“Saturday, August 17th. Yesterday was a good day. We are in open water on the west coast of Franz Josef Land, as far as I can make out, and may again hope to get home this year. About noon yesterday we walked across the ice from our moraine-islet to the higher island west of us. As I was ready before Johansen, I went on first to examine the island a little. As he was following me he caught sight of a bear on the level ice to leeward. It came jogging up against the wind straight towards him. He had his gun ready, but when a little nearer the bear stopped, reconsidered the situation, suddenly turned tail, and was soon out of sight.
“This island[10] we came to seemed to me to be one of the most lovely spots on the face of the earth. A beautiful flat beach, an old strand-line with shells strewn about, a narrow belt of clear water along the shore, where snails and sea-urchins (Echinus) were visible at the bottom and amphipoda were swimming about. In the cliffs overhead were hundreds of screaming little auks, and beside us the snow-buntings fluttered from stone to stone with their cheerful twitter. Suddenly the sun burst forth through the light fleecy clouds, and the day seemed to be all sunshine. Here were life and bare land; we were no longer on the eternal drift-ice! At the bottom of the sea just beyond the beach I could see whole forests of seaweed (Laminaria and Fucus). Under the cliffs here and there were drifts of beautiful rose-colored snow.[11]
“On the north side of the island we found the breeding-place of numbers of black-backed gulls; they were sitting with their young in ledges of the cliffs. Of course we had to climb up and secure a photograph of this unusual scene of family life, and as we stood there high up on the cliff’s side we could see the drift-ice whence we had come. It lay beneath us like a white plain, and disappeared far away on the horizon. Beyond this it was we had journeyed, and farther away still the Fram and our comrades were drifting yet.
“I had thought of going to the top of this island to get a better view, and perhaps come nearer solving the problem of our whereabouts. But when we were on the west side of it the mist came back and settled on the top; we had to content ourselves with only going a little way up the slope to look at our future course westward. Some way out we saw open water; it looked like the sea itself, but before one could get to it there was a good deal of ice. We came down again and started off. Along the land there was a channel running some distance farther, and we tried it, but it was covered everywhere with a thin layer of new ice, which we did not dare to break through in our kayaks, and risk cutting a hole in them; so, finally, a little way farther south we put in to drag up the kayaks and take to the ice again. While we were doing this one huge bearded seal after another stuck its head up by the side of the ice and gazed wonderingly at us with its great eyes; then, with a violent header, and splashing the water in all directions, it would disappear, to come up again soon afterwards on the other side. They kept playing around us, blowing, diving, reappearing, and throwing themselves over so that the water foamed round them. It would have been easy enough to capture one had we required it.
“At last, after a good deal of exertion, we stood at the margin of the ice; the blue expanse of water lay before us as far as the eye could reach, and we thought that for the future we had to do with it alone. To the north[12] there was land, the steep, black, basalt cliffs of which fell perpendicularly into the sea. We saw headland after headland standing out northward, and farthest off of all we could descry a bluish glacier. The interior was everywhere covered with an ice-sheet. Below the clouds, and over the land, was a strip of ruddy night sky, which was reflected in the melancholy, rocking sea.
“So we paddled on along the side of the glacier which covered the whole country south of us. We became more and more excited as we approached the headland to the west. Would the coast trend south here, and was there no more land westward? It was this we expected to decide our fate—decide whether we should reach home that year or be compelled to winter somewhere on land. Nearer and nearer we came to it along the edge of the perpendicular wall of ice. At last we reached the headland, and our hearts bounded with joy to see so much water—only water—westward, and the coast trending southwest. We also saw a bare mountain projecting from the ice-sheet a little way farther on; it was a curious high ridge, as sharp as a knife-blade. It was as steep and sharp as anything I have seen; it was all of dark, columnar basalt, and so jagged and peaked that it looked like a comb. In the middle of the mountain there was a gap or couloir, and there we crept up to inspect the sea-way southward. The wall of rock was anything but broad there, and fell away on the south side in a perpendicular drop of several hundred feet. A cutting wind was blowing in the couloir. While we were lying there, I suddenly heard a noise behind me, and on looking around I saw two foxes fighting over a little auk which they had just caught. They clawed and tugged and bit as hard as they could on the very edge of the chasm; then they suddenly caught sight of us, not twenty feet away from them. They stopped fighting, looked up wonderingly, and began to run around and peep at us, first from one side, then from the other. Over us myriads of little auks flew backward and forward, screaming shrilly from the ledges in the mountain-side. So far as we could make out, there appeared to be open sea along the land to the westward. The wind was favorable, and although we were tired we decided to take advantage of the opportunity, have something to eat, rig up mast and sail on our canoes, and get afloat. We sailed till the morning, when the wind went down, and then we landed on the shore-ice again and camped.[13]
A Paddle along the Edge of the Ice
“I am as happy as a child in the thought that we are now at last really on the west coast of Franz Josef Land, with open water before us, and independent of ice and currents.
“Wednesday, August 24th. The vicissitudes of this life will never come to an end. When I wrote last I was full of hope and courage; and here we are stopped by stress of weather for four days and three nights, with the ice packed as tight as it can be against the coast. We see nothing but piled-up ridges, hummocks, and broken ice in all directions. Courage is still here, but hope—the hope of soon being home—that was relinquished a long time ago, and before us lies the certainty of a long, dark winter in these surroundings.