THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1894 5-i 



if it wasn't a dog !' he replied. ' Ice-bear ' it was, true 

 enough, for so we called this dog. It had seemed so large 

 in the fog, scratching at the meat hummock. ' Did you 

 aim at the dog and miss ? That was a lucky chance !' 

 * No ! I simply fired at random in that direction, for I 

 wanted to see what it was.' I went below and turned 

 in again. At breakfast to-day he had, of course, to run 

 the gantlet of some sarcastic questions about his 'harm- 

 less thunderbolt,' but he parried them adroitly enough. 



"Tuesday, August 21st. North latitude, 81° 4.2'. 

 Strano;e how little alteration there is: we drift a little to 

 the north, then a little to the south, and keep almost to 

 the same spot. But I believe, as I have believed all 

 along, since before we even set out, that we should be 

 away three years, or rather three winters and four sum- 

 mers, neither more nor less, and that in about two years' 

 time from this present autumn we shall reach home.* 

 The approaching winter will drift us farther, however 

 slowly, and it begins already to announce itself, for there 

 were four degrees of cold last night. 



" Sunday, August 26th. It seems almost as if winter 

 had come ; the cold has kept on an average between 

 24.8° Fahr. ( — 4° C.) and 21.2' Fahr. (—6° C.) since 

 Thursday. There are only slight variations in the tem- 

 perature up here, so we may expect it to fall regularly 

 from this time forth, though it is rather early for winter 



* It was two years later to a day that the Fram put in at Skjervo, 

 on the coast of Norway. 



