“Hobby.” Monday, June 8th
There is not a great difference between night and day up here. When we went on deck in the morning the sun was shining from another part of the sky, otherwise everything was as before. The birds, after having taken two hours’ rest at midnight, were also full of activity. Auks in dress-coats and white shirts are still in full flight and whizz in flocks upon flocks from the land to the open sea in order to catch food. Black guillemots and little auks fly madly away, their direction being determined by the higher air currents. Sea gulls rest on their wings and keep moving round and round the boat, waiting for the steward to heave the contents of the rubbish bin overboard. They hover untiringly, hour after hour, though now and then one hears a beat of their wings when they have to change from one air-current to another. During the night a seal-boat has come along—it lies some hundreds of meters away from us and we pass alongside of it. We row up to it and explain “Hobby’s” mission up here—the captain promises to keep a good lookout for our airmen and also to warn any other “sealers” he may possibly get into touch with. No doubt there will be plenty of them up here as the conditions for making good catches are specially promising this year. (We can already see the mast-tops of another boat appearing on the horizon.) We also request the captain to warn those trappers who spend the winter in the huts along the north coast, if some of them by chance should visit him. He promises this, and as a farewell gift gets some packages of tobacco, because his supply is low, for his boat has been a long time at sea.
“Hobby” moves off; the course is set northwards to the ice-edge; we shall steer past it westwards until we reach a point north of Norskeöene. The trip back to Virgo-havn on Danskeöen has started. After a few hours we near the ice-edge again, directly west of Ross-öen, and proceed along it: little by little Syvöene and Northeastland disappear in the horizon and we see no more land. Northwards is only ice and the edge stretches westward as far as we can see. We continue our course past it at a distance of 50–100 meters. A fresh breeze is blowing from the southward, which produces white crests on the waves—it must have been blowing the whole of the previous day, because during the course of the day we notice that the belts of drift-ice, which we passed through on the way up, have disappeared. The wind has driven them northwards and pressed them into the edge of the pack-ice.
On the trip along the ice-edge we help the crew in “blubbering” the sealskins. During the work Wharton makes a strange discovery. The crew he is working with had, during the war, served on the western front in the same American division to which he had belonged.
Having finished with the “blubbering,” we see another polar bear. It is standing on a high ice shoal at the extreme edge. We put a boat out and row towards it, climb ashore, and try to get within shooting range. Slowly we approach from shoal to shoal. In the excitement we fire from too long a range; the bullet passes the bear, which becomes alarmed, and, looking like a yellow-white streak on the drift-ice, it jumps from one shoal to another and speedily disappears from sight. Shall we leave it in peace or shall we try to find it again? We climb an iceberg and sight the bear through the glasses some hundred meters further ahead. One of the shots we fired after it when it sprang away must have injured it, for it appears to be lame on one side. It is not running any longer, but jogs along slowly over the ice. We follow it with glasses. Then it stops, and we see it lying down at the foot of a big iceberg about a kilometer from us. We speculate what to do. To proceed across the pack-ice is impossible. Most of the shoals lying at the outside are not sufficiently large to bear the weight of a man, and between the bigger pieces there are either big cracks or wide openings filled with mush and small lumps of ice.
If we have to get hold of the bear we must pull the boat along with us, push it over the shoals and row where we can. We look at each other and come to a quick decision. It will mean hard work! One man goes forward with the boat-hook, which has to be hooked into the shoals so that the boat can be hauled along; two men push with the oars, and two men jump now and again onto the shoals to help to push the boat over the mush. But they have to be nimble-footed, because many of the shoals they trust themselves on are not big enough to carry them and sink immediately. Then it is a question of getting on board again before they get too wet. (Now and then they are not quick enough.) In such a manner we get slowly along. The bear is still lying at the same spot. At last we get into gun-range and shoot. It jumps up, we shoot again, it collapses and we run towards it and fire a mortal shot. We skin it and take the skin with us to the boat, which we have left in a clearing between two shoals. Then we sit down to enjoy a few moments’ rest which is very necessary. It took us one and one-half hours in the snow to cover one kilometer from the ice-edge to the bear, and we are wet through, partly from perspiration and partly from sea water.
Then we press on again. The same toil on the return journey has to be gone through and about three hours after having left the “Hobby” we are on board again. They had been a little anxious when they noticed how far we had ventured onto the ice, because a fog-bank was approaching from the south. We had not noticed it in the excitement of hunting the bear. Barely half an hour after we are safely on board, the fog gets so thick that we only proceed at half speed along the ice-edge, which we can just catch a glimpse of fifty to sixty meters away from the ship. We are exactly north of the “worst-weather-corner” in Svalbard: Hinlopen Strait (between Spitzbergen and Northeastland), where there is always fog or wind at sea. The fog-belt we have got into is not very extensive. After an hour’s steaming we are out of it; we get clear weather again, but the sky is still a little overcast. We continue full speed along the ice-edge.
Throughout the evening we discuss the result of the trip. The experts on board are unanimous in the opinion that if the airmen get to Svalbard, the only place where one could expect to find them would be Northeastland, and the greatest chance of picking them up, if they get near land, would be on the east side of Syvöen and Nordkap, where the distance from the solid ice to the land is shortest and where the belt of pack-ice is smallest. It is practically impossible that they, with their primitive outfit and scanty remaining provisions, can manage to trek westwards to the ice-edge here, and if they should succeed, their position would be infinitely more difficult than further east. How broad the belt of pack-ice in front of the solid ice may be is of course a matter we cannot judge. But right away from Syvöen we can see it stretching as far as our glasses can range, namely, about fifteen kilometers. The further westward one goes the broader the belt probably gets. Seeing we took one and one-half hours to cover a bare kilometer when we chased the bear, although we had good assistance in having the boat to help us and nothing to carry, it would take a much longer time for the airmen to force their way forward over a similar distance. They would have to carry a burdensome pack, and the small canvas boats are far too fragile to carry the heavy packages when being pulled through the ice. If, notwithstanding all this, they manage to get westwards to the ice-edge, they will have to go along to Northeastland, because from the edge of the ice to the north coast of Spitzbergen there is an open sea channel to a breadth of about 100 kilometers, and to try and row across this in canvas boats means certain death.
We are further agreed that if flying-machines come northwards in order to take part in reconnoitering, they would be of most service if they chose Lavöen, on the west coast of Northeastland, as a basis for their operations. Therefrom they can fly westwards and eastwards as far over the ice as is considered justifiable.