458 FARTHEST NORTH 



It seemed a safe assumption that she might drift out into 

 the sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland next sum- 

 mer or autumn, and probability seemed to point to her 

 being in Norway in August or September. But there 

 was just the possibility that she might arrive earlier in 

 the summer ; or, on the other hand, zvc might not reach 

 home until later in the autumn. This was the great 

 question to which we could give no certain answer, and 

 we reflected with sorrow that she might perhaps get 

 home first. What would our friends then think about 

 us ? Scarcely any one would have the least hope of see- 

 incr us asrain, not even our comrades on board the Frain. 

 It seemed to us, however, that this could scarcely happen ; 

 we could not but reach home in July, and it was hardly 

 to be expected that the Fraui could be free from the ice 

 so early in the summer. 



But where were we t And how great was the 

 distance we had to travel } Over and over again I 

 reckoned out our observations of the autumn and 

 summer and spring, but the whole matter was a per- 

 petual puzzle. It seemed clear, indeed, that we must be 

 lying somewhere far to the west, perhaps off the west 

 coast of Franz Josef Land, a little north of Cape 

 Lofley, as I had conjectured in the autumn. But, if 

 that were so, what could the lands be which we had seen 

 to the northward? And what was the land to which we 

 had first come ? From the first group of islands, which 

 I had called White Land (Hvidtenland), to where we now 



