The “Great Expedition,” upon which so much thought and care had been expended, was ready to start, March 20, 1900. “The weather was beautiful,” writes Sverdrup, “and we drove out through the sound, east of Skreia, at a smart pace, taking, when south of it, a line direct for South Cape.”
On this journey in which Sverdrup and Fosheim traced the west shore of Ellesmere Land to 80° 50´ N., a serious, yet amusing, incident occurred. “At certain places on our way,” writes Sverdrup, “we came across huge rocks, some of which were as big as a cottage, and round them the snow had drifted to such a height that we could only just see the top. When we came nearer, we found that, as a rule, the wind had hollowed out a large empty space between the drift, and we were often met by a yawning pitfall twelve to eighteen feet in depth.... I should mention that we were obliged to drive above the rocks, as below was the open sea.... It once happened that, just as we were passing a rock of this kind, a gap occurred between my sledge and the one following it. As soon as I became aware of this, I pulled up; but almost before I knew what was taking place, the dogs had made their usual frantic rush to catch up, and the sledge, men, and team were precipitated into the hole twelve feet below. A moment afterwards, before anything could be done to prevent it, the next sledge came tearing up and fell into the hole, and on the heels of number two came a third, which followed their example.... In the grave lay pell-mell three men, eighteen dogs, and three sledges with their loads, and the snow was flying up from it in clouds. Here and there a sledge runner, or a sealskin strap, was sticking out. Then I saw one of the men crawling out of the medley and pulling himself together, then another, and another. Thank God, they were all alive! And the dogs? They were lying in a black heap, one team on top of the other, kicking, howling, and fighting, till we could hardly hear the men’s voices for their noise, so, apparently, they, too, were alive. As soon as we had hauled them all up, we set to work to shovel part of the drift away so that we could drag up the loads. The first sledge, which, after much toil, we succeeded in bringing up, strange to say, was whole, nor was there anything wrong with number two, while number three was as intact as the two former. The very astonishing result of this flight through the air was, therefore, that not a limb, nor a lashing, nor bit of wood was broken.”
While the travellers were in the field pursuing their perilous and exciting adventures, the Commandant at Björneborg was leading a lonely and monotonous life awaiting his chance to annihilate marauding Bruins. His first call to arms came soon after Captain Sverdrup’s departure. Late one night, while half asleep, the Commandant, at that time without a garrison, thought he heard a faint sound in the depot. “I only turned round in the bag,” he says, “and inwardly cursed Hassel’s dogs, which were loose again and ransacking the depot. I was on the point of falling asleep once more, when it began to dawn on me that my reasoning had been wrong, for there were no dogs within many miles, and therewith I heard a crash, which seemed to make the earth tremble. A moment later I was out of the bag, had dragged my gun from its cover, and cocked it, for it suddenly occurred to me that my guest was a serious one. The first thing I did was to light the lamp, after which I began to move away some tins I had put in front of the door, that night for the first time, to keep it in place. The sounds still continued at the depot, but, in moving the last tin, I happened to make a slight noise, and then everything became as still as death. I raised the door and crept out. It was one o’clock (I had looked at my watch when I lit the lamp), and much darker than was pleasant for the work before me.
Roald Amundsen
Courtesy of Constable and Co., London, and E. P. Dutton and Co.
“The bear, meanwhile, had made itself quite at home. In order to get at one of the blubber-cases, it had thrust the empty boxes out of its way, and had thrown down one of the dog-food boxes which had been placed on the cases of blubber. The marks of all its claws were clearly visible in the tin. The other box was open, and the bear had tasted a couple of rations, but had evidently not found them to his liking, for he had spat them out again into the box. It had then very carefully lifted the tin down on to the snow, and then—also very carefully—raised the lid of the blubber box. But just as it was going to begin its meal, it had evidently heard my clatter inside the hut, and had sat down to listen, with its right paw clasping the edge of the box. It was in this position at any rate that I found it, when I raised myself up, after creeping out. The bear was about fifteen yards away from me, and as soon as it saw me rose, large, and fat and hissing; it made the open tin rattle as it put its left paw down on it. It looked just as if it were thumping the table, to show what a fine fellow it was, and reminded me of one of my friends on board—so much so that I half unwittingly addressed it in the way usual between us; a manner, however, hardly fit for publication. Whether the bear felt offended at this I know not, but certain it is that it got up and walked, growling, with long measured steps round the depot. I aimed, and shot it in the shoulder; I could just discern the sights through the darkness.” “The bear uttered such a loud growl,” continues the Commandant, “that it seemed to make the stillness ring. The fire from my gun had dazzled me, and I could no longer see the sights, and the bear itself I only saw as a shapeless mass, which seemed to have grown most incredibly larger. The other barrel, the small-shot barrel, which was loaded with a large ball, I fired straight into the mass without going through any such formality as aiming. Then I made a well-ordered retreat behind the hut, and put in some fresh cartridges. I do not much believe in hurrying, but I did this in less time than it takes to tell. To my great astonishment I did not see anything—not that I wanted to—of my enemy during this operation, but as soon as I was ready, I began to peer about after it, though at first without success. At last, on bending down, I caught sight of a large dark object a short distance away, at a spot where I knew there was no rock,—this, of course, must be the bear, but whether dead or alive it was impossible to tell. I therefore advanced with much caution, and fired a shot at what I supposed to be its head. On closer examination it proved to be the other end of the bear I had bombarded; but as a zoölogist I, of course, knew that the head in Ursus maritimus is, as a rule, exactly at the opposite extremity to the after-end of the animal, and at last really succeeded in giving it some lead in the right place. The bear had, no doubt, been dead for some time, but discretion is the better part of valour. I then realized that I had killed my first bear; to say that I was proud is nowhere near the mark.”
The Commandant had other visits from bears while leading the hermit’s life at Björneborg, and the killing of a seal was also added to his achievements. On June 2, however, he left the castle where he had lived alone for almost a quarter of a year.—“It was not without a feeling of sadness,” he writes, “that I saw the last glimpse of the spot as we rounded the steep bluffs of Stormkap, for, although my life there had been solitary and monotonous enough,—except on occasions when it had been extremely lively,—I felt I was leaving a home where I knew every stone and every irregularity of the ground—a place I had known in calm and the glory of sunshine, as well as during the raging of the storms. And then, too, I had a feeling as if peace and quietness were at an end, for east of the Stormkap began for me the great busy world, which for so long now I had almost forgotten.”
A serious fire occurred on board the Fram, May 27, 1900. A spark from the galley falling upon the winter awning, was supposed to be the cause of the conflagration. The loss of paraffin-prepared kayaks, a quantity of skis, and wood and other valuables were consumed, but the chief danger, which threatened the safety of the ship and all on board, was the proximity of the fire to an iron tank containing fifty gallons of spirit; so great was the heat of the fire that, though the tank held, the tinning on the outside was found melted.
RELEASE FROM THE ICE