The Fram in an ice pressure.
By Permission of Harper & Brothers.
It was on Monday, Oct. 9, that the Fram underwent her first experience of a regular ice-pressure. Nansen and the others were sitting after dinner, as usual, chatting about one thing and another, when all at once a deafening sound was heard, and the ship quivered from stem to stern. Up they rushed on deck; for now the Fram was to be put to the test—and gloriously she passed through it! When the ice nipped she lifted herself up, as if raised by invisible hands, and pushed the floes down below her.
An ice-pressure is a most wonderful thing. Let us hear what Nansen says of it:—
“It begins with a gentle crack and moan along the ship’s sides, gradually sounding louder in every conceivable key. Now it is a high plaintive tone, now it is a grumble, now it is a snarl, and the ship gives a start up. Steadily the noise increases till it is like all the pipes of an organ; the ship trembles and shakes, and rises by fits and starts, or is gently lifted up. But presently the uproar slackens, and the ship sinks down into her old position again, as if in a safe bed.”
But woe to them who have not such a ship to resort to under a pressure like this; for when once it begins in real earnest, it is as if there could not be a spot on the earth’s surface that would not tremble and shake.
“First,” says Nansen, “you hear a sound like the thundering rumble of an earthquake far away on the great waste; then you hear it in several places, always coming nearer and nearer. The silent ice world re-echoes with thunders; nature’s giants are awakening to the battle. The ice cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up in heaps. There are howlings and thunderings around you; you feel the ice trembling, and hear it rumbling under your feet. In the semi-darkness you can see it piling and tossing itself up into high ridges,—floes ten, twelve, fifteen feet thick, broken and flung up on the top of each other,—you jump away to save your life. But the ice splits in front of you; a black gulf opens, and the water streams up. You turn in another direction; but there through the dark you can just see a new ridge of moving ice-blocks coming toward you. You try another direction, but there it is just the same. All around there is thundering and roaring, as of some enormous waterfall with explosions like cannon salvoes. Still nearer you it comes. The floe you are standing on gets smaller and smaller; water pours over it; there can be no escape except by scrambling over the ice-blocks to get to the other side of the pack. But little by little the disturbance calms down again, and the noise passes on and is lost by degrees in the distance.”
Another thing brought life and stir into the camp, viz., “bears.” And many a time the cry of “bears” was heard in those icy plains.
In Farthest North, Nansen describes a number of amusing incidents with these animals. We must, however, content ourselves with giving only a brief sketch of some of the most interesting of these.
Nansen and Sverdrup, and indeed several of the others, had shot polar bears before; but some of their number were novices in the sport, among whom were Blessing, Johansen and Scott-Hansen. One day, when the latter were taking observations a short distance from the ship, a bear was seen but a little way off—in fact, just in front of the Fram.