Nothing came of the storm we had feared. The wind blew hard enough,

however, to rend and tear our now well-worn tent, and there was no

shelter where we lay. We hoped to go on on the following day, but

found, to our disappointment, that the way was blocked; the wind

had again driven the ice in. We must remain for the present where

we were; but in that case we would make ourselves as comfortable

as possible. The first thing to be done was to seek for a warm,

well-sheltered place for the tent, but this was not to be found. There

was nothing for it but to get something built up of stone. We quarried

stone in the débris at the bottom of the cliff, and got together as

much as we could. The only quarrying implement we had was a runner

that had been cut off a hand-sledge; but our two hands were what we

had to use most. We worked away during the night. What we had at

first only intended to be a shelter from the wind grew, little by

little, into four walls; and we now kept at it until we had finished

a small hut. It was nothing very wonderful, Heaven knows, not long

enough for a man of my height to lie straight inside--I had to stick

my feet out at the door--and just broad enough to admit of our lying

side by side and leave room for the cooking apparatus. It was worse,

however, with regard to the height. There was room to lie down, but

to sit up decently straight was an impossibility for me. The roof

was made of our thin and fragile silk tent, spread over snow-shoes

and bamboo rods. We closed the doorway with our coats, and the walls

were so loosely put together that we could see daylight between the

stones on all sides. We afterwards called it the den, and a dreadful

den it was, too; but we were none the less proud of our handiwork. It

would not blow down at any rate, even though the wind did blow right

through it. When we had got our bearskin in as a couch and lay warm

and comfortable in our bag, while a good potful of meat bubbled over

the train-oil lamp, we thought existence a pleasure; and the fact

of there being so much smoke that our eyes became red and the tears

streamed down our cheeks could not destroy our feeling of content.

As progress southward was blocked also on the following day (August

28th), and as autumn was now drawing on, I at last resolved on

remaining here for the winter. I thought that we still had more than

138 miles to travel in order to reach Eira Harbor or Leigh Smith's

wintering-place. [60] It might take us a long time to get there,

and then we were not sure of finding any hut; and when we did get

there, it would be more than doubtful if, before the winter set in,

there would be time to build a house and also gather stores for

the winter. It was undoubtedly the safest plan to begin at once to

prepare for wintering while there was still plenty of game to be had;

and this was a good spot to winter in. The first thing I should like

to have done was to have shot the walruses that had been lying on

the ice during the first day or two; but now, of course, they were

gone. The sea, however, was swarming with them; they bellowed and blew

night and day, and, in order to be ready for an encounter with them,

we emptied our kayaks to make them more easy of manipulation in this

somewhat dangerous chase. While thus engaged, Johansen caught sight

of two bears--a she-bear and her cub--coming along the edge of the

ice from the south. We lost no time in getting our guns and setting

off towards them. By the time they reached the shore they were within

range, and Johansen sent a bullet through the mother's chest. She

roared, bit at the wound, staggered a few steps, and fell. The young

one could not make out what was the matter with its mother, and ran

round, sniffing at her. When we approached, it went off a little way

up the slope, but soon came back again and took up a position over

its mother, as if to defend her against us. A charge of small shot

put an end to its life.

This was a good beginning to our winter store. As I was returning

to the hut to fetch the seal-knives, I heard cries in the air above

me. There were actually two geese flying south! With what longing

I looked after them as they disappeared, only wishing that I could

have followed them to the land towards which they were now wending

their flight!

Next to food and fuel the most important thing was to get a hut

built. To build the walls of this was not difficult; there was

plenty of stone and moss. The roof presented greater difficulty,

and we had as yet no idea what to make it of. Fortunately, I found

a sound driftwood pine-log thrown up on to the shore not far from

our den; this would make a capital ridge-piece for the roof of our

future house. And if there was one, there might be others. One of our

first acts, therefore, was to make an excursion up along the shore

and search; but all we found was one short, rotten piece of wood,

which was good for nothing, and some chips of another piece. I then

began to think of using walrus-hides for the roof instead.

The following day (August 29th) we prepared to try our luck at

walrus-hunting. We had no great desire to attack the animals in single

kayaks; we had had enough of that, I thought, and the prospect of

being upset or of having a tusk driven through the bottom of the

kayak or into one's thigh was not altogether alluring. The kayaks

were therefore lashed together, and, seated upon the ring, we put out

towards the big bull which lay and dived just outside. We were well

equipped with guns and harpoons, and thought that it was all quite

simple. Nor was it difficult to get within range, and we emptied our

barrels into the animal's head. It lay stunned for a moment, and we

rowed towards it, but suddenly it began to splash and whirl round

in the water, completely beside itself. I shouted out that we must

back, but it was too late: the walrus got under the kayaks, and we

received several blows underneath, in the violence of its contortions,

before it finally dived. It soon came up again, and now the sound of

its breathing resounded on all sides, while blood streamed from its

mouth and nostrils, and dyed the surrounding water. We lost no time

in rowing up to it and pouring a fresh volley into its head. Again it

dived, and we cautiously drew back, to avoid receiving an attack from

below. It soon appeared again, and we once more rowed up to it. These

manoeuvres were repeated, and each time it came to the surface it

received at least one bullet in the head, and grew more and more

exhausted; but, as it always faced us, it was difficult to give it

a mortal wound behind the ear. The blood, however, now flowed in

streams. During one of these manoeuvres I was in the act of placing

my gun hurriedly in its case on the deck, in order to row nearer,

forgetting that it was cocked, when all at once it went off. I was

rather alarmed, thinking the ball had gone through the bottom of the

kayak, and I began feeling my legs. They were uninjured, however, and

as I did not hear the water rushing in either I was reassured. The

ball had passed through the deck and out through the side a little

above the water-line. We had now had enough of this sport, however;

the walrus only lay gasping for breath, and just as we rowed towards it

it turned its head a little, and received two bullets just behind the

ear. It lay still, and we rowed up to throw our harpoon; but before we

got near enough it sank and disappeared. It was a melancholy ending to

the affair. In all, nine cartridges had been expended to no purpose,

and we silently rowed to shore, not a little crestfallen. We tried

no more walrus-hunting from kayaks that day; but we now saw that a

walrus had come up on to the shore-ice a little way off. Perhaps we

were to receive compensation there for the one we had just lost. It

was not long before another came up beside the first. After having

taken an observation and given them time to compose themselves, we set

off. Having bellowed and made a horrible noise out there for some time,

they now lay asleep and unsuspecting, and we stole cautiously up to

them, I in front and Johansen close at my heels. I first went up to

the head of the nearer one, which was lying with its back to us. As

it had drawn its head well down, and it was difficult to get a shot

at a vulnerable point, I passed behind it, and up to the head of the

other one. The animals still lay motionless, asleep in the sun. The

second was in a better position for a shot, and, when I saw Johansen

standing ready at the head of the first, I fired at the back of the

neck. The animal turned over a little, and lay there dead. At the

report the first started up, but at the same moment received Johansen's

bullet. Half stunned, it turned its gigantic body round towards us;

in a moment I had discharged the ball from my smooth-bore at it, but,

like Johansen, I hit too far forward in the head. The blood streamed

from its nostrils and mouth, and it breathed and coughed till the air

vibrated. Supporting itself upon its enormous tusks, it now lay still,

coughing blood like a consumptive person, and quite indifferent to

us. In spite of its huge body and shapeless appearance, which called

up to the imagination bogy, giant, and kraken, and other evil things,

there was something so gently supplicating and helpless in its round

eyes as it lay there that its goblin exterior and one's own need

were forgotten in pity for it. It almost seemed like murder. I put

an end to its sufferings by a bullet behind the ear, but those eyes

haunt me yet; it seemed as if in them lay the prayer for existence

of the whole helpless walrus race. But it is lost; it has man as its

pursuer. It cannot, however, be denied that we rejoiced at the thought

of all the meat and blubber we had now brought down in one encounter;

