of many bitter disappointments, and furnishes a valuable internal evidence as to the anonymous author’s profession. Meanwhile the guests assembled with tolerable punctuality, the only exception being your humble servant, who was obliged to take some photographs in the rapidly waning daylight. The menu was splendid: 1. Ox-tail soup. 2. Fish-pudding, with melted butter and potatoes. 3. Turtle, with marrowfat pease, etc., etc. 4. Rice, with multer (cloudberries) and cream; Crown malt extract. After dinner, coffee and honey-cakes. After supper, which also was excellent, there was a call for music, which was liberally supplied throughout the whole evening by various accomplished performers on the organ, among whom Bentzen specially distinguished himself, his late experiences on the ice with the crank-handle9 having put him in first-rate training. Every now and then the music dragged a bit, as though it were being hauled up from an abyss some 1000 or 1500 fathoms deep; then it would quicken and get more lively, as it came nearer to the surface. At last the excitement rose to such a pitch that Pettersen and I had to get up and have a dance, a waltz and a polka or two; and we really executed some very tasteful pas de deux on the limited floor of the saloon. Then Amundsen also was swept into the mazes of the dance, while the others played cards. Meanwhile refreshments were served in the form of preserved peaches, dried bananas, figs, honey-cakes, etc., etc. In short, we made a jovial evening of it, and why should we not? We are progressing merrily towards our goal, we are already half-way between the New Siberian Islands and Franz Josef Land, and there is not a soul on board who doubts that we shall accomplish what we came out to do; so long live merriment!

“But the endless stillness of the polar night holds its sway aloft; the moon, half full, shines over the ice, and the stars sparkle brilliantly overhead; there are no restless northern lights, and the south wind sighs mournfully through the rigging. A deep, peaceful stillness prevails everywhere. It is the infinite loveliness of death—Nirvana.

“Monday, October 22d. It is beginning to be cold now; the thermometer was -34.6° C. (30.2° Fahr. below zero) last night, and this evening it is -36° C. (32.8 Fahr. below zero).

“A lovely aurora this evening (11.30). A brilliant corona encircled the zenith with a wreath of streamers in several layers, one outside the other; then larger and smaller sheaves of streamers spread over the sky, especially low down towards S.W. and E.S.E. All of them, however, tended upward towards the corona, which shone like a halo. I stood watching it a long while. Every now and then I could discern a dark patch in its middle, at the point where all the rays converged. It lay a little south of the Pole-star, and approached Cassiopeia in the position it then occupied. But the halo kept smouldering and shifting just as if a gale in the upper strata of the atmosphere were playing the bellows to it. Presently fresh streamers shot out of the darkness outside the inner halo, followed by other bright shafts of light in a still wider circle, and meanwhile the dark space in the middle was clearly visible; at other times it was entirely covered with masses of light. Then it appeared as if the storm abated, and the whole turned pale, and glowed with a faint whitish hue for a little while, only to shoot wildly up once more and to begin the same dance over again. Then the entire mass of light around the corona began to rock to and fro in large waves over the zenith and the dark central point, whereupon the gale seemed to increase and whirl the streamers into an inextricable tangle, till they merged into a luminous vapor, that enveloped the corona and drowned it in a deluge of light, so that neither it, nor the streamers, nor the dark centre could be seen—nothing, in fact, but a chaos of shining mist. Again it became paler, and I went below. At midnight there was hardly anything of the aurora to be seen.

“Friday, October 26th. Yesterday evening we were in 82° 3' north latitude. To-day the Fram is two years old. The sky has been overcast during the last two days, and it has been so dark at midday that I thought we should soon have to stop our snow-shoe expeditions. But this morning brought us clear still weather, and I went out on a delightful trip to the westward, where there had been a good deal of fresh packing, but nothing of any importance. In honor of the occasion we had a particularly good dinner, with fried halibut, turtle, pork chops, with haricot beans and green pease, plum-pudding (real burning plum-pudding for the first time) with custard sauce, and wound up with strawberries. As usual, the beverages consisted of wine (that is to say, lime-juice, with water and sugar) and Crown malt extract. I fear there was a general overtaxing of the digestive apparatus. After dinner, coffee and honey-cakes, with which Nordahl stood cigarettes. General holiday.

