(From a photograph)
During the following days the ice became steadily quieter. In the course of the night of the 9th of January the ice was still slightly cracking and grinding; then it quite subsided, and on the 10th of January the report is “ice perfectly quiet, and if it were not for the ridge on the port side one would never have thought there had ever been any breach in the eternal stillness, so calm and peaceful is it.” Some men went on cutting away the ice, and little by little we could see it was getting less. Mogstad and I were busily engaged in the hold with the new sledges, and during this time I also made an attempt to photograph the Fram by moonlight from different points. The results surpassed my expectations; but as the top of the pressure-ridge had now been cut away, these photos do not give an exact impression of the pack-ice, and of how it came hurtling down upon the Fram. We then put in order our depot on the great hummock on the starboard quarter, and all sleeping-bags, Lapland boots, Finn shoes, wolfskin clothing, etc., were wrapped in the foresail and placed to the extreme west, the provisions were collected into six different heaps, and the rifles and guns were distributed among three of the heaps and wrapped up in boat-sails. Next, Hansen’s instrument-case and my own, together with a bucketful of rifle-cartridges, were placed under a boat-sail. Then the forge and the smith’s tools were arranged separately, and up on the top of the great hummock we laid a heap of sledges and snow-shoes. All the kayaks were laid side by side bottom upward, the cooking apparatus and lamps, etc., being placed under them. They were spread out in this way, so that in the improbable event of the thick floe splitting suddenly our loss would not be so great. We knew where to find everything, and it might blow and drift to its heart’s content without our losing anything.
On the evening of January 14th I wrote in my diary: “Two sharp reports were heard in the ship, like shots from a cannon, and then followed a noise as of something splitting—presumably this must be the cracking of the ice, on account of the frost. It appeared to me that the list on the ship increased at that moment, but perhaps it was only imagination.”
As time passed on we all gradually got busy again preparing for the sledge expedition. On Tuesday, January 15th, I say: “This evening the doctor gave a lesson to Johansen and myself in bandaging and repairing broken limbs. I lay on the table and had a plaster-of-Paris bandage put round the calf of my leg, while all the crew were looking on. The very sight of this operation cannot fail to suggest unpleasant thoughts. An accident of this nature out in the polar night, with 40° to 50° of cold, would be anything but pleasant, to say nothing of how easily it might mean death to both of us. But who knows? We might manage somehow. However, such things must not be allowed to happen, and, what is more, they shall not.”
The Winter Night. January 14, 1895
(From a photograph)
As January went on we could by noon just see the faint dawn of day—that day at whose sunrise we were to start. On January 18th I say: “By 9 o’clock in the morning I could already distinguish the first indications of dawn, and by noon it seemed to be getting bright; but it seems hardly credible that in a month’s time there will be light enough to travel by, yet it must be so. True, February is a month which all ‘experienced’ people consider far too early and much too cold for travelling; hardly any one would do so in the month of March. But it cannot be helped; we have no time to waste in waiting for additional comfort if we are to make any progress before the summer, when travelling will be impossible. I am not afraid of the cold; we can always protect ourselves against that.
“Meantime all preparations are proceeding, and I am now getting everything in order connected with copying of diaries, observation-books, photographs, etc., that we are to take with us. Mogstad is working in the hold making maple guard-runners to put under the sledges. Jacobsen has commenced to put a new sledge together. Pettersen is in the engine-room, making nails for the sledge-fittings, which Mogstad is to put on. In the meantime some of the others have built a large forge out on the ice with blocks of ice and snow, and to-morrow Sverdrup and I will heat and bend the runners in tar and stearine at such a heat as we can produce in the forge. We trust we shall be able to get a sufficient temperature to do this important work thoroughly, in spite of the 40° of frost. Amundsen is now repairing the mill, as there is something wrong with it again, the cog-wheels being worn. He thinks he will be able to get it all right again. Rather chilly work to be lying up there in the wind on the top of the mill, boring in the hard steel and cast-iron by lantern-light, and at such a temperature as we are having now. I stood and watched the lantern-light up there to-day, and I soon heard the drill working; one could tell the steel was hard; then I could hear clapping of hands. ‘Ah,’ thought I, ‘you may well clap your hands together; it is not a particularly warm job to be lying up there in the wind.’ The worst of it is one cannot wear mittens for such work, but has to use the bare hands if one is to make any progress, and it would not take long to freeze them off; but it has to be done, he says, and he will not give in. He is a splendid fellow in all he undertakes, and I console him by saying that there are not many before him who have worked on the top of a mill in such frost north of 83°. On many expeditions they have avoided out-of-door work when the temperature got so low. ‘Indeed,’ he says, ‘I thought that other expeditions were in advance of us in that respect. I imagined we had kept indoors too much.’ I had no hesitation in enlightening him on this point; I know he will do his best in any case.