it made up for the cartridges expended upon the one that had sunk. But

we had not got them on land yet, and it would be a long piece of work

to get them skinned and cut up and brought home. The first thing we

did was to go after sledges and knives. As there was a possibility,

too, of the ice breaking off and being set adrift, I also thought

it wise to take the kayaks on the sledges at the same time, for it

had begun to blow a little from the fjord. But for this fortunate

precaution it is not easy to say what would have become of us. While

we were engaged in skinning, the wind rose rapidly, and soon became

a storm. To landward of us was the narrow channel or lane beside

which the walruses had been lying. I feared that the ice might open

here, and we drift away. While we worked I therefore kept an eye on

it to see if it grew broader. It remained unchanged, and we went on

skinning as fast as we could. When the first walrus was half skinned,

I happened to look landward across the ice, and discovered that it

had broken off a good way from us, and that the part on which we

stood had already been drifting for some time; there was black water

between us and the shore-ice, and the wind was blowing so that the

spray flew from the foaming waves. There was no time to be lost; it

was more than doubtful whether we should be able to paddle any great

distance against that wind and sea, but as yet the ice did not appear

to have drifted a greater distance from the land than we could cross,

if we made haste. We could not bring ourselves to give up entirely the

huge animals we had brought down, and we hurriedly cut off as much

flesh as we could get at and flung it into the kayaks. We then cut

off about a quarter of the skin, with the blubber on it, and threw it

on the top, and then set off for the shore. We had scarcely abandoned

our booty before the gulls bore down in scores upon the half-skinned

carcass. Happy creatures! Wind and waves and drifting were nothing to

them; they screamed and made a hubbub and thought what a feast they

were having. As long as we could see the carcasses as they drifted

out to sea, we saw the birds continually gathering in larger and

larger flocks about them like clouds of snow. In the meantime we were

doing our utmost to gain the ice, but it had developed cracks and

channels in every direction. We managed to get some distance in the

kayaks; but while I was crossing a wide channel on some loose floes I

alighted on such poor ice that it sank under my weight, and I had to

jump back quickly to escape a bath. We tried in several places, but

everywhere it sank beneath us and our sledges, and there was nothing

for it but to take to the water, keeping along the lee-side of the

ice. But we had not rowed far before we perceived that it was of

no use to have our kayaks lashed together in such a wind; we had to

row singly, and sacrifice the walrus hide and blubber, which it then

became impossible to take with us. At present it was lying across the

stern of both kayaks. While we were busy effecting these changes we

were surrounded, before we were aware of it, by ice, and had to pull

the kayaks up hastily to save them from being crushed. We now tried

to get out at several places, but the ice was in constant motion;

it ground round as in a whirlpool. If a channel opened, we had no

sooner launched our kayaks than it once more closed violently, and

we had to snatch them up in the greatest haste. Several times they

were within a hair's-breadth of being smashed. Meanwhile the storm

was steadily increasing, the spray dashed over us, and we drifted

farther and farther out to sea. The situation was not pleasant.

At length, however, we got clear, and now discovered, to our joy,

that by exerting our utmost strength we could just force the kayaks on

against the wind. It was a hard pull, and our arms ached; but still

we crept slowly on towards land. The sea was choppy and bad, but our

kayaks were good sea-boats; and even mine, with the bullet-hole in it,

did so well that I kept to some extent dry. The wind came now and

then in such gusts that we felt as if it might lift us out of the

water and upset us; but gradually, as we drew nearer in under the

high cliffs, it became quieter, and at last, after a long time, we

reached the shore, and could take breath. We then rowed in smoother

water along the shore up to our camping-place. It was with genuine

satisfaction that we clambered on shore that night, and how unspeakably

comfortable it was to be lying again snugly within four walls in our

little den, wet though we were! A good potful of meat was prepared,

and our appetite was ravenous. It was, indeed, with sorrow that we

thought of the lost walruses now drifting out there in the storm;

but we were glad that we were not still in their company.

I had not slept long, when I was awakened by Johansen, who said there

was a bear outside. Even when only half awake, I heard a strange,

low grunting just outside the doorway. I started up, seized my gun,

and crept out. A she-bear with two large cubs was going up the shore;

they had just passed close by our door. I aimed at the she-bear, but,

in my haste, I missed her. She started and looked round; and as she

turned her broadside to me I sent a bullet through her chest. She gave

a fearful roar, and all three started off down the shore. There the

mother dropped in a pool on the ice, but the young ones ran on and

rushed into the sea, dashing up the foam as they went, and began to

swim out. I hastened down to the mother, who was striving and striving

to get out of the pool, but in vain. To save ourselves the labor of

dragging the heavy animal out, I waited until she had drawn herself up

on to the edge, and then put an end to her existence. Meanwhile the

young ones had reached a piece of ice. It was very close quarters

for two, and only just large enough to hold them; but there they

sat, balancing and dipping up and down in the waves. Every now and

then one of them fell off, but patiently clambered up again. They

cried plaintively and incessantly, and kept looking towards land,

unable to understand why their mother was so long in coming. The

wind was still high, and they drifted quickly out to sea before it

with the current. We thought they would at last swim to land to look

for their mother, and that we must wait; we therefore hid ourselves

among the stones, so that they should not be afraid of coming on our

account. We could still hear them complaining, but the sound became

more and more distant, and they grew smaller and smaller out there

on the blue waves, till at last it was all we could do to distinguish

them as two white dots far out upon the dark plain. We had long been

tired of this, and went to our kayaks. But here a sad sight met our

eyes. All the walrus flesh which we had brought home with so much

trouble lay scattered about on the shore, torn and mangled; and every

bit of fat or blubber to be found on it had been devoured. The bears

must have been rummaging finely here while we slept. One of the kayaks

in which the meat had been lying was thrown half into the water, the

other high up among the stones. The bears had been right into them

and dragged out the meat; but, fortunately, they were none the worse,

so it was easy to forgive the bears, and we benefited by the exchange

of bear's flesh for walrus flesh.

We then launched the kayaks, and put off to chase the young ones to

land. As soon as ever they saw us on the water they became uneasy, and

while we were still some way off one of them took to the water. The

other hesitated for a while, as if afraid of the water, while the

first waited impatiently; but at last they both went in. We made a

wide circuit round them, and began to drive them towards the land, one

of us on each side of them. It was easy to make them go in whatever

direction we wanted, and Johansen could not say enough in praise of

this simple method of getting bears from one place to another. We did

not need to row hard to keep up with them; we went slowly and easily,

but surely, towards land. We saw several walruses in the vicinity, but

fortunately escaped being attacked by any of them. From the very first

it was evident how much better the bear that first went into the water

swam, although it was the smaller and thinner. It waited, however,

patiently for the other, and kept it company; but at last the pace of

the latter became too slow for its companion, who struck out for the

shore, the distance between the two growing greater and greater. They

had kept incessantly turning their heads to look anxiously at us, and

now the one that was left behind looked round even more helplessly

than before. While I set off after the first bear, Johansen watched

the second, and we drove them ashore by our den, and shot them there.

We had thus taken three bears on that day, and this was a good

set-off against our walruses, which had drifted out to sea, and,

what was no less fortunate, we found the sunken walrus from the day

before floating just at the edge of the shore. We lost no time in

towing it into a place of safety in a creek and making it fast. It

made a difference to our winter store.

It was late before we turned in that night after having skinned the

bears, laid them in a heap, and covered them with the skins to prevent

the gulls from getting at them. We slept well, for we had to make up

for two nights.