“This evening it has begun to blow from the north, but probably this does not mean much; I must hope so, at all events, and trust that we shall soon get a south wind again. But it is not the mild zephyr we yearn for, not the breath of the blushing dawn. No, a cold, biting south wind, roaring with all the force of the Polar Sea, so that the Fram, the two-year-old Fram, may be buried in the snow-storm, and all around her be but a reeking frost—it is this we are waiting for, this that will drift us onward to our goal. To-day, then, Fram, thou art two years old. I said at the dinner-table that if a year ago we were unanimous in believing that the Fram was a good ship, we had much better grounds for that belief to-day, for safely and surely she is carrying us onward, even if the speed be not excessive, and so we drank the Fram’s good health and good progress. I did not say too much. Had I said all that was in my heart, my words would not have been so measured; for, to say the truth, we all of us dearly love the ship, as much as it is possible to love any impersonal thing. And why should we not love her? No mother can give her young more warmth and safety under her wings than she affords to us. She is indeed like a home to us. We all rejoice to return to her from out on the icy plains, and when I have been far away and have seen her masts rising over the everlasting mantle of snow, how often has my heart glowed with warmth towards her! To the builder of this home grateful thoughts often travel during the still nights. He, I feel certain, sits yonder at home often thinking of us; but he knows not where his thought can seek the Fram in the great white tract around the Pole. But he knows his child; and though all else lose faith in her, he will believe that she will hold out. Yes, Colin Archer, could you see us now, you would know that your faith in her is not misplaced.

“I am sitting alone in my berth, and my thoughts glide back over the two years that have passed. What demon is it that weaves the threads of our lives, that makes us deceive ourselves, and ever sends us forth on paths we have not ourselves laid out—paths on which we have no desire to walk? Was it a mere feeling of duty that impelled me? Oh no! I was simply a child yearning for a great adventure out in the unknown, who had dreamed of it so long that at last I believed it really awaited me. And it has, indeed, fallen to my lot, the great adventure of the ice, deep and pure as infinity; the silent, starlit polar night; nature itself in its profundity; the mystery of life; the ceaseless circling of the universe; the feast of death—without suffering, without regret—eternal in itself. Here in the great night thou standest in all thy naked pettiness, face to face with nature; and thou sittest devoutly at the feet of eternity, intently listening; and thou knowest God the all-ruling, the centre of the universe. All the riddles of life seem to grow clear to thee, and thou laughest at thyself that thou couldst be consumed by brooding, it is all so little, so unutterably little.... ‘Whoso sees Jehovah dies.’

“Sunday, November 4th. At noon I had gone out on a snow-shoe expedition, and had taken some of the dogs with me. Presently I noticed that those that had been left behind at the ship began to bark. Those with me pricked up their ears, and several of them started off back, with ‘Ulenka’ at their head. Most of them soon stopped, listening and looking behind them to see if I were following. I wondered for a little while whether it could be a bear, and then continued on my way; but at length I could stand it no longer, and set off homeward, with the dogs dashing wildly on in front. On approaching the ship I saw some of the men setting off with guns; they were Sverdrup, Johansen, Mogstad, and Henriksen. They had got a good start of me in the direction in which the dogs were barking before I, too, got hold of a gun and set off after them. All at once I saw through the darkness the flash of a volley from those in front, followed by another shot; then several more, until at last it sounded like regular platoon firing. What the deuce could it be? They were standing on the same spot, and kept firing incessantly. Why on earth did they not advance nearer? I hurried on, thinking it was high time I came up with my snow-shoes to follow the game, which must evidently be in full flight. Meanwhile they advanced a little, and then there was another flash to be seen through the darkness, and so they went on two or three times. One of the number at last dashed forward over the ice and fired straight down in front of him, while another knelt down and fired towards the east. Were they trying their guns? But surely it was a strange time for doing so, and there were so many shots. Meanwhile the dogs tore around over the ice, and gathered in clumps, barking furiously. At length I overtook them, and saw three bears scattered over the ice, a she-bear and two cubs, while the dogs lay over them, worrying them like mad and tearing away at paws, throat, and tail. ‘Ulenka’ especially was beside herself. She had gripped one of the cubs by the throat, and worried it like a mad thing, so that it was difficult to get her away. The bears had gone very leisurely away from the dogs, which dared not come to sufficiently close quarters to use their teeth till the old she-bear had been wounded and had fallen down. The bears, indeed, had acted in a very suspicious manner. It seemed just as if the she-bear had some deep design, some evil intent, in her mind, if she could only have lured the dogs near enough to her. Suddenly she halted, let the cubs go on in front, sniffed a little, and then came back to meet the dogs, who at the same time, as if at a word of command, all turned tail and set off towards the west. It was then that the first shot was fired, and the old bear tottered and fell headlong, when immediately some of the dogs set to and tackled her. One of the cubs then got its quietus, while the other one was fired at and made off over the ice with three dogs after it. They soon overtook it and pulled it down, so that when Mogstad came up he was obliged first of all to get the dogs off before he could venture to shoot. It was a glorious slaughter, and by no means unwelcome, for we had that very day eaten the last remains of our last bear in the shape of meat-cakes for dinner. The two cubs made lovely Christmas pork.

