ned a few days before, with three
sledges (two of which carried kayaks) and 28 dogs. They reached their
northern-most camp on April 8, which Nansen has given in his book as
being in latitude 86 deg. 13.6' N. But Nansen tells me that Professor
Geelmuyden, who had his astronomical results and his diary, reckoned that
owing to refraction the horizon was lifted, and if so the observation had
to be reduced accordingly. Nansen therefore gave the reduced latitude in
his book, but he considers that his horizon was very clear when he took
that observation, and believes that his latitude was higher than that
given. He used a sextant and the natural horizon.

They turned, and travelling back round pressed-up ice and open leads they
failed to find the land they had been led to expect in latitude 83 deg.,
which indeed was proved to be non-existent. At the end of June they
started using the kayaks, which needed many repairs after their rough
passage, to cross the open leads. They waited long in camp, that the
travelling conditions might improve, and all the time Nansen saw a white
spot he thought was cloud. At last, on July 24, land was in sight, which
proved to be that white spot. Fourteen days later they reached it to find
that it consisted of a series of islands. These they left behind them
and, unable to say what land they had reached, for their watches had run
down, they coasted on westwards and southwards until winter approached.
They built a hut of moss and stones and snow, and roofed it with walrus
skins cut from the animals while they lay in the sea, for they were too
heavy for two men to drag on to the ice. When I met Nansen he had
forgotten all about this, and would not believe that it had happened
until he saw it in his own book. They lay in their old clothes that
winter, so soaked with blubber that the only way to clean their shirts
was to scrape them. They made themselves new clothes from blankets, and
sleeping-bags from the skins of the bears which they ate, and started
again in May of the following year to make Spitzbergen. They had been
travelling a long month, during which time they had at least two very
narrow escapes--the first due to their kayaks floating away, when Nansen
swam out into the icy sea and reached them just before he sank, and
Johansen passed the worst moments of his life watching from the shore;
the second caused by the attack of a walrus which went for Nansen's kayak
with tusks and flippers. And the