It was not until September 2d that we could set to work on the skinning

of our walrus, which still lay in the water. Close to our den there

was an opening in the strand-ice, [61] connecting the inner channel

between the strand-ice and the land with the outer sea. It was in this

opening that we had made it fast, and we hoped to be able to draw it on

land here; the glacier-ice went with a gentle incline right out into

the water, so that it seemed to promise well. We rounded off the edge

of the ice, made a tackle by drawing the rope through a loop we cut

in the skin of the head, used our broken-off runner of a sledge as a

handspike at the end of the rope, and cut notches in the ice up the

beach as a fulcrum for the handspike. But work and toil as we might,

it was all we could do to get the huge head up over the edge of the

ice. In the midst of this Johansen cried, "I say, look there!" I

turned. A large walrus was swimming straight up the channel towards

us. It did not seem to be in any hurry, but only opened wide its round

eyes, and gazed in astonishment at us and at what we were doing. I

suppose that, seeing a comrade, it had come in to see what we were

doing with him. Quietly, slowly, and with dignity it came right up to

the edge where we stood. Fortunately we had our guns with us, and when

I approached with mine it only rose up in the water and gazed long

and searchingly at me. I waited patiently until it turned a little,

and then sent a bullet into the back of its head. It was stunned for a

time, but soon began to move, so that more shots were required. While

Johansen ran for cartridges and a harpoon I had to fight with it as

I best could, and try to prevent it, with a stick, from splashing

out of the channel again. At last Johansen returned, and I did for

this walrus. We were delighted over our good fortune; but what the

walrus wanted in that narrow channel we have always wondered. These

animals must be uncommonly curious. While we were skinning the bears

two days before, a walrus with its young one came close in to the

edge of the ice and gazed at us; it dived several times, but always

returned, and at last drew the whole of the forepart of its body

up on to the ice in order to see better. This it did several times,

and my approaching to within a few yards of it did not drive it away;

it was only when I went up close to it with my gun that it suddenly

came to its senses and threw itself backward into the water again, and

we could see it far below moving off with its young one by its side.

We now had two great walruses with enormous tusks floating in our

channel. We tried once more to drag one of them up, but the attempt

was as unsuccessful as before. At last we saw that our only course

was to skin them in the water; but this was neither an easy nor an

agreeable task. When at last, late in the evening, we had got one side

of one animal skinned, it was low-water; the walrus lay on the bottom,

and there was no possibility of turning it over, no matter how we

toiled and pulled. We had to wait for high tide the following day,

in order to get at the other side.

While we were busy with the walruses that day we suddenly saw the

whole fjord white with white whales gambolling all round as far as the

eye could see. There was an incredible number of them. In the course

of an hour they had entirely disappeared. Where they came from and

whither they went I was not able to discover.

During the succeeding days we toiled at our task of skinning and

cutting up the walruses, and bringing all up into a safe place on the

beach. It was disgusting work, lying on the animals out in the water

and having to cut down as far as one could reach below the surface of

the water. We could put up with getting wet, for one gets dry in time;

but what was worse was that we could not avoid being saturated with

blubber and oil and blood from head to foot; and our poor clothes, that

we should have to live in for another year before we could change,

fared badly during those days. They so absorbed oil that it went

right through to the skin. This walrus business was unquestionably

the worst work of the whole expedition, and had it not been a sheer

necessity we should have let the animals lie where they were; but we

needed fuel for the winter, even if we could have done without the

meat. When at last the task was completed, and we had two great heaps

of blubber and meat on shore, well covered by the thick walrus hides,

we were not a little pleased.

During this time the gulls were living in luxury. There was abundance

of refuse, blubber, entrails, and other internal organs. They gathered

in large flocks from all quarters, both ivory and glaucus gulls, and

kept up a perpetual screaming and noise both night and day. When they

had eaten as much as they could manage they generally sat out on the

ice-hummocks and chattered together. When we came down to skin they

withdrew only a very little way from the carcasses, and sat waiting

patiently in long rows on the ice beside us, or, led on by a few bold

officers, drew continually nearer. No sooner did a little scrap of

blubber fall than two or three ivory-gulls would pounce upon it, often

at our very feet, and fight over it until the feathers flew. Outside

the fulmars were sailing in their silent, ghost-like flight to and

fro over the surface of the water. Up and down the edge of the shore

flocks of kittiwakes moved incessantly, darting like an arrow, with

a dull splash, towards the surface of the water, whenever a little

crustacean appeared there. We were particularly fond of these birds,

for they kept exclusively to the marine animals and left our blubber

alone; and then they were so light and pretty. But up and down along

the shore the skua (Stercorarius crepidatus) chased incessantly, and

every now and again we were startled by a pitiful cry of distress

above our heads; it was a kittiwake pursued by a skua. How often

we followed with our eyes that wild chase up in the air, until at

last the kittiwake had to drop its booty, and down shot the skua,

catching it even before it touched the water! Happy creatures that

can move with such freedom up there! Out in the water lay walruses,

diving and bellowing, often whole herds of them; and high up in

the air, to and fro, flew the little auks in swarms; you could hear

the whir of their wings far off. There were cries and life on all

sides. But soon the sun will sink, the sea will close in, the birds

will disappear one after another towards the south, the polar night

will begin, and there will be profound, unbroken silence.

It was with pleasure that we at last, on September 7th, set to work

to build our hut. We had selected a good site in the neighborhood,

and from this time forward we might have been seen daily going out in

the morning like other laborers, with a can of drinking-water in one

hand and a gun in the other. We quarried stones up among the débris

from the cliff, dragged them together, dug out the site, and built

walls as well as we could. We had no tools worth mentioning; those

we used most were our two hands. The cut-off sledge-runner again did

duty as a pick with which to loosen the fast-frozen stones, and when

we could not manage to dig up the earth on our site with our hands we

used a snow-shoe staff with an iron ferrule. We made a spade out of

the shoulder-blade of a walrus tied to a piece of a broken snow-shoe

staff, and a mattock out of a walrus tusk tied to the crosstree of

a sledge. They were poor things to work with, but we managed it with

patience, and little by little there arose solid walls of stone with

moss and earth between. The weather was growing gradually colder,

and hindered us not a little in our work. The soil we had to dig

in hardened, and the stones that had to be quarried froze fast;

and there came snow too. But great was our surprise when we crept

out of our den on the morning of the 12th of September to find the

most delightful thaw, with 4° (C.) of heat (39.2° Fahr.). This was

almost the highest temperature we had experienced throughout the

expedition. On every side streams were tumbling in foaming falls

down from mountain and glacier, humming along merrily among the

stones down to the sea. Water trickled and tinkled everywhere;

as if by a stroke of magic, life had returned to frozen nature,

and the hill looked green all over. One could fancy one's self far

south, and forget that a long, long winter was drawing near. The day

after, everything was changed again. The gentle gods of the south,

who yesterday had put forth their last energies, had once more fled;

the cold had returned, snow had fallen and covered every trace: it

would not yield again. This little strip of bare ground, too, was in

the power of the genii of the cold and darkness; they held sway now,

right down to the sea. I stood looking out over it. How desolate and

forsaken this spell-bound nature looked! My eye fell upon the ground

at my feet. Down there among the stones, the poppy still reared its

beautiful blossoms above the snow; the last rays of the departing

sun would once more kiss its yellow petals, and then it would creep

beneath its covering to sleep through the long winter, and awake

again to new life in the spring. Ah to be able to do the same!

After a week's work the walls of our hut were finished. They were not

high, scarcely 3 feet above the ground; but we had dug down the same

distance into the ground, so we reckoned that it would be high enough

to stand up in. Now the thing was to get it roofed, but this was not so

easy. The only materials we had towards it were, as before mentioned,

the log we had found and the walrus hides. The log, which was quite

12 inches across, Johansen at last, after a day's work, succeeded in

cutting in two with our little axe, and with no less labor we rolled

it up over the talus and on to the level, and it was laid on the roof

as the ridgepiece. Then there were the hides; but they were stiff and

frozen fast to the meat and blubber heaps which they covered. With much

difficulty we at length loosened them by using wedges of walrus tusks,

stone, and wood. To transport these great skins over the long distance

to our hut was a no less difficult matter. However, by rolling them,

carrying them, and dragging them we accomplished this too; but to

get the frozen skins stretched over the hut was the worst of all. We

got on pretty well with three half-skins, just managing to bend them

a little; but the fourth half was frozen quite stiff, and we had to

find a hole in the ice, and sink it in the sea, to thaw it.