“In all probability these were the same bears whose tracks we had seen before. Sverdrup and I had followed on the tracks of three such animals on the last day of October, and had lost them to N.N.W. of the ship. Apparently they had come from that quarter now.

“When they wanted to shoot, Peter’s gun, as usual, would not go off; it had again been drenched with vaseline, and he kept calling out: ‘Shoot! shoot! Mine won’t go off.’ Afterwards, on examining the gun I had taken with me to the fray, I found there were no cartridges in it. A nice account I should have given of myself had I come on the bears alone with that weapon!

“Monday, November 5th. As I was sitting at work last night I heard a dog on the deck howling fearfully. I sprang up, and found it was one of the puppies that had touched an iron bolt with its tongue and was frozen fast to it. There the poor beast was, straining to get free, with its tongue stretched out so far that it looked like a thin rope proceeding out of its throat; and it was howling piteously. Bentzen, whose watch it was, had come up, but scarcely knew what to do. He took hold of it, however, by the neck, and held it close to the bolt, so that its tongue was less extended. After having warmed the bolt somewhat with his hand, he managed to get the tongue free. The poor little puppy seemed overjoyed at its release, and, to show its gratitude, licked Bentzen’s hand with its bloody tongue, and seemed as if it could not be grateful enough to its deliverer. It is to be hoped that it will be some time before this puppy, at any rate, gets fast again in this way; but such things happen every now and then.

“Sunday, November 11th. I am pursuing my studies as usual day after day; and they lure me, too, deeper and deeper into the insoluble mystery that lies behind all these inquiries. Nay! why keep revolving in this fruitless circuit of thought? Better go out into the winter night. The moon is up, great and yellow and placid; the stars are twinkling overhead through the drifting snow-dust.... Why not rock yourself into a winter night’s dream filled with memories of summer?

“Ugh, no! The wind is howling too shrilly over the barren ice-plains; there are 33 degrees of cold, and summer, with its flowers, is far, far away. I would give a year of my life to hold them in my embrace; they loom so far off in the distance, as if I should never come back to them.

“But the northern lights, with their eternally shifting loveliness, flame over the heavens each day and each night. Look at them; drink oblivion and drink hope from them: they are even as the aspiring soul of man. Restless as it, they will wreathe the whole vault of heaven with their glittering, fleeting light, surpassing all else in their wild loveliness, fairer than even the blush of dawn; but, whirling idly through empty space, they bear no message of a coming day. The sailor steers his course by a star. Could you but concentrate yourselves, you too, O northern lights, might lend your aid to guide the wildered wanderer! But dance on, and let me enjoy you; stretch a bridge across the gulf between the present and the time to come, and let me dream far, far ahead into the future.

“O thou mysterious radiance! what art thou, and whence comest thou? Yet why ask? Is it not enough to admire thy beauty and pause there? Can we at best get beyond the outward show of things? What would it profit even if we could say that it is an electric discharge or currents of electricity through the upper regions of the air, and were able to describe in minutest detail how it all came to be? It would be mere words. We know no more what an electric current really is than what the aurora borealis is. Happy is the child.... We, with all our views and theories, are not in the last analysis a hair’s-breadth nearer the truth than it.

“Tuesday, November 13th. Thermometer -38° C. (-36.4° Fahr.). The ice is packing in several quarters during the day, and the roar is pretty loud, now that the ice has become colder. It can be heard from afar—a strange roar, which would sound uncanny to any one who did not know what it was.

