“Wednesday, July 17th. At last the time is drawing near when we can be off again and start homeward in earnest. The snow has decreased sufficiently to make advance fairly easy. We are doing our utmost to get ready. The grips on the sledges are nicely arranged, and provided with cushions of bearskin on Johansen’s and of cloth on mine. This is in order to give the kayaks a firm and soft bed and prevent chafing. The kayaks are painted with soot and train-oil, and have been calked with pastels (for drawing), crushed and also mixed with train-oil; that is to say, as far as these various ingredients would go. We are now using a mixture of stearine, pitch, and resin,[11] to finish up with. A thorough revision of our equipment will take place, and everything not absolutely invaluable will be left behind. We must say good-bye here to the sleeping-bag and tent.[12] Our days of comfort are past, and henceforth until we are on board the sloop[13] we will live under the open sky.
“Meanwhile we have lain here—‘Longing Camp,’ as we call it—and let the time slip by. We have eaten bear-meat morning, noon, and night, and, so far from being tired of it, have made the discovery that the breast of the cubs is quite a delicacy. It is remarkable that this exclusive meat and fat diet has not caused us the slightest discomfort in any way, and we have no craving for farinaceous food, although we might, perhaps, regard a large cake as the acme of happiness. Every now and then we cheer ourselves up with lime-juice grog, a blood-pancake, or some stewed whortleberries, and let our imaginations run riot over all the amenities of civilization, which we mean to enjoy to the full when we get home! Perhaps it will be many a long day before we get there; perhaps there will be many a hard trial to overcome. But, no; I will believe the best. There are still two months of summer left, and in them something can be done.
“Friday, July 19th. Two full-grown Ross’s gulls flew over here from the northeast and went west this morning. When far off they uttered cries which reminded me of that of the wryneck, and which I at first thought came from a little auk. They flew quite low, just over my head, and the rose-color of their under-parts could be seen plainly. Another Ross’s gull flew by here yesterday. It is strange that there should be so many of them. Where are we?
“Tuesday, July 23d. Yesterday forenoon we at last got clear of ‘Longing Camp,’ and now, I am thankful to say, we are again on the move. We have worked day and night to get off. First we thought it would be on the 19th, then the 20th, and then the 21st, but something always cropped up that had to be done before we could leave. The bread, which had been soaked in sea-water, had to be carefully dried in the frying-pan over the lamp, and this took several days; then the socks had to be patched, and the kayaks carefully looked over, etc. We were determined to start on our last journey home in good repair, and so we did. Everything goes like wildfire. The chances of progress are better than we expected, although the ice is anything but even; the sledges are lighter to draw, now that everything that can be dispensed with is left behind, and the snow, too, has decreased considerably. On the last part of the journey yesterday we could even go without snow-shoes, and, as a matter of course, progress among the ridges and irregularities, where they are difficult to manage, is quicker without them. Johansen performed a feat by crossing a lane alone in his kayak, with ‘Suggen’ lying on the fore-deck, while he himself knelt on the after-deck and balanced the craft as he paddled. I began to try the same with mine, but found it too cranky to risk the attempt, and preferred to tow it over, with ‘Kaifas’ on the deck, while I went carefully alongside and jumped over on some pieces of ice.
“We have now the advantage of finding drinking-water everywhere. We are also eating our old provender again; but, curiously enough, neither Johansen nor I think the farinaceous food as good as one might suppose after a month of meat diet. It is good to be under way again, and not the least pleasant part about it is our lighter sledges; but then we certainly left a good deal behind at ‘Longing Camp.’ In addition to a respectable mound of meat and blubber, we left three fine bearskins. Our friend, the bag, too, is lying on the top of the bears; a quantity of wood, consisting of the boards from under the sledges, the snow-shoes and other things, more than half of Blessing’s fine medicaments—plaster-of-Paris bandages, soft steam-sterilized gauze bandages, hygroscopic cotton wadding—to say nothing of a good aluminium horizon-glass, rope, our combined frying-pan and melter, half an aluminium cap belonging to the cooker, sheets of German silver, a train-oil lamp of the same, bags, tools, sail-cloth, Finn shoes, our wolfskin fingerless gloves, also woollen ones, a geological hammer, half a shirt, socks, and other sundries, all strewn about in chaotic confusion. Instead of all these we have an augmentation in the form of a sack of dried seal’s and bear’s flesh and the other half of the aluminium cap full of blubber. We are now thoroughly divested of all superfluous articles, and there is hardly so much as a bit of wood to be had if one should want a stick to slip through the end of the hauling-rope.”
[1] It was the first diary I used on the sledge journey.
[2] Until this day we had eaten what we required without weighing out rations. It proved that, after all, we did not eat more than what I had originally allowed per day—i.e., 1 kilo. of dried food. We now reduced these day’s rations considerably.
[3] It was probably pressure of the floes against each other which caused this movement. We noticed the same motion several times later.
[4] We found water on the ice here suitable for cooking for the first time. It was, however, somewhat salt, so that the “fiskegratin” was too well seasoned.