But where were we? And how great was the distance we had to travel? Over and over again I reckoned out our observations of the autumn and summer and spring, but the whole matter was a perpetual puzzle. It seemed clear, indeed, that we must be lying somewhere far to the west, perhaps off the west coast of Franz Josef Land, a little north of Cape Lofley, as I had conjectured in the autumn. But, if that were so, what could the lands be which we had seen to the northward? And what was the land to which we had first come? From the first group of islands, which I had called White Land (Hvidtenland), to where we now lie, we had passed about 7° of longitude—that our observations proved conclusively. But if we were now in the longitude of Cape Fligely these islands must lie on a meridian so far east that it would fall between King Oscar’s Land and Crown Prince Rudolf Land; and yet we had been much farther east and had seen nothing of these lands. How was this to be explained? And, furthermore, the land we saw had disappeared to the southward; and we saw no indication of islands farther east. No, we could not have been near any known land; we must be upon some island lying farther west, in the strait between Franz Josef Land and Spitzbergen; and we could not but think of the hitherto so enigmatic Gillies Land. But this, too, seemed difficult to explain; for it was hard to understand how, in this comparatively narrow strait, such an extensive mass of land as this could find room without coming so near the Northeast Land of Spitzbergen that it could easily be seen from it. No other conclusion, however seemed at all plausible. We had long ago given up the idea that our watches could be even approximately right; for in that case, as already mentioned, we must have come right across Payer’s Wilczek Land and Dove Glacier without having noticed them. This theory was consequently excluded. There were other things, too, that greatly puzzled me. If we were on a new land, near Spitzbergen, why were the rosy gulls never seen there, while we had found them in flocks here to the north? And then there was the great variation of the compass. Unfortunately, I had no chart of the variations with me, and I could not remember where the zero meridian of variation lay—the boundary-line between easterly and westerly variation. I thought, however, that it lay somewhere near the Northeast Land; and here we had still a variation of about 20°. The whole thing was, and remained, an insoluble riddle.
As the daylight began to lengthen later in the spring, I made a discovery which had the effect of still more hopelessly bewildering us. At two points on the horizon, about W.S.W., I fancied that I could see land looming in the air. The appearance recurred again and again, and at last I was quite certain that it really was land; but it must be very far away—at least 69 miles, I thought.[2] If it had been difficult to find room between Franz Josef Land and Northeast Land for the islands we had hitherto seen, it was more difficult still to find room for these new ones. Could it be the Northeast Land itself? This seemed scarcely credible. This land must lie in about 81° or so northward, while the Northeast Land does not reach much north of 80°. But at least these islands must be pretty near Northeast Land, and if we once reached them, we could not have much farther to go, and would perhaps find open water all the way to the Tromsö sloop, on which our fancy had now dwelt for over a year, and which was to take us home.
The thought of all the good things we should find on board that sloop was what comforted us whenever the time hung unendurably heavy on our hands. Our life was not, indeed, altogether luxurious. How we longed for a change in the uniformity of our diet! If only we could have had a little sugar and farinaceous food, in addition to all the excellent meat we had, we could have lived like princes. Our thoughts dwelt longingly on great platters full of cakes, not to mention bread and potatoes. How we would make up for lost time when we got back! And we would begin as soon as we got on board that Tromsö sloop. Would they have potatoes on board? Would they have fresh bread? At worst, even hard ship’s bread would not be so bad, especially if we could get it fried in sugar and butter. But better even than food would be the clean clothes we could put on. And then books—only to think of books! Ugh, the clothes we lived in were horrible! and when we wanted to enjoy a really delightful hour we would set to work imagining a great, bright, clean shop, where the walls were hung with nothing but new, clean, soft woollen clothes, from which we could pick out everything we wanted. Only to think of shirts, vests, drawers, soft and warm woollen trousers, deliciously comfortable jerseys, and then clean woollen stockings and warm felt slippers—could anything more delightful be imagined? And then a Turkish bath! We would sit up side by side in our sleeping-bag for hours at a time and talk of all these things. They seemed almost unimaginable. Fancy being able to throw away all the heavy, oily rags we had to live in, glued as they were to our bodies! Our legs suffered most; for there our trousers stuck fast to our knees, so that when we moved they abraded and tore the skin inside our thighs till it was all raw and bleeding. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping these sores from becoming altogether too ingrained with fat and dirt, and had to be perpetually washing them with moss, or a rag from one of the bandages in our medicine-bag, and a little water, which I warmed in a cup over the lamp. I have never before understood what a magnificent invention soap really is. We made all sorts of attempts to wash the worst of the dirt away; but they were all equally unsuccessful. Water had no effect upon all this grease; it was better to scour one’s self with moss and sand. We could find plenty of sand in the walls of the hut, when we hacked the ice off them. The best method, however, was to get our hands thoroughly lubricated with warm bear’s blood and train-oil, and then scrub it off again with moss. They thus became as white and soft as the hands of the most delicate lady, and we could scarcely believe that they belonged to our own bodies. When there was none of this toilet preparation to be had, we found the next best plan was to scrape our skin with a knife.
