every here and there,
and at the same time the fog grew denser, and we could not see our
way at all. To go ahead in difficult ice and in a fog is not very
prudent, for it is impossible to tell just where you are going, and
you are apt to be set fast before you know where you are. So we had to
stop and wait. But still the fog grew ever denser, while the ice did
the same. Our hopes meanwhile rose and fell, but mostly the latter,
I think. To encounter so much ice already in these waters, where at
this time of year the sea is, as a rule, quite free from it, boded
anything but good. Already at Tromsoe and Vardoe we had heard bad news;
the White Sea, they said, had only been clear of ice a very short time,
and a boat that had tried to reach Yugor Strait had had to turn back
because of the ice. Neither were our anticipations of the Kara Sea
altogether cheerful. What might we not expect there? For the Urania,
with our coals, too, this ice was a bad business; for it would be
unable to make its way through unless it had found navigable water
farther south along the Russian coast.

Just as our prospects were at their darkest, and we were preparing to
seek a way back out of the ice, which kept getting ever denser, the
joyful tidings came that the fog was lifting, and that clear water
was visible ahead to the east on the other side of the ice. After
forcing our way ahead for some hours between the heavy floes, we
were once more in open water. This first bout with the ice, however,
showed us plainly what an excellent ice-boat the Fram was. It was a
royal pleasure to work her ahead through difficult ice. She twisted
and turned "like a ball on a platter." No channel between the floes so
winding and awkward but she could get through it. But it is hard work
for the helmsman. "Hard astarboard! Hard aport! Steady! Hard astarboard
again!" goes on incessantly without so much as a breathing-space. And
he rattles the wheel round, the sweat pours off him, and round it
goes again like a spinning-wheel. And the ship swings round and
wriggles her way forward among the floes without touching, if there
is only just an opening wide enough for her to slip through; and where
there is none she drives full tilt at the ice, with her heavy plunge,
runs her sloping bows up on it, treads it under her, and bursts the
floes asunder. And how strong she is too! Even when she goes full
speed at a floe, not a creak, not a sound, is to be heard in her;
if she give