“Friday, March 22d. Splendid ice for getting over; things go better and better. Wide expanses, with a few pressure-ridges now and then, but passable everywhere. Kept at it yesterday from about half-past eleven in the morning to half-past eight at night; did a good 21 miles, I hope. We should be in latitude 85°. The only disagreeable thing about it now is the cold. Our clothes are transformed more and more into a cuirass of ice during the day, and wet bandages at night. The blankets likewise. The sleeping-bag gets heavier and heavier from the moisture which freezes on the hair inside. The same clear, settled weather every day. We are both longing now for a change; a few clouds and a little more mildness would be welcome.” The temperature in the night, -44.8° Fahr. (-42.7° C.). By an observation which I took later in the forenoon, our latitude that day proved to be 85° 9′ N.
“Saturday, March 23d. On account of observation, lashing the loads on the sledges, patching bags, and other occupations of a like kind, which are no joke in this low temperature, we did not manage to get off yesterday before 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We stuck to it till nine in the evening, when we stopped in some of the worst ice we have seen lately. Our day’s march, however, had lain across several large tracts of level ice, so I think that we made 14 miles or so all the same. We have the same brilliant sunshine; but yesterday afternoon the wind from the northeast, which we have had for the last few days, increased, and made it rather raw.
“We passed over a large frozen pool yesterday evening; it looked almost like a large lake.” It could not have been long since this was formed, as the ice on it was still quite thin. It is wonderful that these pools can form up there at that time of the year.
From this time forward there was an end of the flat ice, which it had been simple enjoyment to travel over; and now we had often great difficulties to cope with. On Sunday, March 24th, I write: “Ice not so good; yesterday was a hard day, but we made a few miles—not more, though, than seven, I am afraid. This continual lifting of the heavily loaded sledges is calculated to break one’s back; but better times are coming, perhaps. The cold is also appreciable, always the same; but yesterday it was increased by the admixture of considerable wind from the northeast. We halted about half-past nine in the evening. It is perceptible how the days lengthen, and how much later the sun sets; in a few days’ time we shall have the midnight sun.
“We killed ‘Livjægeren’ yesterday evening, and hard work it was skinning him.” This was the first dog which had to be killed; but many came afterwards, and it was some of the most disagreeable work we had on the journey, particularly now at the beginning, when it was so cold. When this first dog was dismembered and given to the others, many of them went supperless the whole night in preference to touching the meat. But as the days went by and they became more worn out, they learned to appreciate dog’s flesh, and later we were not even so considerate as to skin the butchered animal, but served it hair and all.
The following day the ice was occasionally somewhat better; but as a rule it was bad, and we became more and more worn out with the never-ending work of helping the dogs, righting the sledges every time they capsized, and hauling them, or carrying them bodily, over hummocks and inequalities of the ground. Sometimes we were so sleepy in the evenings that our eyes shut and we fell asleep as we went along. My head would drop, and I would be awakened by suddenly falling forward on my snow-shoes. Then we would stop, after having found a camping-ground behind a hummock or ridge of ice, where there was some shelter from the wind. While Johansen looked after the dogs, it generally fell to my lot to pitch the tent, fill the cooker with ice, light the burner, and start the supper as quickly as possible. This generally consisted of “lobscouse” one day, made of pemmican and dried potatoes; another day of a sort of fish rissole substance known as “fiskegratin” in Norway, and in this case composed of fish-meal, flour, and butter. A third day it would be pea, bean, or lentil soup, with bread and pemmican. Johansen preferred the “lobscouse,” while I had a weakness for the “fiskegratin.” As time went by, however, he came over to my way of thinking, and the “fiskegratin” took precedence of everything else.
As soon as Johansen had finished with the dogs, and the different receptacles containing the ingredients and eatables for breakfast and supper had been brought in, as well as our bags with private necessities, the sleeping-bags were spread out, the tent door carefully shut, and we crept into the bag to thaw our clothes. This was not very agreeable work. During the course of the day the damp exhalations of the body had little by little become condensed in our outer garments, which were now a mass of ice and transformed into complete suits of ice-armor. They were so hard and stiff that if we had only been able to get them off they could have stood by themselves, and they crackled audibly every time we moved. These clothes were so stiff that the arm of my coat actually rubbed deep sores in my wrists during our marches; one of these sores—the one on the right hand—got frost-bitten, the wound grew deeper and deeper, and nearly reached the bone. I tried to protect it with bandages, but not until late in the summer did it heal, and I shall probably have the scar for life. When we got into our sleeping-bags in the evening our clothes began to thaw slowly, and on this process a considerable amount of physical heat was expended. We packed ourselves tight into the bag, and lay with our teeth chattering for an hour, or an hour and a half, before we became aware of a little of the warmth in our bodies which we so sorely needed. At last our clothes became wet and pliant, only to freeze again a few minutes after we had turned out of the bag in the morning. There was no question of getting these clothes dried on the journey so long as the cold lasted, as more and more moisture from the body collected in them.
