“Friday, October 6th. Cold, down to 11° below zero (Fahr.). To-day we have begun to rig up the windmill. The ice has been packing to the north of the Fram’s stern. As the dogs will freeze if they are kept tied up and get no exercise, we let them loose this afternoon, and are going to try if we can leave them so. Of course they at once began to fight, and some poor creatures limped away from the battle-field scratched and torn. But otherwise great joy prevailed; they leaped, and ran, and rolled themselves in the snow. Brilliant aurora in the evening.
The men who were afraid of frightening the bear. “Off steals Blessing on tiptoe”
(Drawn by A. Bloch)
“Saturday, October 7th. Still cold, with the same northerly wind we have had all these last days. I am afraid we are drifting far south now. A few days ago we were, according to the observations, in 78° 47′ north latitude. That was 16′ south in less than a week. This is too much; but we must make it up again; we must get north. It means going away from home now, but soon it will mean going nearer home. What depth of beauty, with an undercurrent of endless sadness, there is in these dreamily glowing evenings! The vanished sun has left its track of melancholy flame. Nature’s music, which fills all space, is instinct with sorrow that all this beauty should be spread out day after day, week after week, year after year, over a dead world. Why? Sunsets are always sad at home too. This thought makes the sight seem doubly precious here and doubly sad. There is red burning blood in the west against the cold snow—and to think that this is the sea, stiffened in chains, in death, and that the sun will soon leave us, and we shall be in the dark alone! ‘And the earth was without form and void;’ is this the sea that is to come?
“Sunday, October 8th. Beautiful weather. Made a snow-shoe expedition westward, all the dogs following. The running was a little spoiled by the brine, which soaks up through the snow from the surface of the ice—flat, newly frozen ice, with older, uneven blocks breaking through it. I seated myself on a snow hummock far away out; the dogs crowded round to be patted. My eye wandered over the great snow plain, endless and solitary—nothing but snow, snow everywhere.
“The observations to-day gave us an unpleasant surprise; we are now down in 78° 35′ north latitude; but there is a simple enough explanation of this when one thinks of all the northerly and northwesterly wind we have had lately, with open water not far to the south of us. As soon as everything is frozen we must go north again; there can be no question of that; but none the less this state of matters is unpleasant. I find some comfort in the fact that we have also drifted a little east, so that at all events we have kept with the wind and are not drifting down westward.
“Monday, October 9th. I was feverish both during last night and to-day. Goodness knows what is the meaning of such nonsense. When I was taking water samples in the morning I discovered that the water-lifter suddenly stopped at the depth of a little less than 80 fathoms. It was really the bottom. So we have drifted south again to the shallow water. We let the weight lie at the bottom for a little, and saw by the line that for the moment we were drifting north. This was some small comfort, anyhow.
“All at once in the afternoon, as we were sitting idly chattering, a deafening noise began, and the whole ship shook. This was the first ice-pressure. Every one rushed on deck to look. The Fram behaved beautifully, as I had expected she would. On pushed the ice with steady pressure, but down under us it had to go, and we were slowly lifted up. These ‘squeezings’ continued off and on all the afternoon, and were sometimes so strong that the Fram was lifted several feet; but then the ice could no longer bear her, and she broke it below her. Towards evening the whole slackened again, till we lay in a good-sized piece of open water, and had hurriedly to moor her to our old floe, or we should have drifted off. There seems to be a good deal of movement in the ice here. Peter has just been telling us that he hears the dull booming of strong pressures not far off.
“Tuesday, October 10th. The ice continues disturbed.