IF£ PREPARE EOR THE SLEDGE EXPEDITION 25 



shakings would have been less vigorous and their evil 

 forebodings milder if they could have seen us at this 

 moment, drifting quietly and at our ease across the most 

 northerly latitudes ever attained by any vessel, and still 

 farther northward. And the Frani is now not only the 

 most northerly vessel on the globe, but has already 

 passed over a large expanse of hitherto unknown regions, 

 many degrees farther north than have ever been reached 

 in this ocean on this side of the Pole. But we hope she 

 will not stop here ; concealed behind the mist of the 

 future there are many triumphs in store for us — triumphs 

 which will dawn upon us one by one when their time has 

 come. But we will not speak of this now ; we will be 

 content with what has hitherto been achieved, and I 

 believe that the promise implied in Bjornson's greeting 

 to us and to the Fravi, when she was launched, has 

 already been fulfilled, and with him we can exclaim ; 



"'"Hurrah for the ship and her voyage dread! 

 Where never before a keel has sped, 

 Where never before a name was spoken, 

 By Norway's name is the silence broken.' " 



'"We could not help a peculiar feeling, almost akin 

 to shame, when comparing the toil and privation, and 

 frequently incredible sufferings, undergone by our pred- 

 ecessors in earlier expeditions with the easy manner in 

 which we are drifting across unknown expanses of our 

 irlobe laro-er than it has been the lot of most, if not all, 

 of the former polar explorers to travel over at a stretch. 



