This map shows (he three voyages of Nansen 

 described in this chapter: in the Viking; 

 voyage to Greenland; voyage in the Fram. 



cracks on every side of you, and begins to pile itself up, and all of 

 a sudden you too find yourself in the midst of the struggle. There 

 are bowlings and tbunderings round you; you feel the ice trem- 

 bling, and hear it rumbling under your feet ; there is no peace any- 

 where. In the semi-darkness you can see it piling and tossing itself 

 up into high ridges nearer and nearer you — floes lo, 12, 15 feet 

 thick, broken and flung on the top of each other as if they were 

 featherweights. They are quite near you now, and you jump away 

 to save your life. But the ice splits in front of you, a black gulf 

 opens and water streams up. You turn in another direction, but 

 there through the dark you can just see a new ridge of moving ice 

 blocks coming towards you. You try another direction, but there 

 it is the same." 



By the end of November they had made little advance, and 

 Nansen began questioning the correctness of his theory about a 

 Polar current that would carry the Fram across the Arctic Ocean. 

 "My spirits," he wrote, "are like a pendulum. ... It is no good 

 trying to take the thing philosophically. ..." 



By the new year of 1894 the ship had drifted beyond the edge of 

 the continental shelf and Nansen had proved that the supposedly 

 shallow Polar sea was, in fact, of tremendous depth; at one point 

 2850 fathoms. This made Nansen even more doubtful about his 

 current, but he felt that the Siberian driftwood could not lie: 

 ". . . the way it went we must go." 



Winter passed. The sun came back and daylight again lit them. 

 The sun circled the heavens and there was no relief from the contin- 

 uous day. Snow turned to slush, pools of water formed on the 

 floes, and there was even a freshwater lake where members of the 

 expedition practiced sailing. They even wondered if the ice might 

 open enough for them to sail northward. On Norway's national 

 day, May 17, they held a special procession and a mock band 

 marched round the Fram. During these days of doubt, Nansen 

 began to develop a plan which he had long had in mind: to leave 

 the ship with one companion and try to sledge to the North Pole. 

 By this time he was pretty well convinced that the ship itself would 

 never drift to the Pole. 



As winter came again, storms increased, and the aurora borealis 

 flung its shining curtain of waving, changing light across the ice. 

 Another Christmas and Nansen completed his preparations for his 

 dash to the Pole, but not before the Fram was nearly crushed. On 

 January 3 a huge pressure ridge advanced on the ship. Expecting 

 the worst, all hands slept lightly, ready to abandon her. A few days 

 later the ice came crashing on board; then it subsided but again 

 increased its pressure, and snow and ice hurled itself across the 

 deck. The following day the Fram was listing nearly seven degrees, 

 but she withstood the attack and remained firm through the danger 

 period. 



Nansen now chose Frederick Johansen as his companion to the 

 Pole, leaving the experienced Sverdrup to command the Fram and 

 bring her through into open water. But where? he wondered. In 

 the eighteen months since they had been frozen in the pack, they 

 had drifted slowly in a northwest direction over a direct distance of 

 about six hundred miles. The Fram was now past lat. 84° N. and 

 was within 360 miles of the Pole. 



61 