“A delightful snow-shoe run in the light of the full moon. Is life a vale of tears? Is it such a deplorable fate to dash off like the wind, with all the dogs skipping around one, over the boundless expanse of ice, through a night like this, in the fresh, crackling frost, while the snow-shoes glide over the smooth surface, so that you scarcely know you are touching the earth, and the stars hang high in the blue vault above? This is more, indeed, than one has any right to expect of life; it is a fairy tale from another world, from a life to come.

“And then to return home to one’s cozy study-cabin, kindle the stove, light the lamp, fill a pipe, stretch one’s self on the sofa, and send dreams out into the world with the curling clouds of smoke—is that a dire infliction? Thus I catch myself sitting staring at the fire for hours together, dreaming myself away—a useful way of employing the time. But at least it makes it slip unnoticed by, until the dreams are swept away in an ice-blast of reality, and I sit here in the midst of desolation, and nervously set to work again.

“Wednesday, November 14th. How marvellous are these snow-shoe runs through this silent nature! The ice-fields stretch all around, bathed in the silver moonlight; here and there dark cold shadows project from the hummocks, whose sides faintly reflect the twilight. Far, far out a dark line marks the horizon, formed by the packed-up ice, over it a shimmer of silvery vapor, and above all the boundless deep-blue, starry sky, where the full moon sails through the ether. But in the south is a faint glimmer of day low down of a dark, glowing red hue, and higher up a clear yellow and pale-green arch, that loses itself in the blue above. The whole melts into a pure harmony, one and indescribable. At times one longs to be able to translate such scenes into music. What mighty chords one would require to interpret them!

“Silent, oh, so silent! You can hear the vibrations of your own nerves. I seem as if I were gliding over and over these plains into infinite space. Is this not an image of what is to come? Eternity and peace are here. Nirvana must be cold and bright as such an eternal star-night. What are all our research and understanding in the midst of this infinity?

“Friday, November 16th. In the forenoon I went out with Sverdrup on snow-shoes in the moonlight, and we talked seriously of the prospects of our drift and of the proposed expedition northward over the ice in the spring. In the evening we went into the matter more thoroughly in his cabin. I stated my views, in which he entirely coincided. I have of late been meditating a great deal on what is the proper course to pursue, supposing the drift does not take us so far north by the month of March as I had anticipated. But the more I think of it, the more firmly am I persuaded that it is the thing to do. For if it be right to set out at 85°, it must be no less right to set out at 82° or 83°. In either case we should penetrate into more northerly regions than we should otherwise reach, and this becomes all the more desirable if the Fram herself does not get so far north as we had hoped. If we cannot actually reach the Pole, why, we must turn back before reaching it. The main consideration, as I must constantly repeat, is not to reach that exact mathematical point, but to explore the unknown parts of the Polar Sea, whether these be near to or more remote from the Pole. I said this before setting out, and I must keep it continually in mind. Certainly there are many important observations to be made on board during the further drift of the ship, many which I would dearly like to carry on myself; but all the more important of these will be made equally well here, even though two of our number leave the ship; and there can scarcely be any doubt that the observations we shall make farther north will not many times outweigh in value those I could have made during the remainder of the time on board. So far, then, it is absolutely desirable that we set out.

“Then comes the question: What is the best time to start? That the spring—March, at the latest—is the only season for such a venture there can be no doubt at all. But shall it be next spring? Suppose, at the worst, we have not advanced farther than to 83° north latitude and 110° east longitude; then something might be said for waiting till the spring of 1896; but I cannot but think that we should thus in all probability let slip the propitious moment. The drifting could not be so wearingly slow but that after another year had elapsed we should be far beyond the point from which the sledge expedition ought to set out. If I measure the distance we have drifted from November of last year with the compasses, and mark off the same distance ahead, by next November we should be north of Franz Josef Land, and a little beyond it. It is conceivable, of course, that we were no farther advanced in February, 1896, either; but it is more likely, from all I can make out, that the drift will increase rather than diminish as we work westward, and, consequently, in February, 1896, we should have got too far; while, even if one could imagine a better starting-point than that which the Fram will possibly offer us by March 1, 1895, it will, at all events, be a possible one. It must, consequently, be the safest plan not to wait for another spring.

