I was surprised at the change only five days had wrought in Captain Amundsen. He seemed to me to have aged ten years. We now joined with our companions in the work of freeing the N 25 from her precarious position. As stated before, when Captain Amundsen’s plane had started to come down into the lead, his rear motor back-fired, and he was forced to land with only one motor working, which accounted for the position which we now found N 25 in. She lay half on and half off an ice floe; her nose was up on the cake and her tail down in the sea. Coming down thus had reduced her speed and saved her from crashing into the cake of old blue ice, which was directly ahead. It seemed amazing that whereas five days ago the N 25 had found enough open water to land in, now there was not enough to be seen anywhere sufficient to launch a rowboat in. She was tightly locked in the grip of the shifting ice.
N 25 ABOVE THE POLAR PACK JUST BEFORE LANDING AT 87° 44′
A most orderly routine was being enforced at Amundsen’s camp. Regular hours for everything—to work, sleep, eat, smoke and talk; no need to warn these men, as so many explorers had been compelled to do, not to give one another the story of their lives, lest boredom come. These Norwegians have their long periods of silence in which the glance of an eye or the movement of a hand takes the place of conversation. This, no doubt, accounts for the wonderful harmony that existed during the whole twenty-five days of our imprisonment in the ice. One might expect confusion and disorganization under the conditions confronting us. But it was just the reverse. We did everything as if we had oceans of time in which to do it. It was this calm, cool, and unhurried way of doing things which kept our spirits up and eventually got us out of a desperate situation. No one ever got depressed or blue.
N 24 AND OUR ARCTIC HOME
We elected Omdal our cook. Although we felt better nourished and stronger after our noon cup of pemmican broth, it was always our morning and evening cup of chocolate that we looked forward to most. How warming and cheering that hot draught was! Captain Amundsen remarked that the only time we were happy up there was when either the hot chocolate was going down our throats, or else when we were rolled up in our reindeer sleeping bags. The rest of the time we were more or less miserable, but never do I remember a time when we ever lost faith! The after-compartment of our plane—a gaunt hole—served as kitchen, dining-room and sleeping-quarters, but it was draughty and uncomfortable, and it seemed always a relief to get out into the open again after our meals. The cold duralumin metal overhead was coated with hoarfrost which turned into a steady drip as the heat from our little Primus stove, together with that from our steaming chocolate, started to warm up the cabin. Feucht always sat opposite me—I say sat, but he squatted—we all squatted on the bottom of the plane with our chocolate on our knees. I remember how I used to covertly watch him eating his three oatmeal wafers and drinking his chocolate. I always tried to hold mine back so as not to finish before him. I had the strange illusion that if I finished first it was because he was getting more to eat than I. I particularly recall one occasion, two weeks later, after we had cut our rations in half, when I purposely hid my last biscuit in the folds of my parka, and the satisfaction it gave me to draw it out and eat it after Feucht had laid his cup aside. It was the stirring of those primitive instincts which, hidden beneath the veneer of our civilization, lie ever ready to assert themselves upon reversion to primitive conditions. We smoked a pipe apiece of tobacco after each meal, but unfortunately we had taken only a few days’ supply of smoking stuff. When that went, we had to resort to Riiser-Larsen’s private stock of rank, black chewing twist. It took a real hero to smoke that tobacco after moistening it so as to make it burn slower and thus hold out longer. It always gave us violent hiccoughs.
We were compelled to give up our civilized habits of washing or changing our clothes. It was too cold to undress, and we could not spare the fuel to heat any water after our necessary cooking was done.
During all our stay in the ice I never saw Captain Amundsen take a drink of water. I was always thirsty after the pemmican, and when I called for water, he said he could not understand how I could drink so much water.
Captain Amundsen and I slept together in the pilot’s cockpit, which we covered over with canvas to darken it at night. I was never able to get used to the monotony of continuous daylight and found it very wearing. With the exception of Riiser-Larsen the rest of the men slept on their skis stretched across the rear-compartment to keep them off the metal bottom. Riiser-Larsen had the tail all to himself, into which he was compelled to crawl on hands and knees.