“‘Warning!!!“‘I think it is my duty to warn the public that a travelling watchmaker has been making the round of this neighborhood lately, getting watches to repair, and not returning them to their owners. How long is this to be allowed to go on under the eyes of the authorities?“‘The watchmaker’s appearance is as follows: Middle height, fair, gray eyes, brown full beard, round shoulders, and generally delicate-looking.“‘A. Juell.11“‘The person above notified was in our office yesterday, asking for work, and we consider it right to add the following particulars as completing the description. He generally goes about with a pack of mongrel curs at his heels; he chews tobacco, and of this his beard shows traces. This is all we have to say, as we did not consider ourselves either entitled or called upon to put him under the microscope.“‘Ed.Framsjaa.’“Yesterday’s observation placed us in 79° 0′ north latitude, 139° 14′ east longitude. At last, then, we have got as far north again as we were in the end of September, and now the northerly drift seems to be steady: 10 minutes in 4 days.“Monday, December 11th. This morning I took a long excursion to westward. It is hard work struggling over the packed ice in the dark, something like scrambling about a moraine of big boulders at night. Once I took a step in the air, fell forward, and bruised my right knee. It is mild to-day, only 9½° below zero (-23° C.). This evening there was a strange appearance of aurora borealis—white, shining clouds, which I thought at first must be lit up by the moon, but there is no moon yet. They were light cumuli, or cirro-cumuli, shifting into a brightly shining mackerel sky. I stood and watched them as long as my thin clothing permitted, but there was no perceptible pulsation, no play of flame; they sailed quietly on. The light seemed to be strongest in the southeast, where there were also dark clouds to be seen. Hansen said that it moved over later into the northern sky; clouds came and went, and for a time there were many white shining ones—‘white as lambs,’ he called them—but no aurora played behind them.“In this day’s meteorological journal I find noted for 4P.M.: ‘Faint aurora borealis in the north. Some distinct branchings or antlers (they are of ribbon crimped like blond) in some diffused patches on the horizon inthe N.N.E.’ In his aurora borealis journal Hansen describes that of this evening as follows: ‘About 8 P.M. an aurora borealis arch of light was observed, stretching from E.S.E. to N.W., through the zenith; diffused quiet intensity 3–4 most intense in N.W. The arch spread at the zenith by a wave to the south. At 10 o’clock there was a fainter aurora borealis in the southern sky; eight minutes later it extended to the zenith, and two minutes after this there was a shining broad arch across the zenith with intensity 6. Twelve seconds later flaming rays shot from the zenith in an easterly direction. During the next half-hour there was constant aurora, chiefly in bands across or near the zenith, or lower in the southern sky. The observation ended about 10.38. The intensity was then 2, the aurora diffused over the southern sky. There were cumulus clouds of varying closeness all the time. They came up in the southeast at the beginning of the observation, and disappeared towards the end of it; they were closest about 10 minutes past 10. At the time that the broad shining arch through the zenith was at its highest intensity the cumulus clouds in the northwest shone quite white, though we were unable to detect any aurora borealis phenomena in this quarter. The reflection of light on the ice-field was pretty strong at the same time. In the aurora borealis the cumulus clouds appeared of a darker color, almost the gray of wool. The colors of the aurora were yellowish, bluish white, milky blue—cold coloring.’ Accordingto the meteorological journal there was still aurora borealis in the southern sky at midnight.“Tuesday, December 12th. Had a long walk southeast this morning. The ice is in much the same condition there as it is to the west, packed or pressed up into mounds, with flat floes between. This evening the dogs suddenly began to make a great commotion on deck. We were all deep in cards, some playing whist, others ‘marriage.’ I had no shoes on, so said that some one else must go up and see what was the matter. Mogstad went. The noise grew worse and worse. Presently Mogstad came down and said that all the dogs that could get at the rail were up on it, barking out into the dark towards the north. He was sure there must be an animal of some sort there, but perhaps it was only a fox, for he thought he had heard the bark of a fox far in the north; but he was not sure. Well,—it must be a devil of a fox to excite the dogs like that. As the disturbance continued, I at last went up myself, followed by Johansen. From different positions we looked long and hard into the darkness in the direction in which the dogs were barking, but we could see nothing moving. That something must be there was quite certain; and I had no doubt that it was a bear, for the dogs were almost beside themselves. ‘Pan’ looked up into my face with an odd expression, as if he had something important to tell me, and then jumped up on the rail and barked away to the north.The dogs’ excitement was quite remarkable; they had not been so keen when the bear was close in to the side of the ship. However, I contented myself with remarking that the thing to do would be to loose some dogs and go north with them over the ice. But these