How cold we were as we lay there shivering in the bag, waiting for the supper to be ready! I, who was cook, was obliged to keep myself more or less awake to see to the culinary operations, and sometimes I succeeded. At last the supper was ready, was portioned out, and, as always, tasted delicious. These occasions were the supreme moments of our existence—moments to which we looked forward the whole day long. But sometimes we were so weary that our eyes closed, and we fell asleep with the food on its way to our mouths. Our hands would fall back inanimate with the spoons in them and the food fly out on the bag. After supper we generally permitted ourselves the luxury of a little extra drink, consisting of water, as hot as we could swallow it, in which whey-powder had been dissolved. It tasted something like boiled milk, and we thought it wonderfully comforting; it seemed to warm us to the very ends of our toes. Then we would creep down into the bag again, buckle the flap carefully over our heads, lie close together, and soon sleep the sleep of the just. But even in our dreams we went on ceaselessly, grinding at the sledges and driving the dogs, always northward, and I was often awakened by hearing Johansen calling in his sleep to “Pan,” or “Barrabas,” or “Klapperslangen”: “Get on, you devil, you! Go on, you brutes! Sass, sass![2] Now the whole thing is going over!” and execrations less fit for reproduction, until I went to sleep again.
In the morning I, as cook, was obliged to turn out to prepare the breakfast, which took an hour’s time. As a rule, it consisted one morning of chocolate, bread, butter, and pemmican; another of oatmeal porridge, or a compound of flour, water, and butter, in imitation of our “butter-porridge” at home. This was washed down with milk, made of whey-powder and water. The breakfast ready, Johansen was roused; we sat up in the sleeping-bag, one of the blankets was spread out as a table-cloth, and we fell to work. We had a comfortable breakfast, wrote up our diaries, and then had to think about starting. But how tired we sometimes were, and how often would I not have given anything to be able to creep to the bottom of the bag again and sleep the clock round. It seemed to me as if this must be the greatest pleasure in life, but our business was to fight our way northward—always northward. We performed our toilets, and then came the going out into the cold to get the sledges ready, disentangle the dogs’ traces, harness the animals, and get off as quickly as possible. I went first to find the way through the uneven ice, then came the sledge with my kayak. The dogs soon learned to follow, but at every unevenness of the ground they stopped, and if one could not get them all to start again at the same time by a shout, and so pull the sledge over the difficulty, one had to go back to beat or help them, according as circumstances necessitated. Then came Johansen with the two other sledges, always shouting to the dogs to pull harder, always beating them, and himself hauling to get the sledges over the terrible ridges of ice. It was undeniable cruelty to the poor animals from first to last, and one must often look back on it with horror. It makes me shudder even now when I think of how we beat them mercilessly with thick ash sticks when, hardly able to move, they stopped from sheer exhaustion. It made one’s heart bleed to see them, but we turned our eyes away and hardened ourselves. It was necessary; forward we must go, and to this end everything else must give place. It is the sad part of expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better feelings, until only hard-hearted egoism remains. When I think of all those splendid animals, toiling for us without a murmur, as long as they could strain a muscle, never getting any thanks or even so much as a kind word, daily writhing under the lash until the time came when they could do no more and death freed them from their pangs—when I think of how they were left behind, one by one, up there on those desolate ice-fields, which had been witness to their faithfulness and devotion, I have moments of bitter self-reproach. It took us two alone such a long time to pitch the tent, feed the dogs, cook, etc., in the evening, and then break up again and get ready in the morning, that the days never seemed long enough if we were to do proper day’s marches, and, besides, get the sleep we required at night. But when the nights became so light, it was not so necessary to keep regular hours any longer, and we started when we pleased, whether it was night or day. We stopped, too, when it suited us, and took the sleep which might be necessary for ourselves and the dogs. I tried to make it a rule that our marches were to be of nine or ten hours’ duration. In the middle of the day we generally had a rest and something to eat—as a rule, bread-and-butter, with a little pemmican or liver pâté. These dinners were a bitter trial. We used to try and find a good sheltered place, and sometimes even rolled ourselves up in our blankets, but all the same the wind cut right through us as we sat on the sledges eating our meal. Sometimes, again, we spread the sleeping-bag out on the ice, took our food with us, and crept well in, but even then did not succeed in thawing either it or our clothes. When this was too much for us we walked up and down to keep ourselves warm, and ate our food as we walked. Then came the no less bitter task of disentangling the dogs’ traces, and we were glad when we could get off again. In the afternoon, as a rule, we each had a piece of meat-chocolate.
Most Arctic travellers who have gone sledge journeys have complained of the so-called Arctic thirst, and it has been considered an almost unavoidable evil in connection with a long journey across wastes of snow. It is often increased, too, by the eating of snow. I had prepared myself for this thirst, from which we had also suffered severely when crossing Greenland, and had taken with me a couple of india-rubber flasks, which we filled with water every morning from the cooker, and which by carrying in the breast could be protected from the cold. To my great astonishment, however, I soon discovered that the whole day would often pass by without my as much as tasting the water in my flask. As time went by, the less need did I feel to drink during the day, and at last I gave up taking water with me altogether. If a passing feeling of thirst made itself felt, a piece of fresh ice, of which, as a rule, there was always some to be found, was sufficient to dispel it.[3] The reason why we were spared this suffering, which has been one of the greatest hardships of many sledge expeditions, must be attributed in a great measure to our admirable cooking apparatus. By the help of this we were able, with the consumption of a minimum of fuel, to melt and boil so much water every morning that we could drink all we wished. There was even some left over, as a rule, which had to be thrown away. The same thing was generally the case in the evening.