It was almost a cause for anxiety, I thought, that all this time

we saw nothing of any bears. They were what we had to live upon all

through the winter, and the six we had would not go far. I thought,

however, that it might easily be accounted for, as the fjord-ice,

to which the bear prefers to keep, had taken its departure on the

day when we had nearly drifted out to sea with the walruses, and I

thought that, when the ice now formed again, bears would appear once

more. It was therefore a relief when one morning (September 23d)

I caught sight of a bear in front of me, just as I came round the

promontory to look at the skin that we had in soak in the sea. It was

standing on the shore close by the skin. It had not seen me, and I

quickly drew back to let Johansen, who was following with his gun,

pass me, while I ran back to fetch mine. When I returned, Johansen

lay on the same spot behind a stone, and had not fired. There were

two bears, one by the hut and one by the shore; and Johansen could

not get up to the one without being seen by the other. When I had

gone after my gun the bear had turned its steps towards the hut;

but just as it reached it Johansen suddenly saw two bear's paws come

quickly over the edge of the wall and hit out at the first bear, and

a head followed immediately after. This fellow was busily gnawing at

our roof hides, which he had torn down and bent, so that we had to

put them into the sea too, to get them thawed. The first bear had to

retreat to the shore once more, where we afterwards discovered it had

drawn up our hide and had been scraping the fat off it. Under cover

of some hummocks we now ran towards it. It noticed us, and set off

running, and I was only able to send a bullet through its body from

behind. Shouting out to Johansen that he must look after the other

bear, I set off running, and after a couple of hours' pursuit up

the fjord I at last chased it up under the wall of a glacier, where

it prepared to defend itself. I went right up to it, but it growled

and hissed, and made one or two attacks on me from the elevation on

which it stood before I finally put an end to its existence. When

I got back Johansen was busy skinning the other bear. It had been

alarmed by us when we attacked the first, and had gone a long way

out over the ice; it had then returned to look for its companion,

and Johansen had shot it. Our winter store was increasing.

The next day (September 24th), as we were setting out to work at

our hut, we saw a large herd of walruses lying out on the ice. We

had both had more than enough of these animals, and had very little

inclination for them. Johansen was of candid opinion that we had no

need for them, and could let them lie in peace; but I thought it was

rather improvident to have food and fuel lying at one's very door

and make no use of them so we set off with our guns. To steal up to

the animals, under cover of some elevations on the ice, was a matter

of small difficulty, and we had soon come within 40 feet of them,

and could lie there quietly and watch them. The point was to choose

one's victim, and make good use of one's shot, so as not to waste

cartridges. There were both old and young animals, and, having had

more than enough of big ones, we decided to try for the two smallest

that we could see; we thought we had no need of more than two. As

we lay waiting for them to turn their heads and give us the chance

of a good shot, we had plenty of opportunity to watch them. They are

strange animals. They lay incessantly poking one another in the back

with their huge tusks, both the big old ones and the little young

ones. If one of them turned over a little, so as to come near and

disturb his neighbor, the latter immediately raised itself, grunting,

and dug its tusks into the back of the first. It was by no means a

gentle caress, and it is well for them that they have such a thick

hide; but, as it was, the blood ran down the backs of several of

them. The other would, perhaps, start up too, and return the little

attention in the same manner. But it was when another guest came up

from the sea that there was a stir in the camp; they all grunted in

chorus, and one of the old bulls that lay nearest to the new arrival

gave him some well-meant blows. The new-comer, however, drew himself

cautiously up, bowed respectfully, and little by little drew himself

in among the others, who also then gave him as many blows as time and

circumstances would permit, until they finally composed themselves

again, and lay quiet until another interruption came. We waited in

vain for the animals we had picked out to turn their heads enough

to let us get a good shot; but as they were comparatively small we

thought that a bullet in the middle of the forehead might be enough

for them, and at last we fired. They started up, however, and turned

over, half stunned, into the water. Then there was a commotion! The

whole herd quickly raised their ugly heads, glared at us, and one

by one plunged out over the edge of the ice. We had hastily loaded

again, and as it was not difficult now to get a good shot we fired,

and there lay two animals, one young and one old. Most of the others

dived, only one remaining quietly lying, and looking wonderingly,

now at its two dead companions, and now at us as we came up to it. We

did not quite know what to do; we thought that the two that were now

lying there would give us more than enough to do, but nevertheless it

was tempting to take this great monster as well, while we were about

it. While Johansen was standing with his gun, considering whether he

should fire or not, I took the opportunity of photographing both him

and the walrus. It ended, however, in our letting it go unharmed;

we did not think we could afford to sacrifice more cartridges upon

it. Meantime the water beyond was seething with furious animals,

as they broke up the ice round about and filled the air with their

roaring. The big bull himself seemed especially anxious to get at us;

he kept returning to the edge of the ice, getting half up on to it

to grunt and bellow at us and look long at his dead comrades, whom

he evidently wished to take with him. But we would not waste more

cartridges upon them, and he threw himself back, only to return again

immediately. Gradually the whole herd departed, and we could hear the

big bull's grunting becoming more and more distant; but suddenly his

huge head appeared again at the edge of the ice, close to us, as he

challenged us with a roar, and then disappeared again as quickly as

he had come. This was repeated three or four times after our having in

the intervals heard him far out; but at last he disappeared entirely,

and we continued our work of skinning in peace. We very quickly skinned

the smaller of the walruses; it was easy to manipulate compared to

those we were accustomed to. The other, however, was a great fellow

that could not be easily turned over in the hollow in the snow where

he lay; so we contented ourselves with skinning one side from head

to tail, and then went home again with our blubber and skins. We now

thought we should have blubber enough for winter fuel, and had also

abundance of skins for covering the roof of our hut.

The walruses still kept near us for some time. Every now and then we

would hear some violent blows on the ice from beneath, two or three in

succession, and then a great head would burst up with a crash through

the ice. It would remain there for a time panting and puffing so that

it would be heard a long way off, and then vanish again. On September

25th, while we were pulling our roof hides out of the water at a hole

near the shore, we heard the same crashing in the ice a little farther

out, and a walrus came up and then dived again. "Look there! It won't

be long before we have him in this hole." The words were scarcely

spoken, when our hide in the water was pushed aside and a huge head,

with bristles and two long tusks, popped up in front of us. It gazed

fixedly and wickedly at us standing there, then there was a tremendous

splash and it was gone.

Our hides were now so far softened in the sea that we could stretch

them over the roof. They were so long that they reached from one side

of the hut right over the ridge-piece down to the other side, and

we stretched them by hanging large stones at both ends, attached by

strips of hide, thus weighing them down over the edges of the wall,

and we then piled stones upon them. By the aid of stones, moss,

strips of hide, and snow to cover everything, we made the edges of

the walls to some extent close-fitting. To make the hut habitable we

still had to construct benches of stone to lie upon inside it, and

also a door. This consisted of an opening in one corner of the wall,

which led into a short passage dug out in the ground and subsequently

roofed over with blocks of ice, on very much the same principle as the

passage to an Eskimo's house. We had not dug this passage so long as we

wished before the ground was frozen too hard for our implements. It was

so low that we had to creep through it in a squatting posture to get

into the hut. The inner opening was covered with a bearskin curtain,

sewed firmly to the walrus hide of the roof; the outer end was covered

with a loose bearskin laid over the opening. It began to grow cold now,

as low as -20° C. (4° below zero, Fahr.); and living in our low den,

where we had not room to move, became more and more intolerable. The

smoke, too, from the oil-lamp, when we did any cooking, always affected

our eyes. We grew daily more impatient to move into our new house,

which now appeared to us the acme of comfort. Our ever-recurring remark

while we were building was, how nice and snug it would be when we got

in, and we depicted to each other the many pleasant hours we should

spend there. We were, of course, anxious to discover all the bright

points that we could in our existence. The hut was certainly not

large; it was 10 feet long and 6 feet wide, and when you lay across

it you kicked the wall on one side and butted it on the other. You

could move in it a little, however, and even I could almost stand

upright under the roof. This was a thought which especially appealed

to us. Fancy having a place sheltered from the wind where you could

stretch your limbs a little! We had not had that since last March,

on board the Fram. It was long, however, before everything was in

order, and we would not move in until it was quite finished.

