st.

"It is lovely spring weather. One feels that spring-time must have
come, though the thermometer denies it. 'Spring cleaning' has begun
on board; the snow and ice along the Fram's sides are cleared away,
and she stands out like the crags from their winter covering decked
with the flowers of spring. The snow lying on the deck is little by
little shovelled overboard; her rigging rises up against the clear
sky clean and dark, and the gilt trucks at her mastheads sparkle
in the sun. We go and bathe ourselves in the broiling sun along her
warm sides, where the thermometer is actually above freezing-point,
smoke a peaceful pipe, gazing at the white spring clouds that lightly
fleet across the blue expanse. Some of us perhaps think of spring-time
yonder at home, when the birch-trees are bursting into leaf."

CHAPTER VII

THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1894

So came the season which we at home call spring, the season of
joy and budding life, when Nature awakens after her long winter
sleep. But there it brought no change; day after day we had to
gaze over the same white lifeless mass, the same white boundless
ice-plains. Still we wavered between despondency, idle longing, and
eager energy, shifting with the winds as we drift forward to our goal
or are driven back from it. As before, I continued to brood upon the
possibilities of the future and of our drift. One day I would think
that everything was going on as we hoped and anticipated. Thus on
April 17th I was convinced that there must be a current through the
unknown polar basin, as we were unmistakably drifting northward. The
midday observation gave 80 deg. 20' northeast; that is, 9' since the day
before yesterday. Strange! A north wind of four whole days took us
to the south, while twenty-four hours of this scanty wind drifts
us 9' northward. This is remarkable; it looks as if we were done
with drifting southward. And when, in addition to this, I take into
consideration the striking warmth of the water deep down, it seems
to me that things are really looking brighter. The reasoning runs as
follows: The temperature of the water in the East Greenland current,
even on the surface, is nowhere over zero (the mean temperature for
the year), and appears generally to be -1 deg. C. (30.2 deg. Fahr.), even in
70 deg. north latitude. In this latitude the temperature steadily falls
as you get below the surface; nowhere at a greater depth than 100
fathoms is it above -1 deg.