Part III — The Navigator’s Task — By Lieut. Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen
The Navigator’s Task
“The Air Club has fixed up contracts with the publishers of several countries for a book of at least seventy thousand words. Therefore you must write several thousand. Come and stay with me so that you can work in peace.” Such were Amundsen’s orders immediately we stepped ashore in Oslo.
The manuscript of the entire 70,000 words should be delivered by the 10th of August. In view of the big task of arranging charts and pictorial matter, there would not be much time to spare, so we had to get down to it as quickly as possible.
There were also many other things to be done in the meantime. The expedition’s cinema film had to be cut and run off—run off again, and recut, as the cinema owners wanted to “fit in” three shows daily at 5 P.M., 7 P.M. and 9 P.M. It would take fifteen minutes to clear the theater, to ventilate it, and let the next audience get seated, therefore the run of the film must not exceed one hour and three-quarters. At first it took two and a half hours even without the caption lines. Berge continued cutting, and the film got shorter daily. The worst task was to arrange the sequence of the scenes. They were far from being in chronological order, but after a time it began to present a better picture of the expedition’s course—a picture which gave a calm straightforward story—a calendar of daily episodes. The caption lines, too, required writing, as they could not create themselves.
While we were busy with all this work we had also to attend to the returning of the expedition’s unused stores to the suppliers. Much of this had been bought conditionally so that we could return everything we had not used. The ever-helpful Omdal, who never seemed to have enough to do, took charge of this part of the work. The more I left to him the better pleased he was. I asked him often in those days if he would not like to be released to go home. “So long as I can be of use to the expedition there is no hurry,” was his reply. At last on August 1st he set off to his home in Kristiansand, which he had been longing for. But I am sure he would have been quite happy about it if I, even then, had said to him that he could not get off.
That’s the sort of man Omdal is!
In the meantime the post-bag was filled with requests for information regarding the instruments and other equipment we had used on the trip. Lantern slides for lectures had to be got ready and advertising matter sent to our business managers.
Thus the days passed and the dreadful 10th of August got nearer, so threateningly that at last to-day I had to take the bull by the horns and go to Amundsen for further particulars.
Now I sit here experiencing the same feelings as in my schooldays, when I used to put off writing Norwegian composition so long that I had to do it during the games’ interval.
The first thing I shall render an account of is—