The day we had skinned our last walruses I had taken several tendons

from their backs, thinking they might be very useful when we made

ourselves clothes for the winter, for we were entirely without thread

for that purpose. Not until a few days afterwards (September 26th)

did I recollect that these tendons had been left on the ice beside the

carcasses. I went out there to look for them, but found, to my sorrow,

that gulls and foxes had long since made away with them. It was some

comfort, however, to find traces of a bear, which must have been at

the carcasses during the night, and as I looked about I caught sight

of Johansen running after me, making signs and pointing out towards

the sea. I turned that way, and there was a large bear, walking to

and fro and looking at us. We had soon fetched our guns, and while

Johansen remained near the land to receive the bear if it came that

way, I made a wide circuit round it on the ice to drive it landward,

if it should prove to be frightened. In the meantime, it had lain

down out there beside some holes, I suppose to watch for seals. I

stole up to it; it saw me and at first came nearer, but then thought

better of it, and moved away again, slowly and majestically, out over

the new ice. I had no great desire to follow it in that direction,

and though the range was long I thought I must try it. First one

shot; it passed over. Then one more; that hit. The bear started,

made several leaps, and then in anger struck the ice until it broke,

and the bear fell through. There it lay, splashing and splashing and

breaking the thin ice with its weight as it tried to get out again. I

was soon beside it, but did not want to sacrifice another cartridge;

I had faint hopes, too, that it would manage to get out of the water by

itself, and thus save us the trouble of dragging such a heavy animal

out. I called to Johansen to come with a rope, sledges, and knives,

and in the meantime I walked up and down waiting and watching. The bear

labored hard, and made the opening in the ice larger and larger. It

was wounded in one of its fore-legs, so that it could use only the

other, and the two hind-legs. It kept on taking hold and pulling

itself up. But no sooner had it got half up than the ice gave way,

and it sank down again. By degrees its movements became more and

more feeble, till at last it only lay still and panted. Then came a

few spasms, its legs stiffened, its head sank down into the water,

and all was still. While I was walking up and down I several times

heard walruses round about, as they butted holes in the ice and

put their heads through; and I was thinking to myself that I should

soon have them here too. At that moment the bear received a violent

blow from beneath, pushing it to one side, and up came a huge head

with great tusks; it snorted, looked contemptuously at the bear,

then gazed for a while wonderingly at me as I stood on the ice, and

finally disappeared again. This had the effect of making me think the

old solid ice a little farther in a pleasanter place of sojourn than

the new ice. My suspicion that the walrus entertains no fear for the

bear was more than ever strengthened. At last Johansen came with a

rope. We slipped a running noose round the bear's neck and tried to

haul it out, but soon discovered that this was beyond our power; all

we did was to break the ice under the animal, wherever we tried. It

seemed hard to have to give it up; it was a big bear and seemed to be

unusually fat; but to continue in this way until we had towed up to

the edge of the thick ice would be a lengthy proceeding. By cutting

quite a narrow crack in the new ice, only wide enough to draw the

rope through, up to the edge of a large piece of ice which was quite

near, we got pretty well out of the difficulty. It was now an easy

matter to draw the bear thither under the ice, and after breaking

a sufficiently large hole we drew it out there. At last we had got

it skinned and cut up, and, heavily laden with our booty, we turned

our steps homeward late in the evening to our den. As we approached

the beach where our kayaks were lying upon one of our heaps of

walrus blubber and meat, Johansen suddenly whispered to me, "I say,

look there!" I looked up, and there stood three bears on the heaps,

tearing at the blubber. They were a she-bear and two young ones. "Oh

dear!" said I; "shall we have to set to at bears again?" I was tired,

and, to tell the truth, had far more desire for our sleeping-bag and

a good potful of meat. In a trice we had got our guns out, and were

approaching cautiously; but they had caught sight of us, and set off

over the ice. It was with an undeniable feeling of gratitude that we

watched their retreating forms. A little later, while I was standing

cutting up the meat and Johansen had gone to fetch water, I heard him

whistle. I looked up, and he pointed out over the ice. There in the

dusk were the three bears coming back--our blubber-heap had been too

tempting for them. I crept with my gun behind some stones close to the

heap. The bears came straight on, looking neither to right nor left,

and as they passed me I took as good an aim at the she-bear as the

darkness would allow, and fired. She roared, bit her side, and all

three set off out over the ice. There the mother fell, and the young

ones stood astonished and troubled beside her until we approached,

when they fled, and it was impossible to get within range of them. They

kept at a respectful distance, and watched us while we dragged the

dead bear to land and skinned it. When we went out next morning,

they were standing sniffing at the skin and meat; but before we

could get within range they saw us, and were off again. We now

saw that they had been there all night, and had eaten up their own

mother's stomach, which had contained some pieces of blubber. In the

afternoon they returned once more; and again we attempted, but in

vain, to get a shot at them. Next morning (Saturday, September 28th),

when we crawled out, we caught sight of a large bear lying asleep on

our blubber-heap. Johansen crept up close to it under cover of some

stones. The bear heard something moving, raised its head, and looked

round. At the same instant Johansen fired, and the bullet went right

through the bear's throat, just below the cranium. It got slowly up,

looked contemptuously at Johansen, considered a little, and then walked

quietly away with long, measured steps, as if nothing had happened. It

soon had a couple of bullets from each of us in its body, and fell

out on the thin ice. It was so full of food that, as it lay there,

blubber and oil and water ran out of its mouth on to the ice, which

began gradually to sink under its weight, until it lay in a large

pool, and we hastily dragged it in to the shore, before the ice gave

way beneath it. It was one of the largest bears I have ever seen,

but also one of the leanest; for there was not a trace of fat upon

it, neither underneath the skin nor among the entrails. It must have

been fasting for a long time and been uncommonly hungry; for it had

consumed an incredible quantity of our blubber. And how it had pulled

it about! First it had thrown one kayak off, then it had scattered

the blubber about in all directions, scraping off the best of the

fat upon almost every single piece; then it had gathered the blubber

together again in another place, and then, happy with the happiness

of satiety, had lain down to sleep upon it, perhaps so as to have it

handy when it woke up again. Previous to attacking the blubber-heap it

had accomplished another piece of work, which we only discovered later

on. It had killed both the young bears that had been visiting us;

we found them not far off, with broken skulls and frozen stiff. We

could see by the footprints how it had run after them out over the

new ice, first one and then the other, and had dragged them on land,

and laid them down without touching them again. What pleasure it can

have in doing this I do not understand, but it must have regarded

them as competitors in the struggle for food. Or was it, perhaps,

a cross old gentleman who did not like young people? "It is so nice

and quiet here now," said the ogre, when he had cleared the country.

Our winter store now began quite to inspire confidence.

At length, on the evening of that day, we moved into our new hut;

but our first night there was a cold one. Hitherto we had slept in

one bag all the time, and even the one we had made by sewing together

our two blankets had been fairly adequate. But now we thought it

would not be necessary to sleep in one bag any longer, as we should

make the hut so warm by burning train-oil lamps in it that we could

very well lie each in our own berth with a blanket over us, and so

we had unpicked the bag. Lamps were made by turning up the corners

of some sheets of German silver, filling them with crushed blubber,

and laying in this, by way of a wick, some pieces of stuff from the

bandages in the medicine-bag. They burned capitally, and gave such a

good light, too, that we thought it looked very snug; but it neither

was nor ever would be sufficient to warm our still rather permeable

hut, and we lay and shivered with cold all night. We almost thought

it was the coldest night we had had. Breakfast next morning tasted

excellent, and the quantity of bear-broth we consumed in order to put

a little warmth into our bodies is incredible. We at once decided to

alter this by making along the back wall of the hut a sleeping-shelf

broad enough for us to lie beside one another. The blankets were

sewed together again, we spread bearskins under us, and were as

comfortable as we could be under the circumstances; and we made no

further attempt to part company at night. It was impossible to make

the substratum at all even, with the rough, angular stones which,

now that everything was frozen, were all we had at our disposal,

and therefore we lay tossing and twisting the whole winter to find

something like a comfortable place among all the knobs. But it was

hard, and remained so; and we always had some tender spots on our

body, and even sores on our hips, with lying. But, for all that,

we slept. In one corner of the hut we made a little hearth to boil

and roast upon. In the roof above we cut a round hole in the walrus

hide, and made a smoke-board up to it of bearskin. We had not used

this hearth long before we saw the necessity of building a chimney

to prevent the wind from beating down, and so filling the hut with

smoke as to make it sometimes intolerable. The only materials we

had for building this were ice and snow; but with these we erected

a grand chimney on the roof, which served its purpose, and made a

good draught. It was not quite permanent, however; the hole in it

constantly widened with use, and it was not altogether guiltless of

sometimes dripping down on to the hearth; but there was abundance of

this building material, and it was not difficult to renew the chimney

when it was in need of repair. This had to be done two or three times

during the course of the winter. On more exposed spots we employed

walrus flesh, bone, and such-like materials to strengthen it.

