s a firmer
surface of ice to go on.

But large pools of water now formed on the ice-floes. Already on
the 8th and 9th of June such a pool had begun to appear round the
ship, so that she lay in a little lake of fresh water, and we were
obliged to make use of a bridge in order to reach a dry spot on the
ice. Some of these fresh-water pools were of respectable dimensions
and depth. There was one of these on the starboard side of the ship,
so large that in the middle of July we could row and sail on it with
the boats. This was a favorite evening amusement with some of us,
and the boat was fully officered with captain, mate; and second mate,
but had no common sailors. They thought it an excellent opportunity
of practising sailing with a square sail; while the rest of our
fellows, standing on the icy shore, found it still more diverting
to bombard the navigators with snowballs and lumps of ice. It was
in this same pool that we tried one day if one of our boats could
carry all thirteen of us at once. When the dogs saw us all leave the
ship to go to the pool, they followed us in utter bewilderment as to
what this unusual movement could mean; but when we got into the boat
they, all of them, set to work and howled in wild despair; thinking,
probably, that they would never see us again. Some of them swam after
us, while two cunning ones, "Pan" and "Kvik," conceived the brilliant
idea of galloping round the pool to the opposite side to meet us. A
few days afterwards I was dismayed to find the pool dried up; a hole
had been worn through the ice at the bottom, and all the fresh water
had drained out into the sea. So that amusement came to an end.

In the summer, when we wanted to make an excursion over the ice, in
addition to such pools we met with lanes in the ice in all directions;
but as a rule could easily cross them by jumping from one loose floe
to another, or leaping right across at narrow places.

These lanes never attained any great width, and there was consequently
no question of getting the Fram afloat in any of them; and even could
we have done so, it would have been of very little avail, as none of
them was large enough to have taken her more than a few cable-lengths
farther north. Sometimes there were indications in the sky that there
must be large stretches of open water in our vicinity, and we could
now and then see from the crow's-nest large spaces of clear water in
the horizon; but they could not have been large