If it was difficult to get our own bodies clean, it was a sheer impossibility as regards our clothes. We tried all possible ways; we washed them both in Eskimo fashion and in our own; but neither was of much avail. We boiled our shirts in the pot hour after hour, but took them out only to find them just as full of grease as when we put them in. Then we took to wringing the train-oil out of them. This was a little better; but the only thing that produced any real effect was to boil them, and then scrape them with a knife while they were still warm. By holding them in our teeth and our left hand and stretching them out, while we scraped them all over with the right hand, we managed to get amazing quantities of fat out of them; and we could almost have believed that they were quite clean when we put them on again after they were dry. The fat which we scraped off was, of course, a welcome addition to our fuel.
In the meanwhile our hair and beard grew entirely wild. It is true we had scissors and could have cut them; but as our supply of clothes was by no means too lavish, we thought it kept us a little warmer to have all this hair, which began to flow down over our shoulders. But it was coal-black like our faces, and we thought our teeth and the whites of our eyes shone with an uncanny whiteness, now that we could see each other again in the daylight of the spring. On the whole, however, we were so accustomed to each other’s appearance that we really found nothing remarkable about it; and not until we fell in with other people and found that they were precisely of that opinion did we begin to recognize that our outer man was, perhaps, open to criticism.
It was a strange life, and in many ways it put our patience to a severe test; but it was not so unendurable as one might suppose. We at any rate thought that, all things considered, we were fairly well off. Our spirits were good the whole time; we looked serenely towards the future, and rejoiced in the thought of all the delights it had in store for us. We did not even have recourse to quarrelling to while away the time. After our return, Johansen was once asked how we two had got on during the winter, and whether we had managed not to fall out with each other; for it is said to be a severe test for two men to live so long together in perfect isolation. “Oh no,” he answered, “we didn’t quarrel; the only thing was that I had the bad habit of snoring in my sleep, and then Nansen used to kick me in the back.” I cannot deny that this is the case; I gave him many a well-meant kick, but fortunately he only shook himself a little and slept calmly on.
Thus did our time pass. We did our best to sleep away as much as possible of it. We carried this art to a high pitch of perfection, and could sometimes put in as much as 20 hours’ sleep in the 24. If any one still holds to the old superstition that scurvy is due to lack of exercise, he may look upon us as living evidences to the contrary; for all the time our health was excellent. As the light now began to return with the spring, however, we were more inclined to go out. Besides, it was not always so cold now, and we had to restrict our sleep a little. Then, too, the time for our departure was approaching, and we had plenty to occupy us in the way of preparation and so forth.
“Tuesday, February 25th. Lovely weather to be out in to-day; it is as though spring were beginning. We have seen the first birds—first a flock of half a score of little auks (Mergulus alle), then a flock of four; they came from the south along the land, evidently through the sound in the southeast, and disappeared behind the mountain crest to the northwest of us. Once more we heard their cheerful twittering, and it roused a responsive echo in the soul. A little later we heard it again, and then it seemed as if they were perched on the mountain above us. It was the first greeting from life. Blessed birds, how welcome you are!
“It was quite like a spring evening at home; the sun’s red glow faded little by little into golden clouds, and the moon rose. I went up and down outside, and dreamt I was in Norway on a spring evening.
“Wednesday, February 26th. To-day we ought to have had the sun again, but the sky was cloudy.