Our cookery was as simple as possible. It consisted in boiling

bear's flesh and soup (bouillon) in the morning and frying steak

in the evening. We consumed large quantities at every meal, and,

strange to say, we never grew tired of this food, but always ate it

with a ravenous appetite. We sometimes either ate blubber with it or

dipped the pieces of meat in a little oil. A long time might often

pass when we ate almost nothing but meat, and scarcely tasted fat;

but when one of us felt inclined for it again he would, perhaps,

fish up some pieces of burnt blubber out of the lamps, or eat what

was left of the blubber from which we had melted the lamp-oil. We

called these cakes, and thought them uncommonly nice, and we were

always talking of how delicious they would have been if we could have

had a little sugar on them.

We still had some of the provisions we had brought from the Fram, but

these we decided not to use during the winter. They were placed in a

depot to be kept until the spring, when we should move on. The depot

was well loaded with stones to prevent the foxes from running away

with the bags. They were impudent enough already, and took all the

movable property they could lay hold of. I discovered, for instance,

on October 10th, that they had gone off with a quantity of odds and

ends I had left in another depot during the erection of the hut;

they had taken everything that they could possibly carry with them,

such as pieces of bamboo, steel wire, harpoons and harpoon-lines,

my collection of stones, mosses, etc., which were stored in small

sail-cloth bags. Perhaps the worst of all was that they had gone

off with a large ball of twine, which had been our hope and comfort

when thinking of the time when we should want to make clothes, shoes,

and sleeping-bags of bearskin for the winter; for we had reckoned on

making thread out of the twine. It was fortunate that they had not gone

off with the theodolite and our other instruments which stood there;

but these must have been too heavy for them. I was angry when I made

this discovery, and, what made it more aggravating, it happened on my

birthday. And matters did not improve when, while hunting about in

the twilight on the beach above the place where the things had been

lying, to see if I could at any rate discover tracks to show which way

those demons had taken them, I met a fox that stopped at a distance

of 20 feet from me, sat down, and uttered some exasperating howls, so

piercing and weird that I had to stop my ears. It was evidently on its

way to my things again, and was now provoked at being disturbed. I got

hold of some large stones and flung them at it. It ran off a little

way, but then seated itself upon the edge of the glacier and howled

on, while I went home to the hut in a rage, lay down, and speculated

as to what we should do to be revenged on the obnoxious animals. We

could not spare cartridges to shoot them with, but we might make a

trap of stones. This we determined to do, but nothing ever came of

it; there were always so many other things to occupy us at first,

while we still had the opportunity, before the snow covered the talus,

and while it was light enough to find suitable stones. Meanwhile the

foxes continued to annoy us. One day they had taken our thermometer,

[62] which we always kept outside the hut, and gone off with it. We

searched for it in vain for a long time, until at last we found it

buried in a heap of snow a little way off. From that time we were

very careful to place a stone over it at night, but one morning found

that the foxes had turned over the stone, and had gone off with the

thermometer again. The only thing we found this time was the case,

which they had thrown away a little way off. The thermometer itself

we were never to see again; the snow had unfortunately drifted in

the night, so that the tracks had disappeared. Goodness only knows

what fox-hole it now adorns; but from that day we learned a lesson,

and henceforward fastened our last thermometer securely.

Meanwhile time passed. The sun sank lower and lower, until on October

15th we saw it for the last time above the ridge to the south; the

days grew rapidly darker, and then began our third polar night.

We shot two more bears in the autumn, one on the 8th and one on

the 21st of October; but from that time we saw no more until the

following spring. When I awoke on the morning of October 8th I heard

the crunching of heavy steps in the snow outside, and then began a

rummaging about among our meat and blubber up on the roof. I could hear

it was a bear, and crept out with my gun; but when I came out of the

passage I could see nothing in the moonlight. The animal had noticed

me, and had already disappeared. We did not altogether regret this,

as we had no great desire to set to at the cold task of skinning now,

in a wind, and with 39° (70.2° Fahr.) of frost.

There was not much variety in our life. It consisted in cooking and

eating breakfast in the morning. Then, perhaps, came another nap,

after which we would go out to get a little exercise. Of this, however,

we took no more than was necessary, as our clothes, saturated as they

were with fat, and worn and torn in many places, were not exactly

adapted for remaining in the open air in winter. Our wind clothes,

which we should have had outside as a protection against the wind,

were so worn and torn that we could not use them; and we had so little

thread to patch them with that I did not think we ought to use any

of it until the spring, when we had to prepare for our start. I had

counted on being able to make ourselves clothes of bearskins, but

it took time to cleanse them from all blubber and fat, and it was

even a slower business getting them dried. The only way to do this

was to spread them out under the roof of the hut; but there was room

for only one at a time. When at last one was ready we had, first of

all, to use it on our bed, for we were lying on raw, greasy skins,

which were gradually rotting. When our bed had been put in order with

dried skins we had to think about making a sleeping-bag, as, after a

time, the blanket-bag that we had got rather cold to sleep in. About

Christmas-time, accordingly, we at last managed to make ourselves a

bearskin bag. In this way all the skins we could prepare were used up,

and we continued to wear the clothes we had throughout the winter.

These walks, too, were a doubtful pleasure, because there is always

a wind there, and it blew hard under the steep cliff. We felt it a

wonderful relief when it occasionally happened to be almost calm. As

a rule, the wind howled above us and lashed the snow along, so that

everything was wrapped in mist. Many days would sometimes pass almost

without our putting our heads out of the passage, and it was only

bare necessity that drove us out to fetch ice for drinking-water,

or a leg or carcass of a bear for food, or some blubber for fuel. As

a rule, we also brought in some sea-water ice, or, if there were an

opening or a crack to be found, a little sea-water for our soup.

When we came in, and had mustered up appetite for another meal, we

had to prepare supper, eat till we were satisfied, and then get into

our bag and sleep as long as possible to pass the time. On the whole,

we had quite a comfortable time in our hut. By means of our train-oil

lamps we could keep the temperature in the middle of the room at

about freezing-point. Near the wall, however, it was considerably

colder, and there the damp deposited itself in the shape of beautiful

hoar-frost crystals, so that the stones were quite white; and in happy

moments we could dream that we dwelt in marble halls. This splendor,

however, had its disadvantages, for when the outside temperature rose,

or when we heated up the hut a little, rivulets ran down the wall into

our sleeping-bag. We took turns at being cook, and Tuesday, when one

ended his cooking-week and the other began, afforded on that account

the one variation in our lives, and formed a boundary-mark by which

we divided out our time. We always reckoned up how many cooking-weeks

we had before we should break up our camp in the spring. I had hoped

to get so much done this winter--work up my observations and notes,

and write some of the account of our journey; but very little was

done. It was not only the poor, flickering light of the oil-lamp which

hindered me, nor yet the uncomfortable position--either lying on one's

back, or sitting up and fidgeting about on the hard stones, while the

part of the body thus exposed to pressure ached; but altogether these

surroundings did not predispose one to work. The brain worked dully,

and I never felt inclined to write anything. Perhaps, too, this was

owing to the impossibility of keeping what you wrote upon clean; if

you only took hold of a piece of paper your fingers left a dark-brown,

greasy mark, and if a corner of your clothes brushed across it, a dark

streak appeared. Our journals of this period look dreadful. They are

"black books" in the literal sense of the term. Ah! how we longed for

the time when we should once more be able to write on clean white paper

and with black ink! I often had difficulty in reading the pencil notes

I had written the day before, and now, in writing this book, it is all

I can do to find out what was once written on these dirty, dark-brown

pages. I expose them to all possible lights, I examine them with a

magnifying-glass; but, notwithstanding, I often have to give it up.

