On the evening of the same day I wrote: “To-day I have patched my kayak, and we have gone over all the seams in both kayaks with stearine; so now we hope we shall be able to go on in quite sound boats. In the meantime the walruses are lying outside, staring at us with their great, round eyes, grunting and blowing, and now and then clambering up on the edge of the ice, as though they wanted to drive us away.
“Tuesday, June 23d.
“‘Do I sleep? Do I dream?
Do I wonder and doubt?
Are things what they seem?
Or are visions about?’
What has happened? I can still scarcely grasp it. How incessant are the vicissitudes in this wandering life! A few days ago swimming in the water for dear life, attacked by walrus, living the savage life which I have lived for more than a year now, and sure of a long journey before us over ice and sea through unknown regions before we should meet with other human beings—a journey full of the same ups and downs, the same disappointments, that we have become so accustomed to—and now living the life of a civilized European, surrounded by everything that civilization can afford of luxury and good living, with abundance of water, soap, towels, clean, soft woollen clothes, books, and everything that we have been sighing for all these weary months.
Our Last Camp
“It was past midday on June 17th when I turned out to prepare breakfast. I had been down to the edge of the ice to fetch salt-water, had made up the fire, cut up the meat and put it in the pot, and had already taken off one boot, preparatory to creeping into the bag again, when I saw that the mist over the land had risen a little since the preceding day. I thought it would be as well to take the opportunity of having a look round, so I put on my boot again and went up on to a hummock near to look at the land beyond. A gentle breeze came from the land, bearing with it a confused noise of thousands of bird-voices from the mountain there. As I listened to these sounds of life and movement, watched flocks of auks flying to and fro above my head, and as my eye followed the line of coast, stopping at the dark, naked cliffs, glancing at the cold, icy plains and glaciers in a land which I believed to be unseen by any human eye and untrodden by any human foot, reposing in Arctic majesty behind its mantle of mist—a sound suddenly reached my ear so like the barking of a dog that I started. It was only a couple of barks, but it could not be anything else. I strained my ears, but heard no more, only the same bubbling noise of thousands of birds. I must have been mistaken, after all; it was only birds I had heard; and again my eye passed from sound to island in the west. Then the barking came again—first single barks, then full cry; there was one deep bark, and one sharper; there was no longer any room for doubt. At that moment I remembered having heard two reports the day before which I thought sounded like shots, but I had explained them away as noises in the ice. I now shouted to Johansen that I heard dogs farther inland. Johansen started up from the bag where he lay sleeping and tumbled out of the tent. ‘Dogs?’ He could not quite take it in, but had to get up and listen with his own ears while I got breakfast ready. He very much doubted the possibility of such a thing, yet fancied once or twice that he heard something which might be taken for the barking of dogs; but then it was drowned again in the bird-noises, and, everything considered, he thought that what I had heard was nothing more than that. I said he might believe what he liked, but I meant to set off as quickly as possible, and was impatient to get breakfast swallowed. I had emptied the last of the Indian meal into the soup, feeling sure that we should have farinaceous food enough by the evening. As we were eating we discussed who it could be, whether our countrymen or Englishmen. If it was the English expedition to Franz Josef Land which had been in contemplation when we started, what should we do? ‘Oh, we’ll just have to remain with them a day or two,’ said Johansen, ‘and then we’ll have to go on to Spitzbergen, else it will be too long before we get home.’ We were quite agreed on this point; but we would take care to get some good provisions for the voyage out of them. While I went on, Johansen was to stay behind and mind the kayaks, so that we should run no risk of their drifting away with the ice. I got out my snow-shoes, glass, and gun, and was ready. Before starting I went up once more to listen and look out a road across the uneven ice to the land. But there was not a sound like the barking of dogs, only noisy auks, harsh-toned little auks, and screaming kittiwakes. Was it these, after all, that I had heard? I set off in doubt. Then in front of me I saw the fresh tracks of an animal. They could hardly have been made by a fox, for if they were, the foxes here must be bigger than any I had ever seen. But dogs? Could a dog have been no more than a few hundred paces from us in the night without barking, or without our having heard it? It seemed scarcely probable; but, whatever it was, it could never have been a fox. A wolf, then? I went on, my mind full of strange thoughts, hovering between certainty and doubt. Was all our toil, were all our troubles, privations, and sufferings to end here? It seemed incredible, and yet—Out of the shadow-land of doubt, certainty was at last beginning to dawn. Again the sound of a dog yelping reached my ear, more distinctly than ever; I saw more and more tracks which could be nothing but those of a dog. Among them were foxes’ tracks, and how small they looked! A long time passed, and nothing was to be heard but the noise of the birds. Again arose doubt as to whether it was all an illusion. Perhaps it was only a dream. But then I remembered the dogs’ tracks; they, at any rate, were no delusion. But if there were people here we could scarcely be on Gillies Land or a new land, as we had believed all the winter. We must, after all, be on the south side of Franz Josef Land, and the suspicion I had had a few days ago was correct, namely, that we had come south through an unknown sound and out between Hooker Island and Northbrook Island, and were now off the latter, in spite of the impossibility of reconciling our position with Payer’s map.