"Yes; our camp is over there. Won't you come across?" the other replied. "I think we can find room for you, if you will."
Nansen, never dreaming but that he was recognised, assented, although he wondered why the man did not ask him about the Fram. Presently his companion looked at him closely and said: "Are you Nansen?"
"Of course I am," the explorer answered, and at once both his hands were clasped in a hearty grasp as his companion quickly expressed his congratulations.
"I was not certain," he explained. "When I saw you in London you were a fair man with light hair, but now your face and hair are black, and for the moment I did not know you. My name is Jackson."
THE MEETING OF JACKSON AND NANSEN.
Nansen and Jackson returned to Norway in the Windward, the ship of the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition, on August 13, 1896.
Nansen had forgotten that his face and hair were still begrimed with the dirt and grease of months of travel, and that his own family might have been forgiven for not recognising in the unkempt, travel-stained, long-haired man, the smart, well-set-up Norwegian doctor. Now, however, that he was known, he listened with great interest to the information that his companion, Mr. F. G. Jackson, leader of the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition, was able to give him. When they reached the encampment of the party on Cape Flora, every one turned out in answer to the leader's call and gave the intrepid explorer a characteristic British greeting. Then they photographed him, as he stood, before they took him into the house and supplied him with the luxury he had not known for more than a year—of a cake of soap and a change of clothes.
While he was enjoying his bath, his hosts exchanged opinions. The fact that he had arrived on foot and alone suggested to them the idea that he was the only survivor of the thirteen who had set out in the Fram, and they decided to make no reference to what might be a very unhappy memory. Consequently, when Nansen reappeared, clean and comfortably clad, they had a meal ready for him, and urged him to set to at once. He looked at them and asked where his comrade Johansen was. Had they not brought him in? Of course they knew nothing about Johansen; they believed Nansen was the only survivor, and he had been so long out of the world that it had never occurred to him it was necessary to tell them Johansen was waiting for him to return to breakfast. When two men see no one else but themselves for more than a year, it is not to be wondered at that they forget the rest of the world is not in touch with them.