By the next morning our patience was already quite exhausted, but not so with the south-wester.  It kept going as steadily as ever, but it was clear weather, and therefore we decided at once to make an attempt to get to the west.  There was nothing to be done but to have recourse to the ancient method of beating.  We cleared one point, and then another, but more than that we could not manage for the time being.  We took one bearing after another; no, there was no visible progress.  Off Dungeness we had to anchor again, and once more console ourselves with the much-vaunted balm of patience.  This time we escaped with passing the night there.  The wind now thought fit to veer sufficiently to let us get out at daybreak, but it was still a contrary wind, and we had to beat almost all the way down the English Channel.  A whole week was spent in doing these three hundred miles; that was rather hard, considering the distance we had to go.

I fancy most of us gave a good sigh of relief when at last we were clear of the Scilly Isles.  The everlasting south-west wind was still blowing, but that did not matter so much now.  The main thing was that we found ourselves in open sea with the whole Atlantic before us.  Perhaps one must have sailed in the Fram to be able fully to understand what a blessing it was to feel ourselves altogether clear of the surrounding land and the many sailing-ships in the Channel —­ to say nothing of constantly working the ship with a deck swarming with dogs.  On our first voyage through the Channel in June we had caught two or three carrier pigeons, which had come to rest in the rigging utterly tired out.  On the approach of darkness we were able to get hold of them without difficulty.  Their numbers and marks were noted, and after they had been taken care of for a couple of days and had recovered their strength, we let them go.  They circled once or twice round the mast-heads, and then made for the English coast.

I think this episode led to our taking a few carrier pigeons with us when we left Christiansand; Lieutenant Nilsen, as a former owner of pigeons, was to take charge of them.  Then a nice house was made for them, and the pigeons lived happily in their new abode on the top of the whale-boat amidships.  Now, in some way or other the second in command found out that the circulation of air in the pigeon-house was faulty; to remedy this defect, he one day set the door a little ajar.  Air certainly got into the house, but the pigeons came out.  A joker, on discovering that the birds had flown, wrote up “To Let” in big letters on the wall of the pigeon-house.  The second in command was not in a very gentle frame of mind that day.

As far as I know, this escape took place in the Channel.  The pigeons found their way home to Norway.