wretched dogs won’t tackle a bear, and besides it is so dark that there is hardly a chance of finding anything. If it is a bear he will come again. At this season, when he is so hungry, he will hardly go right away from all the good food for him here on board. I struck about with my arms to get a little heat into me, then went below and to bed. The dogs went on barking, sometimes louder than before. Nordahl, whose watch it was, went up several times, but could discover no reason for it. As I was lying reading in my berth I heard a peculiar sound; it was like boxes being dragged about on deck, and there was also scraping, like a dog that wanted to get out, scratching violently at a door. I thought of ‘Kvik,’ who was shut up in the chart-room. I called into the saloon to Nordahl that he had better go up again and see what this new noise was. He did so, but came back saying that there was still nothing to be seen. It was difficult to sleep, and I lay long tossing about. Peter came on watch. I told him to go up and turn the air-sail to the wind, to make the ventilation better. He was a good time on deck doing this and other things, but he also could see no reason for the to-do the dogs were still making. He had to go forward, and thennoticed that the three dogs nearest the starboard gangway were missing. He came down and told me, and we agreed that possibly this might be what all the excitement was about; but never before had they taken it so to heart when some of their number had run away. At last I fell asleep, but heard them in my sleep for a long time.Plate VI.Plate VI.At Sunset, 22nd September 1893. Water-Colour Sketch.“Wednesday, December 13th. Before I was rightly awake this morning I heard the dogs ‘at it’ still, and the noise went on all the time of breakfast, and had, I believe, gone on all night. After breakfast Mogstad and Peter went up to feed the wretched creatures and let them loose on the ice. Three were still missing. Peter came down to get a lantern; he thought he might as well look if there were any tracks of animals. Jacobsen called after him that he had better take a gun. No, he did not need one, he said. A little later, as I was sitting sorrowfully absorbed in the calculation of how much petroleum we had used, and how short a time our supply would last if we went on burning it at the same rate, I heard a scream at the top of the companion. ‘Come with a gun!’ In a moment I was in the saloon, and there was Peter tumbling in at the door, breathlessly shouting, ‘A gun! a gun!’ The bear had bitten him in the side. I was thankful that it was no worse. Hearing him put on so much dialect,12I had thoughtit was a matter of life and death. I seized one gun, he another, and up we rushed, the mate with his gun after us. There was not much difficulty in knowing in what direction to turn, for from the rail on the starboard side came confused shouts of human voices, and from the ice below the gangway the sound of a frightful uproar of dogs. I tore out the tow-plug at the muzzle of my rifle, then up with the lever and in with a cartridge; it was a case of hurry. But, hang it! there is a plug in at this end too. I poked and poked, but could not get a grip of it. Peter screamed: ‘Shoot, shoot! Mine won’t go off!’He stood clicking and clicking, his lock full of frozen vaseline again, while the bear lay chewing at a dog just below us at the ship’s side. Beside me stood the mate, groping after a tow-plug which he also had shoved down into his gun, but now he flung the gun angrily away and began to look round the deck for a walrus spear to stick the bear with. Our fourth man, Mogstad, was waving an empty rifle (he had shot away his cartridges), and shouting to some one to shoot the bear. Four men, and not one that could shoot, although we could have prodded the bear’s back with our gun-barrels. Hansen, making a fifth, was lying in the passage to the chart-room, groping with his arm through a chink in the door for cartridges; he could not get the door open because of ‘Kvik’s’ kennel. At last Johansen appeared and sent a ball straight down into the bear’s hide. That did some good. The monster let gothe dog and gave a growl. Another shot flashed and hissed down on the same spot. One more, and we saw the white dog the bear had under him jump up and run off, while the other dogs stood round, barking. Another shot still, for the animal began to stir a little. At this moment my plug came out, and I gave him a last ball through the head to make sure. The dogs had crowded round barking as long as he moved, but now that he lay still in death they drew back terrified. They probably thought it was some new ruse of the enemy. It was a little thin one-year-old bear that had caused all this terrible commotion.