We arrived here this morning. The journey down past the seven glaciers was like an adventure. As we left the Sound between Amsterdamöen and Danskeöen we saw the high snow-clad hills of Prince Karl’s Foreland—they were 100 kilometers away and blended into the clear evening air in the distance like a white veil. We followed the coast till we arrived opposite Seal Bay, and were able to observe the whole time how the light of the midnight sun illuminated the hills of the mainland with a rosy glow, so it was long before we sought our bunks. We passed the seven glaciers one by one, which lie along the coast, making it impossible to land anywhere between Cape Mitra and Magdalena Bay—for the dark brown cliffs lying between each glacier rise sheer from the sea, and here also the fairway is dangerous. Far out, as we are, from the coast we can see the waves break over the ground, although the sea is so calm and the swell hardly perceptible, while “Fram” rarely gives a single roll. During the trip downwards we had coffee in company with our comrades who should now leave us. It was the last meal on board that we should have together for some time, yet the final cup had to be quickly swallowed as those who were leaving us had many things to pack. Bjerknes and Calwagen gathered their meteorological instruments together—and the Amundsen-Ellsworth Expedition’s weather service came to an end. The last report they made showed us that the weather in the polar basin had not got much worse. The depression from the North Atlantic was delayed.
We are now opposite the center glacier and can see all seven. One of the expedition’s humorists asks us if we can tell him which two of the glaciers have the greatest distance between them.
He is full of glee when we make him answer his own question and he replies with the words, “The distance is naturally greatest between the first and the seventh!”
We stand on the afterdeck and earnestly ask the Dornier-Wal factory’s representative if it is not possible that one of the flying machines has dashed down during the flight and crashed, and that the other has probably got damaged in landing to go to its assistance. “Nothing is impossible,” says Schulte-Frohlinde, “but the chance that one machine has crashed during the flight is even less than that ‘Fram’ at the present moment should suddenly break her back. And one must never forget that skilled airmen are piloting N 24 and 25, making an accident highly improbable.”
We are now nearing Cape Mitra and turn in for the night. As we wake this morning we find we have arrived at the coaling quay of Ny-Aalesund. Formerly we stayed in this little thriving mining town for six weeks ere we left it nine days ago, yet we have to look long at everything before we recognize the place, for while we have been away the sun and wind have altered its appearance and left their mark on it in every direction. The ice which had lain beside the quay to a thickness of eight or ten inches was now only mush; the rest had been carried away to sea by the currents and the tide. On the other side of the fjord the fairway is clear and open, reaching to the foot of the glacier and on the Ny-Aalesund side the ice has become so thin that it will hardly bear the weight of a man. The track which the flying machines had glided over is now clear of ice and people ashore tell us that it was not many days after the start before the ice broke up entirely. We have hardly finished breakfast on board when the expedition’s good friend, Director Knutsen, comes on board to hear the news. We have not much to tell him, but what we relate never shakes his confidence in the least that the six will return to Ny-Aalesund, and that this tiny outpost of civilization shall see the beginning of their triumphal procession southwards. He declares further that so long as he is on the spot everything shall be ready to receive them, or to minister to their needs, and the table shall be spread within half an hour of their setting foot in Ny-Aalesund. Greetings shall thunder out and every flag the town possesses shall be flown mast-high. Everything is ready! Just let them arrive! His confidence inflects us, and by the time we sit at the luncheon table we all take a brighter view of the situation. And this, although it is Saturday, nine days after the start—the day we should have begun to doubt in earnest.
Ny-Aalesund, King’s Bay. Sunday, May 31st
This evening the first of the party, who arrived here on Easter Day (April 13th) with the expedition, set off southwards. To-day is Whitsunday; seven weeks have passed since “Fram” and “Hobby” sailed to the ice border—five kilometers in front of the quay where “Fram” now lies. It is a bitterly cold day—the air raw, and a biting wind stinging one’s face and blowing through even the thickest clothes. During the entire day we have had a clear blue sky which acts as a background to the three mountains, Nora, Svea and Dana, the peculiar formation of which in the strangely clear atmosphere makes them appear to be only a stone’s throw away and not thirty kilometers from the spot where we stand on the quay.
Towards the entrance to the fjord we see a long heavy smoke cloud; it is the farewell greeting from the icebreaker “Pasvik,” which is carrying our comrades away.
There were originally twenty members in the expedition which came to help Amundsen. He and five others flew into the unknown on the 21st of May. Here again in Spitzbergen are Horgen, the chemist Zapffe, the film photographer Berge, the journalist Wharton, the stewart Einer Olsen, and I. On board the “Pasvik” are Director Schulte-Frohlinde, Dr. Matheson, Dr. Phil. Bjerknes, the meteorologist Calwagen, sail-maker Rönne, the engineer Green, the mechanic Zinsmayer, and the meteorological telegraphist Devoid, sailing southwards.
The twenty of us were not gathered together for so very many weeks, but it is not the duration of time which determines good feeling amongst men. The occurrence through which we have lived has bound us together with mutual memories so exalted that even if we should never meet again there will always be a Freemasonry amongst us. We saw six men in two heavy gray machines place themselves in the hands of Fate, a fate more relentless, more unknown, than Columbus and Vasco da Gama encountered. If we should meet each other under different conditions we should never be at a loss for a subject of conversation, for we could always fall back on the eternal, “Do you remember ...?” by way of an opening.