Round About the North Pole

by W. J. Gordon

Preparations for wintering began. The rudder was hauled up, the engine was taken to pieces, each separate part oiled and laid away with the greatest care—for Amundsen looked after it as if it were his own child—a carpenter's shop was started in the hold, a smithy arranged first on deck and then on the ice. But it all had to be replaced, even the engine put together again, for the pack cleared away for a brief period, to return, when again the shiftings were made; and when the windmill was put up to drive the dynamo, the winter installation was in all senses complete.

Slowly the Fram drifted in her ice-berth, so slowly that at the end of twelve months she had moved from point to point only 189 miles, having returned no further west than the longitude of the Olenek; her highest north, attained on the 18th of June, being 81° 46´. In the main the drift was north-westerly, but three times it had boxed the compass in irregular loops, the only constant thing about it being that, in no matter what direction she was taken, the bow of the Fram always pointed south. Of grips she had many, some of the pressures were enormous, once they were severe enough to suggest measures for her abandonment, but she survived them all unscathed. Early in the drift it became apparent that the ice was packing twice and slacking twice in every twenty-four hours, and in this sea, as afterwards in the Atlantic area, the influence of the tides, particularly the spring tides, was unmistakable—as it was expected it would be—though in the deep Polar basin the wind had more effect; and, in truth, the wind was a factor throughout in the packing of the ice and in the drift's direction. One thing was clear, that the current was not taking the Fram across the North Pole, but about half-way between it and Spitsbergen; and if the Pole was to be reached some of the expedition must attempt to get there over the ice. This meant leaving the ship, going north, and returning to the nearest known land, for, owing to the irregularity of the drift, it was hopeless to think of again reaching the Fram. During the second winter the route of the ship trended more to the north, and, after a loop all round in January, she reached 84° 4´ on the 14th of March in the longitude of Cape Chelyuskin. Here Nansen and Lieutenant F. H. Johansen, who rather than not join the Fram had shipped in her as stoker, left the ship with three sledges, two kayaks, and twenty-eight dogs to go as far northward as they could, their expectation being that they would reach the Pole in fifty days. Had they remained in the ship until November they would have saved themselves trouble, for, as matters turned out, the embarrassing drift took the Fram within eight miles of the farthest north they attained after twenty-three days of strenuous endeavour.

The ice, fairly easy for a few days, soon became terrible in the difficulties it offered to progress over it, and the continual toil of hauling and carrying the sledges, and righting them when capsized, soon told on the two men to such an extent as to tire them out so thoroughly that sometimes in the evening they fell asleep as they went along. The cold, too, proved singularly searching and severe. During the course of the day the damp exhalations of the body little by little became condensed in their outer garments, which became transformed into suits of ice-armour, so hard that if they could have been got off they could have stood by themselves, and they crackled audibly at every movement. The clothes were so stiff that the sleeve of Nansen's coat rubbed deep sores in his wrist, one of which got frost-bitten, the wound growing deeper and deeper and nearly reaching the bone. "How cold we were," says Nansen, "as we lay there shivering in the bag, waiting for the supper to be ready! I, who was cook, was obliged to keep myself more or less awake to see to the culinary operations, and sometimes I succeeded. At last the supper was ready, was portioned out, and, as always, tasted delicious. These occasions were the supreme moments of our existence, moments to which we looked forward all day long. But sometimes we were so weary that our eyes closed, and we fell asleep with the food on its way to our mouths. Our hands would fall back inanimate with the spoons in them and the food fly out on the bag."

The further they went the worse became the conditions. On the 8th of April, with ridge after ridge and nothing but rubble to travel over, the work became so disheartening that Nansen went on ahead on his skis and from the highest hummocks viewed the state of affairs; and as far as the horizon, lay a chaos of such character that progress across was impracticable if he and Johansen were to return alive. Here, then, they stopped, this being their northernmost limit, 128 miles from the Fram, 260 miles from the Pole, latitude 86° 13·6´, longitude 95°.

To reach this point they had been travelling north-westwards for six days, the way due north being impassable; but on turning south they seemed to enter another country; so much did the going improve after the first mile that in three days they covered over forty miles. They were making for Petermann Land, which does not exist, or for the wide-stretching Franz Josef Land, also placed on the maps by Payer, which Jackson had been cutting up into fragments while the Fram was in the ice. Further south difficulties thickened ahead of them till the road became almost as bad as that to the north. Before they reached land the hundred days they had allowed themselves had increased to more than half as many again, their dogs had been killed one by one to yield food for the rest, until only two remained; Nansen was helpless with rheumatism for two days; and Johansen was nearly killed by a bear. Through a chain of disasters caused by storms and fogs and snow and the state of the ice, they threaded their way, sometimes by sledge, sometimes by kayak, through mazes of open channels, leaping from floe to floe and ferrying back to get their baggage over, hundreds of yards on mere brash, dragging the sledges after them in constant fear of their capsizing into the water. Then the ice gave out and, taking to their kayaks, they sailed and paddled to what is now known as Frederick Jackson Island in the north of the Franz Josef Archipelago.

