Nansen and Johansen slept during the greater part of that long winter. Sometimes, like bears in their winter quarters, they would sleep for twenty-four hours at a stretch, when there was nothing particular to be done. Spring, however, returned at last, and the birds began to reappear on their northerly flight. The polar bears, too, revisited their hut, so they got plenty of fresh meat. The first bear they killed acted very daringly. Johansen was on the point of going out of the hut one day, when he started back, crying out, “There’s a bear just outside!” Snatching up his gun, he put his head out of the door of the hut, but instantly withdrew it. “It is close by, and means coming in.” Then he put his gun out again, and fired. The shot took effect, and the wounded beast made off for some rocky ground. After a long pursuit Nansen came up with it, and shot it in a snowdrift. It rolled over and over like a ball, and fell dead close to his feet. Its flesh lasted them six weeks.
On May 19 they broke up their winter camp, and proceeded over the ice in a southerly direction, meeting with long stretches of level young ice, making also good use of their sail, and finally reached open water on Friday, June 12. They now lashed the two kayaks together, forming a double kayak, and set out to sea with a favorable breeze, feeling not a little elated; and in the evening lay to at the edge of the ice to rest, having first moored the kayaks with a rope, and then got up on a hummock to reconnoitre. Presently Johansen was heard to shout out, “The kayaks are adrift!” Down they both of them rushed as fast as they could.
“Here, take my watch!” cried Nansen, handing it to Johansen, while he divested himself of his outer garments, and jumped into the water.
Meanwhile the kayaks had drifted a considerable distance. It was absolutely necessary to overtake them, for their loss meant—death.
But we will let Nansen tell the story:—
“When I got tired, I turned over on my back, and then I could see Johansen walking incessantly to and fro on the ice. Poor fellow! he could not stand still; he felt it was so dreadful to be unable to do anything. Moreover, he did not entertain, he told me, much hope of my being able to reach them. However, it would not have mended matters had he jumped in after me. They were the worst minutes, he said, he had ever passed in all his life.
“But when I turned over again and began swimming once more, I saw that I was perceptibly gaining on the kayaks, and this made me redouble my exertions. My limbs, however, were now becoming so numb and stiff that I felt I couldn’t go on much longer. But I wasn’t far off the kayaks now; if I could only manage to hold out a little longer, we were saved—and on I went. My strokes kept getting shorter and feebler every instant, but still I was gaining, and hoped to be able to come up with them. At last I got hold of a ski that lay athwart the bows, and clutched onto the kayaks. We were saved! but when I tried to get aboard, my limbs were so cold and stiff that I couldn’t manage it. For a moment I feared it was too late after all, and that although I had got thus far, I should never be able to get on board. So I waited a moment to rest, and after a great deal of difficulty, succeeded in getting one leg up on the edge of the sleigh that was lying on the deck, and so got on board, but so exhausted that I found it hard work to use the paddle.”
When Nansen at last got the kayaks back to the edge of the ice, he changed his wet clothes, and was put to bed on the ice, that is to say, in the sleeping-bag, by Johansen, who threw a sail over him, and made him some warm drink, which soon restored the circulation. But when he told Johansen to go and fetch the two auks he had shot as he was rowing the kayaks back, the latter burst out laughing, and said, “I thought you had gone clean mad when you shot.”
On Monday, June 15, Nansen’s life was a second time in jeopardy. They were rowing after walruses, when one of the creatures bobbed up close by Nansen’s kayak, and stuck its tusks through the side. Nansen hit it over the head with the paddle, whereon the brute let go his hold and disappeared.
But the kayak very nearly foundered, and was only hauled up on the ice as it was on the point of sinking.