Meanwhile Jackson and his companions, having been foiled in their
attempt to penetrate far to the north, turned their attention to the
vast tract of undiscovered country which lay to the west of them,
and they spent the rest of the summer in exploring and mapping out
Alexandra Land as far as Cape Mary Harmsworth.
Two serious losses befell them during their second winter at Cape
Flora, in that one of their ponies was found hanged in its stable one
morning, while another fell sick and died. Otherwise, however, the
winter months passed without incident.
The spring was spent in another trip north along the shores of
British Channel, during the course of which Jackson and his
companions added islands and capes innumerable to the map of Franz
Josef Land. Their discoveries, however, though of great geographic
value, need not be recorded at length here, and it was not until June
17 that an event occurred of which we must give any detailed account.
We leave Mr Jackson to tell the story in his own words.
[Illustration: THE MEETING BETWEEN JACKSON AND NANSEN]
“Just after dinner,” he writes, “Armitage came rushing down to tell
me that through his field-glass he could see a man on the floe to
the S.S.E. of Cape Flora, about four miles off. I could hardly
believe it; such a thing seemed utterly impossible, and thought he
had mistaken a walrus on the ice for a man, but having got a glass I
could see he was correct. I could also make out somewhat indistinctly
a staff or mast, with another man apparently standing near it close
to the water’s edge. It occurred then to me that it might be one
of my own men, although they had all been at dinner a few minutes
before, but I, however, found that all were present. I got a gun
with all speed, and firing off a shot on the bank to endeavour to
arrest the stranger’s attention, I started off to meet him coming
across the ice.... On our approaching each other, about three miles
distant from the land, I saw a tall man on ski with roughly-made
clothes and an old felt hat on his head. He was covered with oil and
grease, and black from head to foot. I at once concluded from his
wearing ski that he was no English sailor, but that he must be a man
from some Norwegian walrus sloop who had come to grief and wintered
somewhere on Franz Josef Land in very rough circumstances. His hair
was very long and dirty, his complexion appeared to be fair, but dirt
prevented me from being sure on this point, and his beard was
straggly and dirty also. We shook hands heartily, and I expressed the
greatest pleasure at seeing him. I inquired if he had a ship. ‘No,’
he replied, ‘my ship is not here’—rather sadly I thought—and then he
remarked, in reply to my question, that he had only one companion,
who was at the floe edge. It then struck me that his features, in
spite of the black grease and long hair and beard, resembled Nansen,
whom I had met once in London before he started in 1893, and I
exclaimed:—
“‘Aren’t you Nansen?’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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