Now Nansen planned the great sledge journey, which has been called "the most daring ever undertaken." The winter was passed in peaceful preparation for a start in the spring. When the New Year of 1895 dawned the Fram had been firmly frozen in for fifteen months. A few days later, the ship was nearly crushed by a fresh ice pressure and all prepared to abandon her if necessary, but after an anxious day of ice roaring and crackling—"an ice pressure with a vengeance, as if Doomsday had come," remarked Nansen—it quieted down. They had now beaten all records, for they had reached 83 degrees latitude.
And now preparations for the great sledge journey were complete. They had built kayaks or light boats to sail in open water, and these were placed on the sledges and drawn by dogs. Nansen decided only to take one companion, Johansen, and to leave the others with the Fram.
"At last the great day has arrived. The chief aim of the expedition is to push through the unknown Polar sea from the region around the New Siberian Islands, north of Franz Josef Land and onward to the Atlantic Ocean near Spitzbergen or Greenland." Farewells were said, and then the two men bravely started off over the unknown desert sea with their sledges and twenty-eight dogs. For the first week they travelled well and soon reached 85 degrees latitude. "The only disagreeable thing to face now is the cold," says Nansen. "Our clothes are transformed more and more into complete suits of ice armour. The sleeve of my coat actually rubbed deep sores in my wrists, one of which got frostbitten; the wound grew deeper and deeper and nearly reached the bone. At night we packed ourselves into our sleeping-bags and lay with our teeth chattering for an hour before we became aware of a little warmth in our bodies."
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DR. NANSEN. After a photograph. |
Steadily, with faces to the north, they pressed on over the blocks of rough ice, stretching as far as the horizon, till on 8th April further progress became impossible. Nansen strode on ahead and mounted one of the highest hummocks to look around. He saw "a veritable chaos of ice-blocks, ridge after ridge, and nothing but rubble to travel over." He therefore determined to turn and make for Franz Josef Land some four hundred and fifty miles distant. They had already reached 86 degrees of latitude, farther north than any expedition had reached before.
As they travelled south, they rejoiced in the warmth of the sun, but their food was growing scarce, and they had to kill a dog every other day to feed the others, till by May they had only thirteen dogs left. June found them having experienced tremendous snowstorms with only seven dogs left. Although they were in the latitude of Franz Josef Land, no welcome shores appeared. It was now three months since they had left the Fram; the food for the dogs was quite finished and the poor creatures were beginning to eat their harness of sailcloth. Mercifully before the month ended they managed to shoot a seal which provided them with food for a month. "It is a pleasing change," says Nansen, "to be able to eat as much and as often as we like. Blubber is excellent, both raw and fried. For dinner I fried a highly successful steak, for supper I made blood-pancakes fried in blubber with sugar, unsurpassed in flavour. And here we lie up in the far north, two grim, black, soot-stained barbarians, stirring a mess of soup in a kettle, surrounded on all sides by ice—ice covered with impassable snow."
A bear and two cubs were shot and the explorers stayed on at "Longing Camp" as they named this dreary spot, unable to go on, but amply fed.
On 24th July we get the first cheerful entry for many a long day: "Land! land! after nearly two years we again see something rising above that never-ending white line on the horizon yonder—a new life is beginning for us!"
Only two dogs were now left to drag the sledges, so the two explorers were obliged to help with the dragging. For thirteen days they proceeded in the direction of land, dragging and pushing their burdens over the ridges of ice with thawing snow. At last on 7th August they stood at the edge of the ice. Behind lay their troubles; before was the waterway home. Then they launched their little kayaks, which danced over the open waters, the little waves splashing against their sides. When the mist cleared they found themselves on the west coast of Franz Josef Land, discovered by an Austro-Hungarian expedition in 1874.