They soon encountered ice again—nothing but ice—bare ice as far as the eye could reach. After waiting a considerable time, they once more had open water, of which they took advantage by hoisting a sail; but at the end of twenty-four hours their course was again blocked—a block that decided their future movements materially; for they were compelled to winter there!
It may readily be supposed that this was not only a terrible disappointment, but a severe trial to our two arctic navigators. After all their labor and exertion, after reaching open water, and buoying themselves up, with the hope that their struggles would soon be over, to find that hope shattered, and their plans rendered abortive, and that they must perforce be imprisoned in the ice for months, was enough to make them lose heart altogether. But when once they realized their position, they acted like men, and set to work to build a stone hut, on the roof and floor of which they stretched bear hides. They succeeded in shooting several walruses, the blubber of which provided them with fuel, so that they might have been in a worse plight than they were. Still, it was not altogether pleasant to have to lie in a stone hut during a polar winter, with the thermometer down to -40 Fahrenheit, without any other food than bears’ flesh and blubber. Indeed, it required the constitution of a giant to endure it, and unyielding determination not to lose heart altogether.
By working for a week, they finished the walls of their abode, and after getting the roof on, moved into it. They made a great heap of blubber of the walruses they shot outside the hut, covering it over with walrus hides. This was their fuel store. It served of course to attract bears, which was an advantage; and many a one paid the penalty of his appetite by being shot. At first they found it very uncomfortable at night, so they both slept in one sleeping-bag, and thus kept tolerably warm. But the climax of their joy was building in the roof a chimney of ice to let out the smoke of their fire. They had no other materials to make it out of. It answered capitally, however, having only one drawback; viz., that it readily melted. But there was no lack of ice for making another.
Their cuisine was simple in the extreme, and strangely enough they never got tired of their food. Whatever came to hand, flesh or blubber, they ate readily, and sometimes, when a longing for fatty food, as was often the case, came over them, they would fish pieces of blubber out of the lamps, and eat them with great relish. They called these burnt pieces biscuits; and “if there had only been a little sugar sprinkled on them, they would have tasted deliciously,” they said.
During the course of this winter the foxes proved very troublesome. They gnawed holes in the roof, stole instruments, wire, harpoons, and a thermometer. Luckily they had a spare one, so that the register of the temperature did not suffer. They were principally white foxes that visited them; but occasionally they saw the blue fox, and would dearly have liked to shoot some specimens of that beautiful animal, only that they feared their ammunition would not hold out. They shot their last bear on Oct. 21, after which they saw no more till the following spring.
It was a long, tedious winter; the weather generally very boisterous, with drifting snowstorms. But every now and then fine weather would set in, when the stars would shine with great brilliancy, and wondrously beautiful displays of the aurora borealis would lighten up the whole scene.
Another Christmas Eve arrived, the third they had spent in the polar regions; but this was the dreariest and gloomiest of them all. However, they determined to celebrate it, which they did by reversing their shirts. Then they ate fish-meal with train-oil instead of butter, and for a second course toasted bread and blubber. On Christmas morning they treated themselves to chocolate and bread.
On New Year’s Day, 1896, there were -41° of cold (Fahrenheit), and all Nansen’s finger-tips were frost-bitten. Out there on that dreary headland their thoughts wandered away to their home, where they pictured to themselves all the Christmas joy and festivity that would be taking place, the flakes of snow falling gently out-of-doors, and the happy faces of their dear ones within.
“The road to the stars is long and heavy!”