On September 28th we again lost one of the puppies. It was seized with convulsions, and lay whining and howling all day. As the evening advanced, and it became paralyzed along one side, there was no hope of saving it, so we put an end to its misery. It was pitiful to see how these pretty little creatures suffered when the convulsions came upon them.
On October 9th “Skvint” gave birth to puppies, but as so young an animal could not have brought them up, especially in such a cold season, we allowed her to keep only one of them as an experiment; the others were at once killed. A week later “Sussi” produced a second litter, two he-dogs and nine she-dogs. We let her keep the two males and one of the females.
It proved inadvisable to have both the mothers with their families in the same kennel. If one of the mothers went out for a moment, the other at once took all the puppies into her keeping, and then there was a battle royal when the first one returned and wanted to reclaim her property. Something of this sort had, no doubt, occurred one night in the case of “Skvint,” whom Henriksen found in the morning lying at the door of the kennel frozen so fast to the ice that it cost us a good deal of trouble to get her loose again. She must have had anything but a pleasant night—the thermometer had been down to -33° C. (-27.4° Fahr.)—and her tail was frozen fast to one of her hind-legs, so that we had to take her down into the saloon to get her thawed. To obviate such misadventures for the future I had a detached villa built for her where she could be at peace with her child.
One evening, when Mogstad was housing the puppies for the night, two of them were missing. Henriksen and I at once set off with lanterns and guns to hunt for them. We thought that there had been a bear in the neighborhood, as we had heard a great deal of barking earlier in the day out upon the ice to the east of the ship; but we could find no tracks. After supper we set out again, five of us, all carrying lanterns. After an hour’s search along the lanes and up in the pressure-ridges we at last found the puppies on the other side of a new lane. Although the new ice on the lane was strong enough to bear them, they were so terrified after having been in the water that they dared not come over to us, and we had to make a long detour to get hold of them.
In the middle of December we took the youngest puppies on board, as they had now grown so big, and ran away if they were not very closely watched. The gangway was left open at night so that the mothers could come into them from the ice whenever they wanted to.
Workshop on Deck. July, 1895
In respect to temper, there was a great difference between the generation of dogs we had originally taken on board and those we now had. While the former were great fighters, perpetually at feud with each other, and often to the death, the latter were exceedingly quiet and well-behaved, although wild and fierce enough when it came to chasing a bear. Now and then there would be a little squabble among them, but this was rare. “Axel” was the worst of them. Shortly before Christmas he all of a sudden made a fierce attack upon the unoffending “Kobben,” against whom he bore a grudge. But he got the rope’s-end for supper several times, and that improved his manners amazingly.
During the first half of September the weather was very unsettled, with prevailing westerly and southwesterly winds, a good deal of rain and snow, especially rain, and frequent disturbance in the ice. The frost at night, which sometimes reached 10° or 11°, soon made the new ice strong enough to bear a man, except just at the stern of the ship, where all the slops were thrown out. Here the ice was much broken up, and formed a thick slush, the surface of which was frozen over, but so thinly that it would not bear much weight. Thus it happened one day that three men got a ducking, one after another, at the same treacherous spot. The first was Pettersen. He had to go round the stern to look to the log-line which hung from the ship’s side to port; but before he got so far, down he went through the ice. Shortly after the same thing happened to Nordahl, and half an hour later it was Bentzen’s turn to plump in. He plunged right up to his neck, but at once bobbed up again like a cork, and scrambled gallantly up on to the edge of the ice without a moment’s delay. The observation of the log-line had to be postponed, while a grand changing and drying of clothes took place on board.
On September 15th the ice slackened so much that there was quite a little sea between us and the great hummock. The following day the ice was still so much disturbed that we had to think seriously of fetching back the things which still lay there. About midday I took a walk over towards the hummock to find out a suitable transport path, and discovered an excellent one. But some hours later, when I set off with men and sledges to fetch back the things, so many lanes had opened around the “estate” that we had to give up the attempt for that day. During the whole of September, and well on in October, there was almost incessant disturbance in the ice. New lanes opened on all sides, some close to the ship, and there were frequent pressures. The winter harbor we had found proved an excellent one. There was very little disturbance in the bay where the Fram was moored, thanks to the new ice we here had around us, of which the pressure was quite inconsiderable. It was quickly broken up, and the fragments forced over or under each other, while the two solid points of the bay bore the brunt of the attacks. Once or twice it seemed as though the Fram would be afloat again before the winter finally chained her in its icy fetters. On October 25th, for instance, it slackened so much in the lane nearest us that the ship lay free from the stern right to the fore-chains; but soon the ice packed together again, so that she was once more frozen quite fast. The hardest pressure occurred on October 26th and 27th, but the ship was not very severely attacked. Pressure, however, is more unpleasant in winter, on account of the deafening noise it makes when the ice is hurled against the ship’s side. It was quite different in summer, when the ice is more tough and elastic, and the pressure goes on calmly and quietly.