Here they wintered, quite at a loss at first to know where they were, owing to their watches having run down during a great effort of thirty-six hours at a stretch, so that they did not know their longitude, though they subsequently concluded they must be somewhere on Franz Josef Land within 140 miles of Eira Harbour. They built a hut and altogether lived passably well, there being no lack of food, thanks mainly to the bears, whose visits were embarrassing in their frequency though the visitors were not unwelcome when they came to stay.

On the 19th of May they set out for the south, down British Channel, with their sledges and kayaks, and five days afterwards, when off Cape M'Clintock, while Johansen was busy lashing the sail and mast securely to the deck of his kayak to prevent their being blown away, Nansen went on ahead to look for a camping ground and fell through a crack in the ice which had been hidden by the snow. He tried to get out, but with his skis firmly fastened could not pull them up through the rubble of ice which had fallen into the water on the top of them, and, being harnessed to the sledge, he could not turn round. Fortunately, as he fell, he had dug his staff into the ice on the opposite side of the crack, and holding himself up with its aid, and the arm he had got over the edge of the ice, he waited patiently for Johansen to come and pull him out. When he thought a long time had passed and felt the staff giving way and the water creeping further up his body, he called out but received no answer; and it was not until the water had reached his chest that Johansen came and pulled him out.

For a few days they were storm-bound. On the 3rd of June they started again down the channel, their whereabouts still a mystery to them, nothing in the least like it being on their map. Nine days afterwards, after rounding Cape Barents on Northbrook Island, the kayaks, which had been left moored to the edge of the ice, got adrift. Nansen, running down from the hummock, from which he had been looking round, threw off some of his clothes and sprang into the water. The wind was off the ice, and the kayaks with their high rigging were moving away as fast as he could swim. It seemed more than doubtful if he could reach them. But all their hope was there, all they had was on board; they had not even a knife with them, and whether he sank or turned back amounted to much the same thing. When he tired he turned over and swam on his back, and then he could see Johansen walking restlessly up and down on the ice, unable to do anything, and having the worst time he ever lived through. But the wind lulled, and when Nansen turned over he saw he was nearing the kayaks, and though his limbs were stiffening and losing all feeling, he put all the strength he could into his strokes, and eventually was able to reach them. He tried to pull himself up, but was so stiff with cold that he could not do so. For a moment he thought he was too late; but after a little he managed to swing one leg up on to the edge of the sledge, which lay on the deck, and in this way he scrambled on board. The kayaks were lashed together so as to form a double boat, and the only way in which, owing to his stiffness, he could paddle them was to take one or two strokes on one side and then step into the other kayak and take a few strokes on the other side. The return was consequently slow, but it was a return, though the ice was reached a long way from where the drifting had begun.

Next day but one came another perilous episode. "Towards morning," says Nansen, "we rowed for some time without seeing any walrus, and now felt more secure. Just then we saw a solitary rover pop up a little in front of us. Johansen, who was in front at the time, put in to a sunken ledge of ice; and although I really thought that this was caution carried to excess, I was on the point of following his example. I had not gone so far, however, when suddenly the walrus shot up beside me, threw himself on to the edge of the kayak, took hold further over the deck with one flipper, and as it tried to upset me aimed a blow at the kayak with its tusks. I held on as tightly as possible, so as not to be upset into the water, and struck at the animal's head with the paddle as hard as I could. It took hold of the kayak once more and tilted me up so that the deck was almost under water, then let go and raised itself right up. I seized my gun, but at the same moment it turned round and disappeared as quickly as it had come. The whole thing had happened in a moment, and I was just going to remark to Johansen that we were fortunate in escaping so easily from that adventure, when I noticed that my legs were wet. I listened, and now heard the water trickling into the kayak under me. To turn and run her in on to the sunken ledge of ice was the work of a moment, but I sank there. The thing was to get out and on to the ice, the kayak filling all the time. The edge of the ice was high and loose, but I managed to rise; and Johansen, by tilting the sinking kayak over to starboard, so that the leak came above the water, managed to bring her to a place where the ice was low enough to admit of our drawing her up. All I possessed was floating about inside, soaked through. So here we lie, with all our worldly goods spread out to dry and a kayak that must be mended before we can face the walrus again. It is a good big rent that he has made, at least six inches long; but it is fortunate that it was no worse."