“Once he actually undid one hood,” says Nansen, “took another turn to the boats, and then another look at the surf, leaving the hood unfastened in case of accidents. A huge crag of ice was swaying in the sea close beside us, and threatening every moment to fall upon our floe. The surf was washing us on all sides.... The other boat, in which Balto was asleep, was washed so heavily that again and again Sverdrup had to hold it in its place.”
A second time he came to undo the tent hood, but just as things looked their worst, the floe changed her course and as if directed by an unseen hand, sailed toward land, and took refuge in a good harbour. On July 29, the fates were kind, and they made a landing at Anoritok, 62° 05´ N., nearly two hundred miles south of Cape Dan. Following the shore to the north, they fell in with natives near Cape Bille.
The ice journey commenced from Ninivik 64° 45´ N., which was reached August 10, after pursuing their journey up steep, irregular slopes, covered with soft snow and beset with dangerous crevasses; they made only forty miles inland after seventeen days of most arduous travel, and reached an elevation of six thousand feet.
PLANS THE CROSSING OF GREENLAND
“It was now late in the year,” writes Nansen, “and the autumn of the ‘inland ice’ was not likely to prove a gentle season, so the fact that it was considerably shorter crossing to the head of one of the fiords in the neighbourhood of Godthaab to Christianshaab was an argument that had its weight.... I consulted the map again and again, made the calculations to myself, and finally determined upon the Godthaab route.... The point where I thought of getting down was that which we actually hit, and which lies at about latitude 64° 10´ N.... The rest of the party hailed my change of plan with acclamation. They seemed to have already had more than enough of ‘inland ice,’ were longing for kindlier scenes, and gave their unqualified approval to the new route.”
CARRIES OUT HIS UNDERTAKINGS
Sails had been rigged to the sleds, and with the terrific winds which swept the ice-cap, advance was assisted by this means, the men marching on skis. So frightful were the storms that raged over these desolate snow fields that at night it seemed as if the tent would be torn to shreds, and before a start could be made in the morning, the sledges had to be dug out of the drifts and unloaded so that their runners might be scraped clean of snow and ice, “a task which we found anything but grateful in the biting wind, ... but the cruellest work of the whole day was getting the tent up in the evening, for we had to begin by lacing the floor and walls together; as this had to be done with the unprotected fingers, we had to take good care not to get them seriously frozen.” “One evening when I was at work,” says Nansen, “I suddenly discovered that the fingers of both my hands were white up to the palms. I felt them and found they were as hard and senseless as wood. By rubbing and beating them, however, I soon set the blood in circulation and brought their colour back.”
The Lapps suffered from snow-blindness, and all were burned by the sun’s rays. This was largely due to the want of density in the air, and the reflection of the rays from the level expanse of snow.
“About ten in the morning of August 31,” writes Dietrichson, “we saw land for the last time. We were upon the crest of one of the great waves, or gentle undulations in the surface, and had our final glimpse of a little point of rock which protruded from the snow. It lay, of course, far in the interior, and for many days had been the only dark point, save ourselves and the sledges, on which our eyes could rest.”
At an altitude of nearly eight thousand feet, they toiled on for days over the interminable desert of snow; there was no break in the horizon, no object to rest the eye upon, and a course was laid out by the diligent use of the compass alone. From the second week in September the party had been anxiously looking for the beginning of the western slope. On September 19, Balto’s joyful cry of “Land ahead!” greeted the advancing sledge fleet. The ice conditions had become more formidable in character, the gradual descent treacherous in the extreme.