14. On the 7th there was no change. The day passed away in moving from one floe with rotten edges to another somewhat more firm. We only shoved our boats a few hundred yards through the lakes of thaw water which had formed themselves on the ice. Our latitude was 79° 43′.
15. On the 8th we got away in a narrow “lead” a few hundred paces southward, but after getting so far we were stopped by thickly-packed ice, and again we had to draw our boats out of the water and recommence our life of painful expectancy—watching for the ice to open. No one of the party suffered so much from this depressing state of things as Carlsen. For more than twenty years the old and tried “ice-master” had lived amid floes and ice-blinks, manfully and successfully fighting against the hardships of the Arctic Seas, and now that frailties had increased on him, he saw himself compelled to such toils and privations as would have taxed his strength even in his prime. The old polar navigator bore his burthens without murmur or complaint, though it was painful to others to see the signs of exhaustion in his appearance. He no longer spoke of the polar bears and walruses, which he had entranced by a glance of his eye or bewitched with one of his words of magic. Even the puritanical zeal with which he once rebuked and lectured the Slavonians for playing cards on “God’s holy day” had grown somewhat cold, and his fears lest the conversations of the lively Southerners should end in blows became even more intense.
16. It was a strange life this abode for weeks of summer in boats covered over with a low tent roof. Oars by way of furniture, and three pairs of stockings for each man’s mattress and pillow. My journal describes these days: “Four boats are lying on the ice, crammed with sleeping men: and so great is the heat in them, that no one needs his fur coat, and snow placed in any vessel becomes water in a few hours. If Torossy has not ushered in the day by barking, the cooks do it when they bring the bowls of soup to the boats with the cry ‘Quanta!’ Then ensues a short scene of confusion: spoons and tin-pots have to be searched for and found, till at length quiet is again restored, after a little ransacking, and each man has his pot full of hot soup in his hand, consisting of meal, pemmican, pease-sausage, bread-dust, boiled beef, seal, and bears’ flesh; when the soup is flavoured with seal-blubber it is called ‘Gulyas.’ The soup is consumed amid perfect silence—not a word is spoken; what indeed was there to be said, which was not already known, or which had not been said a hundred times before? Each one knows the other’s history from his cradle downwards. A stillness like death reigns over all the surrounding forms of ice, and the frozen ocean stretches out beneath a vast shroud. A sunless leaden sky spreads over all, not a breath of air stirs, it is neither warm nor cold, slowly melts the snow, and this pale realm of ice forms a world of danger and difficulty, against which are matched the strength and sagacity of three-and-twenty men!