CHAPTER XX. 



THE ' FRAM'S ' SECOND WINTER HARBOUR. 



ON the night of August 28, we left the fjord. It was still blowing 

 fairly hard from the east, but looked as if the bad weather was 

 over for the time being. At Cone Island a thick fog came on, 

 which prevented us from seeing a ship's length away from us, and 

 there, too, we got into a pack of coarse polar ice, with pressure- 

 ridges, hummocks, and other heartbreaking inventions, and were 

 eventually obliged to moor to a large floe. There was a swift 

 current here, and the ice was whirled round and round incessantly, 

 making it necessary for us to shift our moorings several times. 



When, later in the afternoon, the ice began to slacken a little, 

 we went west, but did not get very far; still it was the right 

 direction, and every little helped. The weather was very bad ; 

 rain and sleet succeeded one another, and it was so thick, we could 

 hardly see where we were going. On the night of August 29, we 

 should, according to the reckoning, have been due south of Sir 

 Eobert Inglis Peak, and, as I thought the chart must be more or 

 less right, I decided to go in there, to avoid wasteful use of coal. 

 We therefore attempted to bore the ice-belt, but, towards morning, 

 the ice packed so much, that we lay nipped for the whole of that 

 day, though every now and then it slackened for a moment. The 

 bank of fog was so thick and greyish-black and deceptive, that we 

 kept thinking we had quite long, broad lanes in front of us, but no 

 sooner did we put the ship into one of them than it came to an 

 unexpected end. 



As we lay there, holding our own against the ice, a she-bear 

 with two cubs came along towards us. Fosheim sent her a bullet, 



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