“Such, then, are the prospects before us of pushing through. The distance from this proposed starting-point to Cape Fligely, which is the nearest known land, I set down at about 370 miles,10 consequently not much more than the distance we covered in Greenland; and that would be easy work enough over this ice, even if it did become somewhat bad towards land. If once a coast is reached, any reasonable being can surely manage to subsist by hunting, whether large or small game, whether bears or sandhoppers. Thus we can always make for Cape Fligely or Petermann’s Land, which lies north of it, if our situation becomes untenable. The distance will, of course, be increased the farther we advance northward, but at no point whatever between here and the Pole is it greater than we can and will manage, with the help of our dogs. ‘A line of retreat’ is therefore secured, though there are those doubtless who hold that a barren coast, where you must first scrape your food together before you can eat it, is a poor retreat for hungry men; but that is really an advantage, for such a retreat would not be too alluring. A wretched invention, forsooth, for people who wish to push on is a ‘line of retreat’—an everlasting inducement to look behind, when they should have enough to do in looking ahead.

“But now for the expedition itself. It will consist of 28 dogs, two men, and 2100 pounds of provisions and equipments. The distance to the Pole from 83° is 483 miles. Is it too much to calculate that we may be able to accomplish that distance in 50 days? I do not of course know what the staying powers of the dogs may be; but that, with two men to help, they should be able to do 9½ miles a day with 75 pounds each for the first few days, sounds sufficiently reasonable, even if they are not very good ones. This, then, can scarcely be called a wild calculation, always, of course, supposing the ice to be as it is here, and there is no reason why it should not be. Indeed, it steadily improves the farther north we get; and it also improves with the approach of spring. In 50 days, then, we should reach the Pole (in 65 days we went 345 miles over the inland ice of Greenland at an elevation of more than 8000 feet, without dogs and with defective provisions, and could certainly have gone considerably farther). In 50 days we shall have consumed a pound of pemmican a day for each dog11—that is, 1400 pounds altogether; and 2 pounds of provisions for each man daily is 200 pounds. As some fuel also will have been consumed during this time, the freight on the sledges will have diminished to less than 500 pounds; but a burden like this is nothing for 28 dogs to draw, so that they ought to go ahead like a gale of wind during the latter part of the time, and thus do it in less than the 50 days. However, let us suppose that it takes this time. If all has gone well, we shall now direct our course for the Seven Islands, north of Spitzbergen. That is 9°, or 620 miles. But if we are not in first-rate condition it will be safer to make for Cape Fligely or the land to the north of it. Let us suppose we decide on this route. We set out from the Fram on March 1st (if circumstances are favorable, we should start sooner), and therefore arrive at the Pole April 30th. We shall have 500 pounds of our provisions left, enough for another 50 days; but we can spare none for the dogs. We must, therefore, begin killing some of them, either for food for the others or for ourselves, giving our provisions to them. Even if my figures are somewhat too low, I may assume that by the time twenty-three dogs have been killed we shall have travelled 41 days, and still have five dogs left. How far south shall we have advanced in this time? The weight of baggage was, to begin with, less than 500 pounds—that is to say, less than 18 pounds for each dog to draw. After 41 days this will at least have been reduced to 280 pounds (by the consumption of provisions and fuel and by dispensing with sundry articles of our equipment, such as sleeping-bags, tent, etc., etc., which will have become superfluous). There remain, then, 56 pounds for each of the five dogs, if we draw nothing ourselves; and should it be desirable, our equipment might be still further diminished. With a burden of from 18 to 56 pounds apiece (the latter would only be towards the end), the dogs would on an average be able to do 13–? miles a day, even if the snow-surface should become somewhat more difficult. That is to say, we shall have gone 565 miles to the south, or we shall be 18½ miles past Cape Fligely, on June 1st, with five dogs and nine days’ provisions left. But it is probable, in the first place, that we shall long before this have reached land; and, secondly, so early as the first half of April the Austrians found open water by Cape Fligely and abundance of birds. Consequently, in May and June we should have no difficulty as regards food, not to mention that it would be strange indeed if we had not before that time met with a bear or a seal or some stray birds.

