are formed on the floes all around us. In
short, the surface is abominable. The snow-shoes break through into the
water everywhere. Truly one would not be able to get far in a day now
should one be obliged to set off towards the south or west. It is as if
every outlet were blocked, and here we stick--we stick. Sometimes it
strikes me as rather remarkable that none of our fellows have become
alarmed, even when we are bearing farther and farther northward,
farther and farther into the unknown; but there is no sign of fear in
any one of them. All look gloomy when we are bearing south or too much
to the west, and all are beaming with joy when we are drifting to the
northward, the farther the better. Yet none of them can be blind to the
fact that it is a matter of life and death if anything of what nearly
every one prophesied should now occur. Should the ship be crushed in
this ice and go to the bottom, like the Jeannette, without our being
able to save sufficient supplies to continue our drift on the ice, we
should have to turn our course to the south, and then there would be
little doubt as to our fate. The Jeannette people fared badly enough,
but their ship went down in 77 deg. north latitude, while the nearest land
to us is many times more than double the distance it was in their
case, to say nothing of the nearest inhabited land. We are now more
than 70 miles from Cape Chelyuskin, while from there to any inhabited
region we are a long way farther. But the Fram will not be crushed,
and nobody believes in the possibility of such an event. We are like
the kayak-rower, who knows well enough that one faulty stroke of his
paddle is enough to capsize him and send him into eternity; but none
the less he goes on his way serenely, for he knows that he will not
make a faulty stroke. This is absolutely the most comfortable way
of undertaking a polar expedition; what possible journey, indeed,
could be more comfortable? Not even a railway journey, for then you
have the bother of changing carriages. Still a change now and then
would be no bad thing."

Later on--in July--the surface was even worse. The floes were
everywhere covered with slush, with water underneath, and on the
pressure-ridges and between the hummocks where the snow-drifts were
deep one would often sink in up to the middle, not even the snow-shoes
bearing one up in this soft snow. Later on in July matters improved,
the snow having gradually melted away, so that there wa