“Monday, May 27th. Ever since yesterday morning we have seen the looming of water on the sky; it is the same looming that we saw on the previous day, and I set our course direct for the place where, to judge by it, there should be the greatest accumulation of ice, and where, consequently, a crossing should be easiest. During the course of the afternoon we came on one lane after the other, just as the water-sky had denoted, and towards evening the dark heavens before us augured open water of a worse kind. The reflection was particularly dark and threatening, both in the west and in the east. By 7 o’clock I could see a broad lane before us, stretching away west and east as far as the eye could reach from the highest hummock. It was broad, and appeared to be more impracticable than any of the previous ones. As the dogs were tired, our day’s march had been a good one, and we had a splendid camping-place ready to hand, we decided to pitch the tent. Well satisfied and certain that we were now in latitude 82½°, and that land must inevitably be near, we disappeared into the bag.
“During breakfast this morning I went out and took a meridian altitude. It proves that we have not deceived ourselves. We are in latitude 82° 30′ N., perhaps even a minute or two farther south. But it is growing more and more remarkable that we see no sign of land. I cannot explain it in any other way than that we are some degrees farther east than we suppose.[9] That we should be so much farther west as to enable us to pass entirely clear of Petermann’s Land and Oscar’s Land, and not so much as get a glimpse of them, I consider an impossibility. I have again looked at our former observations; have again gone through our dead reckoning, the velocity and directions of the wind, and all the possibilities of drift during the days which passed between our last certain observation for longitude (April 8th) and the day when, according to the dead reckoning, we assumed ourselves to be in longitude 86° E. (April 13th). That there should be any great mistake is inconceivable. The ice can hardly have had such a considerable drift during those particular days, seeing that our dead reckoning in other respects tallied so well with the observations.
“Yesterday evening ‘Kvik’ was slaughtered. Poor thing, she was quite worn out, and did little or nothing in the hauling line. I was sorry to part with her, but what was to be done? Even if we should get fresh meat, it would have taken some time to feed her up again, and then, perhaps, we should have had no use for her, and should only have had to kill her, after all. But a fine big animal she was, and provided food for three days for our remaining eight dogs.
“I am in a continual state of wonderment at the ice we are now travelling over. It is flat and good, with only smallish pieces of broken-up ice lying about, and a large mound or small ridge here and there, but all of it is ice which can hardly be winter-old, or at any rate has been formed since last summer. It is quite a rarity to come across a small tract of older ice, or even a single old floe which has lain the summer through—so rare, in fact, that at our last camping-place it was impossible to find any ice which had been exposed to the summer sun, and consequently freed from salt. We were obliged to be content with snow for our drinking-water.[10] Certain it is that where these great expanses of flat ice come from there was open water last summer or autumn, and that of no little extent, as we have passed over many miles of this compact ice the whole day yesterday and a good part of the previous day, besides which there were formerly a considerable number of such tracts in between older, summer-old ice. There is little probability that this should have been formed in the vicinity hereabouts. More probably it has come from farther east or southeast, and was formed in open water on the east side of Wilczek’s Land. I believe, consequently, that this must indicate that there can be not a little open water along the east or northeast coast of Wilczek’s Land in the summer or autumn months.[11]
“Now followed a time when the lanes grew worse than ever, and we began to toil in grim earnest. Lanes and cracks went crosswise in every direction. The ice was sometimes uneven, and the surface loose and heavy between the irregularities.
“If one could get a bird’s-eye view of this ice, the lanes would form a veritable net-work of irregular meshes. Woe to him who lets himself get entangled in it!
“Wednesday, May 29th. Yesterday I inaugurated a great change, and began with ‘komager.’ It was an agreeable transition. One’s feet keep nice and dry now, and one is furthermore saved the trouble of attending to the Finn shoes[12] night and morning. They were beginning in this mild temperature to assume a texture like our native ‘lefser,’ a kind of tough rye-cake. Then, too, one need no longer sleep with wet rags on one’s chest and legs to dry them.”
That day we saw our first bird; a fulmar (Procellaria glacialis).
“Thursday, May 30th. At 5 o’clock yesterday morning we set forth with the buoyancy born of the belief that now at last the whole network of lanes was behind us; but we had not gone far before the reflection of new channels appeared in front. I climbed up on to a hummock as quickly as possible, but the sight which met my eyes was anything but enlivening—lane after lane, crossing and recrossing, in front of us and on each side, as far as the eye could reach. It looked as if it mattered little what direction we chose: it would be of no avail in getting out of the maze. I made a long excursion on ahead to see if there might not be a way of slipping through and over on the consecutive flat sheets as we had done before; but the ice appeared to be broken up, and so it probably is all the way to land. It was no longer with the compact, massive polar ice that we had to deal, but with thin, broken-up pack-ice, at the mercy of every wind of heaven, and we had to reconcile ourselves to the idea of scrambling from floe to floe as best we might. What would I not have given at this moment for it to be March, with all its cold and sufferings, instead of the end of May, and the thermometer almost above 32° Fahr.? It was just this end of May I had feared all along, the time at which I considered it of the greatest importance to have gained land. Unhappily my fears proved to be well founded. I almost began to wish that it was a month or more later; the ice would then perhaps be slacker here, with more open pools and lanes, so that in a measure one could make one’s way in a kayak. Well, who could tell? This miserable thin young ice appeared to be utterly treacherous, and there was a water-sky in every direction, but mostly far, far ahead. If only we were there! if only we were under land! Perhaps, if the worst should come to the worst, we may be reduced to waiting till over the time when the mild weather and break-up of the ice come in earnest. But have we provisions enough to wait till that time? This was, indeed, more than doubtful.... As I stood sunk in these gloomy reflections on the high hummock, and looking southward over the ice, seeing ridge after ridge and lane after lane before me, I suddenly heard the well-known sound of a whale blowing from a lead close behind. It was the solution of my troubles. Starve we should not; there are animals here, and we have guns, thank Heaven, and harpoons as well, and we know how to use them. There was a whole school of narwhals in the lane breathing and blowing ceaselessly. As some high ice hid them from view for a great part, I could only see their gray backs, now and then, as they arched themselves over the black surface of the water. I stood a long while looking at them, and had I had my gun and harpoon, it would have been an easy matter to get one. After all, the prospect was not so bad at present; and meanwhile what we had to do was not to mind lanes, but to keep on our course S.W. or S.W. to S. over them, and push on the best we could. And with that resolution I returned to the sledges. Neither of us, however, had a very firm belief that we should get much farther, and therefore all the more elated did we become as our advance proved by degrees to be tolerably easy, in spite of our exhausted dogs.
“While we were making our way during the morning between some lanes I suddenly saw a black object come rushing through the air; it was a black guillemot (Uria grylle), and it circled round us several times. Not long afterwards I heard a curious noise in a southwesterly direction—something like the sound made by a goat’s horn when blown on; I heard it many times, and Johansen also remarked it, but I could not make out what it was. An animal, at all events, it must be, as human beings are hardly likely to be near us here.[13] A little while later a fulmar came sailing towards us, and flew round and round just over our heads. I got out my gun, but before I had a cartridge in the bird had gone again. It is beginning to grow lively here; it is cheering to see so much life, and gives one the feeling that one is approaching land and kindlier regions. Later on I saw a seal on the ice; it was a little ringed seal, which it would have been a satisfaction to capture; but before I had quite made out which it was it had disappeared into the water.