During the passage from the Pentland Firth we had a violent gale from the north, which gave us an opportunity of experiencing how the Fram behaved in bad weather.  The trial was by no means an easy one.  It was blowing a gale, with a cross sea; we kept going practically under full sail, and had the satisfaction of seeing our ship make over nine knots.  In the rather severe rolling the collar of the mast in the fore-cabin was loosened a little; this let the water in, and there was a slight flooding of Lieutenant Nilsen’s cabin and mine.  The others, whose berths were to port, were on the weather side, and kept dry.  We came out of it all with the loss of a few boxes of cigars, which were wet through.  They were not entirely lost for all that; Ronne took charge of them, and regaled himself with salt and mouldy cigars for six months afterwards.  Going eight or nine knots an hour, we did not make much of the distance between Scotland and Norway.  On the afternoon of Saturday, July 9, the wind dropped, and at the same time the lookout reported land in sight.  This was Siggen on Bommelo.  In the course of the night we came under the coast, and on Sunday morning, July 10, we ran into Saelbjomsfjord.  We had no detailed chart of this inlet, but after making a great noise with our powerful air-siren, we at last roused the inmates of the pilot-station, and a pilot came aboard.  He showed visible signs of surprise when he found out, by reading the name on the ship’s side, that it was the Fram he had before him.  “Lord, I thought you were a Russian!” he exclaimed.  This supposition was presumably intended to serve as a sort of excuse for his small hurry in coming on board.

It was a lovely trip through the fjords to Bergen, as warm and pleasant in here as it had been bitter and cold outside.  We had a dead calm all day, and with the four knots an hour, which was all the motor could manage, it was late in the evening when we anchored off the naval dockyard in Solheimsvik.  Our stay in Bergen happened at the time of the exhibition, and the committee paid the expedition the compliment of giving all its members free passes.

Business of one kind and another compelled me to go to Christiania, leaving the Fram in charge of Lieutenant Nilsen.  They had their hands more than full on board.  Diesel’s firm in Stockholm sent their experienced fitter, Aspelund, who at once set to work to overhaul the motor thoroughly.  The work that had to be done was executed gratis by the Laxevaag engineering works.  After going into the matter thoroughly, it was decided to change the solar oil we had on board for refined petroleum.  Through the courtesy of the West of Norway Petroleum Company, we got this done on very favourable terms at the company’s storage dock in Skaalevik.  This was troublesome work, but it paid in the future.

The samples of water from our trip were taken to the biological station, where Kutschin at once went to work with the filtering (determination of the proportion of chlorine).