Thus the days passed by, one exactly like the other; we waited and waited for the snow to melt, and worked desultorily meanwhile at getting ourselves ready to proceed. This life reminded me of some Eskimos who journeyed up a fjord to collect grass for hay; but when they arrived at their destination found it quite short, and so settled down and waited till it was long enough to cut. A suitable condition of the snow was long in coming. On June 29th I write: “Will not the temperature rise sufficiently to make something like an effectual clearance of the snow? We try to pass the time as best we can in talking of how delightful it will be when we get home, and how we shall enjoy life and all its charms, and go through a calculation of chances as to how soon that may be; but sometimes, too, we talk of how well we will arrange for the winter in Spitzbergen, if we should not reach home this year. If it should come to that, we may not even get so far, but have to winter on some place ashore here—no, it can never come to that!
“Sunday, June 30th. So this is the end of June, and we are about the same place as when we began the month. And the state of the snow? Well, better it certainly is not; but the day is fine. It is so warm that we are quite hot lying here inside the tent. Through the open door we can see out over the ice where the sun is glittering through white sailing cirrus clouds on the dazzling whiteness. And then there is a Sunday calm, with a faint breeze mostly from the southeast, I think. Ah me! it is lovely at home to-day, I am sure, with everything in bloom and the fjord quivering in the sunlight; and you are sitting out on the point with Liv, perhaps, or are on the water in your boat. And then one’s eye wanders out through the door again, and I am reminded there is many an ice-floe between now and then, before the time when I shall see it all again.
“Here we lie far up in the north; two grim, black, soot-stained barbarians, stirring a mess of soup in a kettle and surrounded on all sides by ice; by ice and nothing else—shining and white, possessed of all the purity we ourselves lack. Alas, it is all too pure! One’s eye searched to the very horizon for a dark spot to rest on, but in vain. When will it really come to pass? Now we have waited for it two months. All the birds seemed to have disappeared to-day; not even a cheery little auk to be seen. They were here until yesterday, and we have heard them flying north and south, probably to and from land, where they have gone, I suppose, now that there is so little water about in these parts. If only we could move as easily as they!
“Wednesday, July 3d. Why write again? What have I to commit to these pages? Nothing but the same overpowering longing to be home and away from this monotony. One day just like the other, with the exception, perhaps, that before it was warm and quiet, while the last two days there has been a south wind blowing, and we are drifting northward. Found from a meridian altitude yesterday that we have drifted back to 82° 8.4′ N., while the longitude is about the same. Both yesterday and the day before we had to a certain extent really brilliant sunshine, and this for us is a great rarity. The horizon in the south was fairly clear yesterday, which it had not been for a long time; but we searched it in vain for land. I do not understand it....
“We had a fall of snow last night, and it dripped in here so that the bag became wet. This constant snowfall, which will not turn to rain, is enough to make one despair. It generally takes the form of a thick layer of new snow on the top of the old, and this delays the thaw.
“This wind seems to have formed some lanes in the ice again, and there is a little more bird-life. We saw some little auks again yesterday; they came from the south, probably from land.
“Saturday, July 6th. 33.8° Fahr. (+1° C.). Rain. At last, after a fortnight, we seem to have got the weather we have been waiting for. It has rained the whole night and forenoon, and is still at it—real, good rain: so now, perhaps, this everlasting snow will take itself off; it is as soft and loose as scum. If only this rain would go on for many days! But before we have time to look round there will be a cold wind with snow, a crust will form, and again we must wait. I am too used to disappointment to believe in anything. This is a school of patience; but nevertheless the rain has put us in good spirits.
“The days drag wearily by. We work in an intermittent way at the kayak grips of wood for our sledges, and at calking and painting our kayaks to make them water-tight. The painting, however, causes me a good deal of trouble. I burned bones here for many days till the whole place smelled like the bone-dust works at Lysaker; then came the toilsome process of pounding and grating them to make them perfectly fine and even. The bone-dust was thereupon mixed with train-oil, and at last I got as far as a trial, but the paint proved uncompromisingly to be perfectly useless. So now I must mix it with soot, as I had first intended, and add more oil. I am now occupied in smoking the place out in my attempts to make soot; but all my exertions, when it comes to collecting it, only result in a little pinch, although the smoke towered in the air, and they might have seen it in Spitzbergen. There is a great deal to do battle with when one has not a shop next door. What would I not give for a little bucket of oil-paint, only common lampblack! Well, well; we shall find a way out of the difficulty eventually, but meanwhile we are growing like sweeps.
“On Wednesday evening ‘Haren’ was killed; poor beast, he was not good for much latterly, but he had been a first-rate dog, and it was hard, I fancy, for Johansen to part with him; he looked sorrowfully at the animal before it went to the happy hunting-grounds, or wherever it may be draught-dogs go to. Perhaps to places where there are plains of level ice and no ridges and lanes. There are only two dogs left now—‘Suggen’ and ‘Kaifas’—and we must keep them alive as long as we can, and have use for them.
