“Tuesday, March 27th. We are again drifting southward, and the wind is northerly. The midday observation showed 80° 4′ north latitude. But why so dispirited? I am staring myself blind at one single point—am thinking solely of reaching the Pole and forcing our way through to the Atlantic Ocean. And all the time our real task is to explore the unknown polar regions. Are we doing nothing in the service of science? It will be a goodly collection of observations that we shall take home with us from this region, with which we are now rather too well acquainted. The rest is, and remains, a mere matter of vanity. ‘Love truth more, and victory less.’
“I look at Eilif Peterssen’s picture, a Norwegian pine forest, and I am there in spirit. How marvellously lovely it is there now, in the spring, in the dim, melancholy stillness that reigns among the stately stems! I can feel the damp moss in which my foot sinks softly and noiselessly; the brook, released from the winter bondage, is murmuring through the clefts and among the rocks, with its brownish-yellow water; the air is full of the scent of moss and pine-needles; while overhead, against the light-blue sky, the dark pine-tops rock to and fro in the spring breeze, ever uttering their murmuring wail, and beneath their shelter the soul fearlessly expands its wings and cools itself in the forest dew.
“O solemn pine forest, the only confidant of my childhood, it was from you I learned nature’s deepest tones—its wildness, its melancholy! You colored my soul for life.
At the coming of the Spring. March, 1894
(From a photograph)
“Alone—far in the forest—beside the glowing embers of my fire on the shore of the silent, murky woodland tarn, with the gloom of night overhead, how happy I used to be in the enjoyment of nature’s harmony!
“Thursday, March 29th. It is wonderful what a change it makes to have daylight once more in the saloon. On turning out for breakfast and seeing the light gleaming in, one feels that it really is morning.
“We are busy on board. Sails are being made for the boats and hand-sledges. The windmill, too, is to have fresh sails, so that it can go in any kind of weather. Ah, if we could but give the Fram wings as well! Knives are being forged, bear-spears which we never have any use for, bear-traps in which we never catch a bear, axes, and many other things of like usefulness. For the moment there is a great manufacture of wooden shoes going on, and a newly started nail-making industry. The only shareholders in this company are Sverdrup and Smith Lars, called ‘Storm King,’ because he always comes upon us like hard weather. The output is excellent and is in active demand, as all our small nails for the hand-sledge fittings have been used. Moreover, we are very busy putting German-silver plates under the runners of the hand-sledges, and providing appliances for lashing sledges together. There is, moreover, a workshop for snow-shoe fastenings, and a tinsmith’s shop, busied for the moment with repairs to the lamps. Our doctor, too, for lack of patients, has set up a bookbinding establishment which is greatly patronized by the Fram’s library, whereof several books that are in constant circulation, such as Gjest Baardsens Liv og Levnet, etc., are in a very bad state. We have also a saddlers’ and sail-makers’ workshop, a photographic studio, etc. The manufacture of diaries, however, is the most extensive—every man on board works at that. In fine, there is nothing between heaven and earth that we cannot turn out—excepting constant fair winds.
“Our workshops can be highly recommended; they turn out good solid work. We have lately had a notable addition to our industries, the firm ‘Nansen & Amundsen’ having established a music-factory. The cardboard plates of the organ had suffered greatly from wear and damp, so that we had been deplorably short of music during the winter. But yesterday I set to work in earnest to manufacture a plate of zinc. It answers admirably, and now we shall go ahead with music sacred and profane, especially waltzes, and these halls shall once more resound with the pealing tones of the organ, to our great comfort and edification. When a waltz is struck up it breathes fresh life into many of the inmates of the Fram.