He has a history of northern custom and tradition behind him, for his people have often left their work of trapping if they believed that there was some geographical secret to be unraveled or some new road to be opened up. The Hammerfest skipper, Elling Carlsen, came into this neighborhood where we are now lying with a little vessel in 1863 in order to follow his calling as a trapper. As the fairway northwards appeared to be free from ice, he did not turn back the way he had come. He steered eastwards, sailed round Northeastland, and set his course southwards towards Norway, passing Giles Land, Barentsöen and Hopen. For such enterprise (in days when ice-boats only had sails) he got a well-deserved reward from the Royal Geographical Society in London.
How much this skipper’s experience has helped in our present expedition it would be difficult to say, but certain it is that many an explorer has been aided considerably by this man’s discoveries and by his accounts of conditions in districts hitherto unexplored and unknown. Polar explorers have always worked in company with the trappers in the Arctic—and Nansen, Sverdrup and Amundsen all made their first expedition in a seal-boat. Can one not regard their enterprise as a continuation of the work done by brave skippers in earlier days who took advantage of every opportunity which offered?
Nothing is to be seen of the airmen. On an ice-floe near the coast Johannessen notices that a number of seals are lying sleeping and sunning themselves. The seal-boat has been hanging on its derricks since the bear-hunt, so we quickly lower it and some of our party row towards the floe. They have to row very quietly (and have not gone far from the side of the vessel when we on board can no longer hear the sound of the rowlocks) for the slightest noise will waken the seals, which are light sleepers, and once awake they will flop into the sea and dive. Through our glasses we follow the progress of the boat. They crouch over their oars, and we can see nothing but their heads over the side of the boat as with long steady strokes they approach the ice-floe. The seals lie in such a position that if they are to be shot the boat will have to round the floe. At last they are within shooting range and the man with the gun rises noiselessly and takes aim. All the same the seal wakens, lifts its head and looks at him. It amazedly catches sight of the boat and we can see it draw itself together for a plunge into the sea. But it has been a good shot, and the fear that the animal would escape is groundless, for it remains lying on the outer edge of the floe with only its head lying in the water. The boat then draws alongside and the boys jump onto the ice, stick a hook into the heavy, slippery skin and haul the animal into a more favorable position. The shot has struck it behind the ear, killing it instantly. In a few moments the big heavy body is skinned, several pounds of seal-flesh are cut off and all carried on board the boat. Then the men row on to where the next seal lies on a floe some hundred meters away. Hardly has the boat rowed off when the remains of the dead animal are being fought over by flocks of sea-gulls and sea-mews. They tear the remainder of the fat and flesh into pieces, swallowing one big lump after another, until there is not one morsel to be found. But, even then, they cannot leave the place, as they have become so heavy it is impossible for them to fly.
An hour after the boat returns with four seal-skins as their “bag,” also provision for the larder:
“Fresh meat this evening, Steward!”
Then the engines start again and “Hobby” continues southwards along the coast. About 10 P.M. we “lay to” for the night, slightly to the northeast of Lavöen outside Brandy Bay. The seal-boat rows out once more as the crew wish to make the little extra money which a night’s seal-hunting will bring them. From the deck we watch them row away between the ice-floes. We hope it will not turn out for these three men on board the little boat as it did for the three others who once landed east of Spitzbergen and went inland to search for eggs and eiderdown on the Tusindöene. We heard of them from a seal-skipper whom we met in King’s Bay. “They took with them only a hook in a small lifeboat, and hardly had they landed when the drift-ice closed in between the island and the vessel, which lay some hundreds of meters away. The fog descended around them and everything disappeared in its density. The three men decided to wait. They waited eight days before the fog cleared. They turned the ship’s boat over them to give them shelter from snow and wind, while they lived on eggs and uncooked birds, for any available fuel was too wet to use. When the fog lifted the vessel had disappeared, and they had no other way to save themselves but to cross over the ice-floes in their little boat towards the mainland-coast round South Cape, and nineteen days afterwards they arrived thin and emaciated, but otherwise in good condition, at the Swedish coal-fields in Bellsund. From there they were able to get a coal-boat to Tromsö. Arriving home, they found that their vessel had not returned, however, as it had remained to search for Kristian and his companions, and when it arrived several days after their return it was flying its flag half-mast, causing Kristian, who stood on the quay, to burst out in loud laughter as he shouted, ‘Hullo, father, what have you done with the top of the flag cord?’
The weather is still calm, and the seal-boat does not row very far away from the vessel. One could not imagine a calmer night. The barren landscape is as still as death. The only noise that we can hear is an occasional clang from the boat when an oar strikes the ice. The echo of it rolls from cliff to cliff along the coast. The sky is cloudless, but the atmosphere is hazy, so that the sun, which blazes high in the north, appears distant and unreal. The cliffs with their icy crests are reflected in the water. We hang over the side and gaze upon it all. It would be delightful if only we knew that the six airmen were safe. It is Riiser-Larsen’s birthday. We remember a remark of his early in May, “Now we must really start so that I can spend my birthday at home in Norway.”
“Hobby.” Monday, June 8th
There is not a great difference between night and day up here. When we went on deck in the morning the sun was shining from another part of the sky, otherwise everything was as before. The birds, after having taken two hours’ rest at midnight, were also full of activity. Auks in dress-coats and white shirts are still in full flight and whizz in flocks upon flocks from the land to the open sea in order to catch food. Black guillemots and little auks fly madly away, their direction being determined by the higher air currents. Sea gulls rest on their wings and keep moving round and round the boat, waiting for the steward to heave the contents of the rubbish bin overboard. They hover untiringly, hour after hour, though now and then one hears a beat of their wings when they have to change from one air-current to another. During the night a seal-boat has come along—it lies some hundreds of meters away from us and we pass alongside of it. We row up to it and explain “Hobby’s” mission up here—the captain promises to keep a good lookout for our airmen and also to warn any other “sealers” he may possibly get into touch with. No doubt there will be plenty of them up here as the conditions for making good catches are specially promising this year. (We can already see the mast-tops of another boat appearing on the horizon.) We also request the captain to warn those trappers who spend the winter in the huts along the north coast, if some of them by chance should visit him. He promises this, and as a farewell gift gets some packages of tobacco, because his supply is low, for his boat has been a long time at sea.
“Hobby” moves off; the course is set northwards to the ice-edge; we shall steer past it westwards until we reach a point north of Norskeöene. The trip back to Virgo-havn on Danskeöen has started. After a few hours we near the ice-edge again, directly west of Ross-öen, and proceed along it: little by little Syvöene and Northeastland disappear in the horizon and we see no more land. Northwards is only ice and the edge stretches westward as far as we can see. We continue our course past it at a distance of 50–100 meters. A fresh breeze is blowing from the southward, which produces white crests on the waves—it must have been blowing the whole of the previous day, because during the course of the day we notice that the belts of drift-ice, which we passed through on the way up, have disappeared. The wind has driven them northwards and pressed them into the edge of the pack-ice.