The entries in my journal for this time are exceedingly meagre; there

are sometimes weeks when there is nothing but the most necessary

meteorological observations with remarks. The chief reason for this

is that our life was so monotonous that there was nothing to write

about. The same thoughts came and went day after day; there was no

more variety in them than in our conversation. The very emptiness of

the journal really gives the best representation of our life during

the nine months we lived there.

"Wednesday, November 27th. -23° C. (9.4° below zero, Fahr.). It is

windy weather, the snow whirling about your ears, directly you put your

head out of the passage. Everything is gray; the black stones can be

made out in the snow a little way up the beach, and above you can just

divine the presence of the dark cliff; but wherever else the gaze is

turned, out to sea or up the fjord, there is the same leaden darkness;

one is shut out from the wide world, shut into one's self. The wind

comes in sharp gusts, driving the snow before it; but up under the

crest of the mountain it whistles and roars in the crevices and holes

of the basaltic walls--the same never-ending song that it has sung

through the thousands of years that are past, and will go on singing

through thousands of years to come. And the snow whirls along in its

age-old dance; it spreads itself in all the crevices and hollows, but

it does not succeed in covering up the stones on the beach; black as

ever, they project into the night. On the open space in front of the

hut two figures are running up and down like shadows in the winter

darkness to keep themselves warm, and so they will run up and down on

the path they have trampled out, day after day, till the spring comes.

"Sunday, December 1st. Wonderfully beautiful weather for the last few

days; one can never weary of going up and down outside, while the

moon transforms the whole of this ice-world into a fairy-land. The

hut is still in shadow under the mountain which hangs above it, dark

and lowering; but the moonlight floats over ice and fjord, and is

cast back glittering from every snowy ridge and hill. A weird beauty,

without feeling, as though of a dead planet, built of shining white

marble. Just so must the mountains stand there, frozen and icy cold;

just so must the lakes lie congealed beneath their snowy covering; and

now as ever the moon sails silently and slowly on her endless course

through the lifeless space. And everything so still, so awfully still,

with the silence that shall one day reign when the earth again becomes

desolate and empty, when the fox will no more haunt these moraines,

when the bear will no longer wander about on the ice out there, when

even the wind will not rage--infinite silence! In the flaming aurora

borealis the spirit of space hovers over the frozen waters. The soul

bows down before the majesty of night and death.

"Monday, December 2d. Morning. To-day I can hear it blowing again

outside, and we shall have an unpleasant walk. It is bitterly cold now

in our worn, greasy clothes. It is not so bad when there is no wind;

but even if there is only a little it goes right through one. But

what does it matter? Will not the spring one day come here too? Yes;

and over us arches the same heaven now as always, high and calm as

ever; and as we walk up and down here shivering we gaze into the

boundless starry space, and all our privations and sorrows shrink

into nothingness. Starlit night, thou art sublimely beautiful! But

dost thou not lend our spirit too mighty wings, greater than we

can control? Couldst thou but solve the riddle of existence! We

feel ourselves the centre of the universe, and struggle for life,

for immortality--one seeking it here, another hereafter--while

thy silent splendor proclaims: At the command of the Eternal,

you came into existence on a paltry planet, as diminutive links in

the endless chain of transformations; at another command, you will

be wiped out again. Who then, through an eternity of eternities,

will remember that there once was an ephemeral being who could bind

sound and light in chains, and who was purblind enough to spend years

of his brief existence in drifting through frozen seas? Is, then,

the whole thing but the meteor of a moment? Will the whole history

of the world evaporate like a dark, gold-edged cloud in the glow of

evening--achieving nothing, leaving no trace, passing like a caprice?

"Evening. That fox is playing us a great many tricks; whatever he can

move he goes off with. He has once gnawed off the band with which the

door-skin is fastened, and every now and then we hear him at it again,

and have to go out and knock on the roof of the passage. To-day he went

off with one of our sails, in which our salt-water ice was lying. We

were not a little alarmed when we went to fetch ice and found sail and

all gone. We had no doubt as to who had been there, but we could not

under any circumstances afford to lose our precious sail, on which we

depended for our voyage to Spitzbergen in the spring, and we tramped

about in the dark, up the beach, over the level, and down towards the

sea. We looked everywhere, but nothing was to be seen of it. At last

we had almost given it up when Johansen, in going on to the ice to get

more salt-water ice, found it at the edge of the shore. Our joy was

great; but it was wonderful that the fox had been able to drag that

great sail, full of ice too, so far. Down there, however, it had come

unfolded, and then he could do nothing with it. But what does he want

with things like this? Is it to lie upon in his winter den? One would

almost think so. I only wish I could come upon that den, and find

the thermometer again, and the ball of twine, and the harpoon-line,

and all the other precious things he has taken, the brute!

"Thursday, December 5th. It seems as if it would never end. But

patience a little longer, and spring will come, the fairest spring

that earth can give us. There is furious weather outside, and snow,

and it is pleasant to lie here in our warm hut, eating steak, and

listening to the wind raging over us.

"Tuesday, December 10th. It has been a bad wind. Johansen discovered

to-day that his kayak had disappeared. After some search he found

it again several hundred feet off, up the beach; it was a good deal

knocked about, too. The wind must first have lifted it right over my

kayak, and then over one big stone after another. It begins to be

too much of a good thing when even the kayaks take to flying about

in the air. The atmosphere is dark out over the sea, so the wind

has probably broken up the ice, and driven it out, and there is open

water once more. [63]

"Last night it all at once grew wonderfully calm, and the air was

surprisingly mild. It was delightful to be out, and it is long since

we have had such a long walk on our beat. It does one good to stretch

one's legs now and then, otherwise I suppose we should become quite

stiff here in our winter lair. Fancy, only 12° (21 1/2° Fahr.) of

frost in the middle of December! We might almost imagine ourselves

at home--forget that we were in a land of snow to the north of the

eighty-first parallel.

"Thursday, December 12th. Between six and nine this morning there

were a number of shooting-stars, most of them in Serpentarius. Some

came right from the Great Bear; afterwards they chiefly came from the

Bull, or Aldebaran, or the Pleiades. Several of them were very bright,

and some drew a streak of shining dust after them. Lovely weather. But

night and day are now equally dark. We walk up and down, up and down,

on the level, in the darkness. Heaven only knows how many steps we

shall take on that level before the winter ends. Through the gloom

we could see faintly only the black cliffs, and the rocky ridges,

and the great stones on the beach, which the wind always sweeps

clean. Above us the sky, clear and brilliant with stars, sheds its

peace over the earth; far in the west falls shower after shower of

stars, some faint, scarcely visible, others bright like Roman candles,

all with a message from distant worlds. Low in the south lies a bank

of clouds, now and again outlined by the gleam of the northern lights;

but out over the sea the sky is dark; there is open water there. It

is quite pleasant to look at it; one does not feel so shut in; it is

like a connecting link with life, that dark sea, the mighty artery

of the world, which carries tidings from land to land, from people to

people, on which civilization is borne victorious through the earth;

next summer it will carry us home.

