Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/615

From Olenek I shall steer north-east towards the west coast of the New Siberian Islands. If the season is favourable, I hope to find open water here a good bit northward into the unknown regions. We shall go as far as we can northward in open water, and, when we can do so no more, choose our place and run the Fram into the ice.

Then our work will be done for a long time, probably, as the ice will have to carry us further north. That such will be the case, if we only get far enough northward in open water, I do not doubt. We shall then arrange our ship as best we can to make her a comfortable winter quarter. If we drift many years in this way the life may become somewhat monotonous, but we shall have plenty of things to do to pass the time. There is much scientific work to be done in these unknown regions. The climate must be observed each hour in the day, the currents in the water under the ice, the ice itself and its formation; the Northern Lights must be watched, the magnetism of the earth, and if new land is met with this must be carefully examined.

In the long, light summers, the life is almost gay up there. Then the sun sends its refreshing, glorious light—day and night—over this frozen white ice world, and does not disappear for many months; and there will be excursions in all directions on our ski (Norwegian snow-shoes), or on the sledges drawn by the dogs, or, even still better, standing on your ski and letting the dogs draw you at a tremendous pace over the flat floes. If any land is discovered, we might even get good shooting.

But after the bright day comes the long, dark, Arctic night, when the temperature sinks lower than, perhaps, anybody knows. Then there will not be much to do in the open air, except to take the necessary meteorological and astronomical observations, besides a little exercise and, perhaps, to take a drive