“That we should now be pretty safe I consider as certain, and we can choose whichever route we please: either along the northwest coast of Franz Josef Land, by Gillis Land towards Northeast Island and Spitzbergen (and, should circumstances prove favorable, this would decidedly be my choice), or we can go south through Austria Sound towards the south coast of Franz Josef Land, and thence to Novaya Zemlya or Spitzbergen, the latter by preference. We may, of course, find Englishmen on Franz Josef Land, but that we must not reckon on.

“Such, then, is my calculation. Have I made it recklessly? No, I think not. The only thing would be if during the latter part of the journey, in May, we should find the surface like what we had here last spring, at the end of May, and should be considerably delayed by it. But this would only be towards the very end of our time, and at worst it could not be entirely impassable. Besides, it would be strange if we could not manage to average 11½ miles a day during the whole of the journey, with an average load for each dog of from 30 to 40 pounds—it would not be more. However, if our calculations should prove faulty, we can always, as aforesaid, turn back at any moment.

“1 and 2. That the ice may be more impracticable farther north is certainly possible, but hardly probable. I can see no reason why it should be, unless we have unknown lands to the north. But should this be so—very well, we must take what chance we find. The ice can scarcely be altogether impassable. Even Markham was able to advance with his scurvy-smitten people. And the coasts of this land may possibly be advantageous for an advance; it simply depends on their direction and extent. It is difficult to say anything beforehand, except that I think the depth of water we have here and the drift of the ice render it improbable that we can have land of any extent at all close at hand. In any case, there must, somewhere or other, be a passage for the ice, and at the worst we can follow that passage.

“3. There is always a possibility that the dogs may fail us, but, as may be seen, I have not laid out any scheme of excessive work for them. And even if one or two of them should prove failures, that could not be the case with all. With the food they have hitherto had they have got through the winter and the cold without mishap, and the food they will get on the journey will be better. In my calculations, moreover, I have taken no account of what we shall draw ourselves. And, even supposing all the dogs to fail us, we could manage to get along by ourselves pretty well.

“4. The worst event would undeniably be that we ourselves should be attacked by scurvy; and, notwithstanding our excellent health, such a contingency is quite conceivable when it is borne in mind how in the English North Pole Expedition all the men, with the exception of the officers, suffered from scurvy when the spring and the sledge journeys began, although as long as they were on board ship they had not the remotest suspicion that anything of the kind was lying in wait for them. As far, however, as we are concerned, I consider this contingency very remote. In the first place, the English expedition was remarkably unfortunate, and hardly any others can show a similar experience, although they may have undertaken sledge journeys of equal lengths—for example, M’Clintock’s. During the retreat of the Jeannette party, so far as is known, no one was attacked with scurvy; Peary and Astrup did not suffer from scurvy either. Moreover, our supply of provisions has been more carefully selected, and offers greater variety than has been the case in former expeditions, not one of which has enjoyed such perfect health as ours. I scarcely think, therefore, that we should take with us from the Fram any germs of scurvy; and as regards the provisions for the sledge journey itself, I have taken care that they shall consist of good all-round, nutritious articles of food, so that I can scarcely believe that they would be the means of developing an attack of this disease. Of course, one must run some risk; but in my opinion all possible precautions have been taken, and, when that is done, it is one’s duty to go ahead.

“There is yet another question that must be taken into consideration. Have I the right to deprive the ship and those who remain behind of the resources such an expedition entails? The fact that there will be two men less is of little importance, for the Fram can be handled quite as well with eleven men. A more important point is that we shall have to take with us all the dogs except the seven puppies; but they are amply supplied with sledge provisions and first-class sledge equipments on board, and it is inconceivable that in case anything happened to the Fram they should be unable to reach Franz Josef Land or Spitzbergen. It is scarcely likely that in case they had to abandon her it would be farther north than 85°; probably not even so far north. But suppose they were obliged to abandon her at 85°, it would probably be about north of Franz Josef Land, when they would be 207 miles from Cape Fligely; or if farther to the east it would be some 276 miles from the Seven Islands, and it is hard to believe that they could not manage a distance like that with our equipments. Now, as before, I am of opinion that the Fram will in all probability drift right across the polar basin and out on the other side without being stopped, and without being destroyed; but even if any accident should occur, I do not see why the crew should not be able to make their way home in safety, provided due measures of precaution are observed. Consequently, I think there is no reason why a sledge expedition should not leave the Fram, and I feel that as it promises such good results it ought certainly to be attempted.”

End of Vol. I