"Thursday, December 19th. -28.5°(19.3° below zero, Fahr.). It has

turned cold again, and is bitter weather to be out in. But what does

it signify? We are comfortable and warm in here, and do not need to go

out more than we like. All the out-of-door work we have is to bring in

fresh and salt water ice two or three times a week, meat and blubber

now and again, and very occasionally a skin to dry under the roof. And

Christmas, the season of rejoicing, is drawing near. At home, every one

is busy now, scarcely knowing how to get time for everything; but here

there is no bustle; all we want is to make the time pass. Ah, to sleep,

sleep! The pot is simmering pleasantly over the hearth; I am sitting

waiting for breakfast, and gazing into the flickering flames, while my

thoughts travel far away. What is the strange power in fire and light

that all created beings seek them, from the primary lump of protoplasm

in the sea to the roving child of man, who stops in his wanderings,

makes up a fire in the wood, and sits down to dismiss all care and

revel in the crackling warmth. Involuntarily do these snake-like,

fiery tongues arrest the eye; you gaze down into them as if you could

read your fate there, and memories glide past in motley train. What,

then, is privation? What the present? Forget it, forget yourself;

you have the power to recall all that is beautiful, and then wait for

the summer.... By the light of the lamp she sits sewing in the winter

evening. Beside her stands a little maiden with blue eyes and golden

hair, playing with a doll. She looks tenderly at the child and strokes

her hair; but her eyes fill, and the big tears fall upon her work.

"Johansen is lying beside me asleep; he smiles in his sleep. Poor

fellow! he must be dreaming he is at home at Christmas-time with those

he loves. But sleep on--sleep and dream, while the winter passes;

for then comes spring--the spring of life!

"Sunday, December 22d. Walked about outside for a long time yesterday

evening, while Johansen was having a thorough clearing in the hut in

preparation for Christmas. This consisted chiefly in scraping the

ashes out of the hearth, gathering up the refuse of bone and meat,

and throwing it away, and then breaking up the ice which has frozen

together with all kinds of rubbish and refuse into a thick layer upon

the floor, making the hut rather low in the roof.

"The northern lights were wonderful. However often we see this weird

play of light, we never tire of gazing at it; it seems to cast a spell

over both sight and sense till it is impossible to tear one's self

away. It begins to dawn with a pale, yellow, spectral light behind

the mountain in the east, like the reflection of a fire far away. It

broadens, and soon the whole of the eastern sky is one glowing mass

of fire. Now it fades again, and gathers in a brightly luminous belt

of mist stretching towards the southwest, with only a few patches

of luminous haze visible here and there. After a while scattered

rays suddenly shoot up from the fiery mist, almost reaching to the

zenith; then more; they play over the belt in a wild chase from east

to west. They seem to be always darting nearer from a long, long way

off. But suddenly a perfect veil of rays showers from the zenith out

over the northern sky; they are so fine and bright, like the finest

of glittering silver threads. Is it the fire-giant Surt himself,

striking his mighty silver harp, so that the strings tremble and

sparkle in the glow of the flames of Muspellsheim? Yes, it is harp

music, wildly storming in the darkness; it is the riotous war-dance

of Surt's sons. And again at times it is like softly playing, gently

rocking, silvery waves, on which dreams travel into unknown worlds.

"The winter solstice has come, and the sun is at its lowest; but still

at midday we can just see a faint glimmer of it over the ridges in

the south. Now it is again beginning to mount northward; day by day

it will grow lighter and lighter, and the time will pass rapidly. Oh,

how well I can now understand our forefathers' old custom of holding

an uproarious sacrificial banquet in the middle of winter, when the

power of the winter darkness was broken. We would hold an uproarious

feast here if we had anything to feast with; but we have nothing. What

need is there, either? We shall hold our silent festival in the spirit,

and think of the spring.

"In my walk I look at Jupiter over there above the crest of the

mountain--Jupiter, the planet of the home; it seems to smile at us,

and I recognize my good attendant spirit. Am I superstitious? This

life and this scenery might well make one so; and, in fact, is not

every one superstitious, each in his own way? Have not I a firm belief

in my star, and that we shall meet again? It has scarcely forsaken me

for a day. Death, I believe, can never approach before one's mission

is accomplished--never comes without one feeling its proximity;

and yet a cold fate may one day cut the thread without warning.

"Tuesday, December 24th. At 2 P.M. to-day -24° C. (11.2° below zero,

Fahr.). And this is Christmas-eve--cold and windy out-of-doors, and

cold and draughty indoors. How desolate it is! Never before have we

had such a Christmas-eve.

"At home the bells are now ringing Christmas in. I can hear their

sound as it swings through the air from the church tower. How beautiful

it is!

"Now the candles are being lighted on the Christmas-trees, the

children are let in and dance round in joyous delight. I must have

a Christmas party for children when I get home. This is the time

of rejoicing, and there is feasting in every cottage at home. And

we are keeping the festival in our little way. Johansen has turned

his shirt and put the outside shirt next him; I have done the same,

and then I have changed my drawers, and put on the others that I had

wrung out in warm water. And I have washed myself, too, in a quarter

of a cup of warm water, with the discarded drawers as sponge and

towel. Now I feel quite another being; my clothes do not stick to

my body as much as they did. Then for supper we had 'fiskegratin,'

made of powdered fish and maize-meal, with train-oil to it instead

of butter, both fried and boiled (one as dry as the other), and for

dessert we had bread fried in train-oil. To-morrow morning we are

going to have chocolate and bread." [64]

"Wednesday, December 25th. We have got lovely Christmas weather,

hardly any wind, and such bright, beautiful moonlight. It gives one

quite a solemn feeling. It is the peace of thousands of years. In the

afternoon the northern lights were exceptionally beautiful. When I came

out at 6 o'clock there was a bright, pale-yellow bow in the southern

sky. It remained for a long time almost unchanged, and then began to

grow much brighter at the upper margin of the bow behind the mountain

crests in the east. It smouldered for some time, and then all at once

light darted out westward along the bow; streamers shot up all along

it towards the zenith, and in an instant the whole of the southern

sky from the arc to the zenith was aflame. It flickered and blazed,

it whirled round like a whirlwind (moving with the sun), rays darted

backward and forward, now red and reddish-violet, now yellow, green,

and dazzling white; now the rays were red at the bottom and yellow

and green farther up, and then again this order was inverted. Higher

and higher it rose; now it came on the north side of the zenith too;

for a moment there was a splendid corona, and then it all became one

whirling mass of fire up there; it was like a whirlpool of fire in

red, yellow, and green, and the eye was dazzled with looking at it. It

then drew across to the northern sky, where it remained a long time,

but not in such brilliancy. The arc from which it had sprung in the

south was still visible, but soon disappeared. The movement of the

rays was chiefly from west to east, but sometimes the reverse. It

afterwards flared up brightly several times in the northern sky;

I counted as many as six parallel bands at one time, but they did

not attain to the brightness of the former ones.

"And this is Christmas-day! There are family dinners going on at

home. I can see the dignified old father standing smiling and happy

in the doorway to welcome children and grandchildren. Out-of-doors

the snow is falling softly and silently in big flakes; the young

folk come rushing in fresh and rosy, stamp the snow off their feet in

the passage, shake their things and hang them up, and then enter the

drawing-room, where the fire is crackling comfortably and cozily in

the stove, and they can see the snowflakes falling outside and covering

the Christmas corn-sheaf. A delicious smell of roasting comes from the

kitchen, and in the dining-room the long table is laid for a good,

old-fashioned dinner with good old wine. How nice and comfortable

everything is! One might fall ill with longing to be home. But wait,

wait; when summer comes....

"Oh, the road to the stars is both long and difficult!

"Tuesday, December 31st. And this year too is vanishing. It has been

strange, but, after all, it has perhaps not been so bad.

"They are ringing out the old year now at home. Our church-bell is

the icy wind howling over glacier and snow-field, howling fiercely as

it whirls the drifting snow on high in cloud after cloud, and sweeps

it down upon us from the crest of the mountain up yonder. Far in up

the fjord you can see the clouds of snow chasing one another over the

ice in front of the gusts of wind, and the snow-dust glittering in

the moonlight. And the full moon sails silent and still out of one

year into another. She shines alike upon the good and the evil, nor

does she notice the wants and yearnings of the new year. Solitary,

forsaken, hundreds of miles from all that one holds dear; but the

thoughts flit restlessly to and fro on their silent paths. Once more

a leaf is turned in the book of eternity, a new blank page is opened,

and no one knows what will be written on it."