Franz Josef Land
“It was with a strange mixture of feelings that I made my way in towards land among the numerous hummocks and inequalities. Suddenly I thought I heard a shout from a human voice, a strange voice, the first for three years. How my heart beat and the blood rushed to my brain as I ran up on to a hummock and hallooed with all the strength of my lungs! Behind that one human voice in the midst of the icy desert—this one message from life—stood home and she who was waiting there; and I saw nothing else as I made my way between bergs and ice-ridges. Soon I heard another shout, and saw, too, from an ice-ridge, a dark form moving among the hummocks farther in. It was a dog; but farther off came another figure, and that was a man. Who was it? Was it Jackson, or one of his companions, or was it perhaps a fellow-countryman? We approached one another quickly. I waved my hat; he did the same. I heard him speak to the dog, and I listened. It was English, and as I drew nearer I thought I recognized Mr. Jackson, whom I remembered once to have seen.
“I raised my hat; we extended a hand to one another, with a hearty ‘How do you do?’ Above us a roof of mist shutting out the world around, beneath our feet the rugged, packed drift-ice, and in the background a glimpse of the land, all ice, glacier, and mist. On one side the civilized European in an English check suit and high rubber water-boots, well shaved, well groomed, bringing with him a perfume of scented soap, perceptible to the wild man’s sharpened senses; on the other side the wild man clad in dirty rags, black with oil and soot, with long uncombed hair and shaggy beard, black with smoke, with a face in which the natural fair complexion could not possibly be discerned through the thick layer of fat and soot which a winter’s endeavors with warm water, moss, rags, and at last a knife, had sought in vain to remove. No one suspected who he was or whence he came.
“Jackson: ‘I’m immensely glad to see you.’
“‘Thank you; I also.’
“‘Have you a ship here?’
“‘No; my ship is not here.’
“‘How many are there of you?’
“‘I have one companion at the ice-edge.’