“While it was being flayed I went off in a northwesterly direction to look for the dogs that were still missing. I had not gone far when I noticed that the dogs that were following me had caught scent of something to the north and wanted to go that way. Soon they got frightened, and I could not get them to go on; they kept close in to my side or slunk behind me. I held my gun ready, while I crawled on all-fours over the pack-ice, which was anything but level. I kept a steady lookout ahead, but it was not far my eyes could pierce in that darkness. I could only just see the dogs, like black shadows, when they were a few steps away from me. I expected every moment to see a huge form rise among the hummocks ahead, or come rushing towards me. The dogs got more and more cautious; one or two of them sat down, but they probably felt that it would be a shameto let me go on alone, so followed slowly after. Terrible ice to force one’s way over. Crawling along on hands and knees does not put one in a very convenient position to shoot from if the bear should make a sudden rush. But unless he did this, or attacked the dogs, I had no hope of getting him. We now came out on some flat ice. It was only too evident that there must be something quite near now. I went on, and presently saw a dark object on the ice in front of me. It was not unlike an animal. I bent down—it was poor ‘Johansen’s Friend,’ the black dog with the white tip to his tail, in a sad state, and frozen stiff. Beside him was something else dark. I bent down again and found the second of the missing dogs, brother of the corpse-watcher ‘Suggen.’ This one was almost whole, only eaten a little about the head, and it was not frozen quite stiff. There seemed to be blood all round on the ice. I looked about in every direction, but there was nothing more to be seen. The dogs stood at a respectful distance, staring and sniffing in the direction of their dead comrades. Some of us went, not long after this, to fetch the dogs’ carcasses, taking a lantern to look for bear tracks, in case there had been some big fellows along with the little one. We scrambled on among the pack-ice. ‘Come this way with the lantern, Bentzen; I think I see tracks here.’ Bentzen came, and we turned the light on some indentations in the snow; they were bear-paw marks, sure enough, but only the same littlefellow’s. ‘Look! the brute has been dragging a dog after him here.’ By the light of the lantern we traced the blood-marked path on among the hummocks. We found the dead dogs, but no footprints except small ones, which we all thought must be those of our little bear. ‘Svarten,’ alias ‘Johansen’s Friend,’ looked bad in the lantern-light. Flesh and skin and entrails were gone; there was nothing to be seen but a bare breast and back-bone, with some stumps of ribs. It was a pity that the fine strong dog should come to such an end. He had just one fault: he was rather bad-tempered. He had a special dislike to Johansen; barked and showed his teeth whenever he came on deck or even opened a door, and when he sat whistling in the top or in the crow’s-nest these dark winter days the ‘Friend’ would answer with a howl of rage from far out on the ice. Johansen bent down with the lantern to look at the remains.“‘Are you glad, Johansen, that your enemy is done for?’“‘No, I am sorry.’“‘Why?’“‘Because we did not make it up before he died.’“And we went on to look for more bear-tracks, but found none; so we took the dead dogs on our backs and turned homeward.“On the way I asked Peter what had really happened with him and the bear. ‘Well, you see,’ said he, ‘when I came along with the lantern we saw a few drops ofblood by the gangway; but that might quite well have been a dog that had cut itself. On the ice below the gangway we saw some bear-tracks, and we started away west, the whole pack of dogs with us, running on far ahead. When we had got away a bit from the ship, there was suddenly an awful row in front, and it wasn’t long before a great beast came rushing at us, with the whole troop of dogs around it. As soon as we saw what it was, we turned and ran our best for the ship. Mogstad, you see, had moccasins (komager) on, and knew his way better and got there before me. I couldn’t get along so fast with my great wooden shoes, and in my confusion I got right on to the big hummock to the west of the ship’s bow, you know. I turned here and lighted back to see if the bear was behind me, but I saw nothing and pushed on again, and in a minute these slippery wooden shoes had me flat on my back among the hummocks. I was up again quick enough; but when I got down on to the flat ice close to the ship I saw something coming straight for me on the right-hand side. First I thought it was a dog—it’s not so easy to see in the dark, you know. I had no time for a second thought, for the beast jumped on me and bit me in the side. I had lifted my arm like this, you see, and so he caught me here, right on the hip. He growled and hissed as he bit.’“‘What did you think then, Peter?’“‘What did I think? I thought it was all up with me. What was I to do? I had neither gun nor knife.But I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it that the thing broke, and went flying away over the ice. The moment he felt the blow he sat down and looked at me. I was just taking to my heels when he got up; I don’t know whether it was to grip me again or what it was for, but anyhow at that minute he caught sight of a dog coming and set off after it, and I got on board.’“‘I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it’”“‘I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it’”(Drawn by H. Egidius)“‘Did you scream, Peter?’“‘Scream! I screamed with all my might.’“And apparently this was true, for he was quite hoarse.“‘But where was Mogstad all this time?’“‘Well, you see, he had reached the ship long before me, but he never thought of running down and giving the alarm, but takes his gun from the round-house wall and thinks he’ll manage all right alone; but his gun wouldn’t go off, and the bear would have had time to eat me up before his nose.’“We were now near the ship, and Mogstad, who had heard the last part of the story from the deck, corrected it in so far that he had just reached the gangway when Peter began to roar. He jumped up and fell back three times before he got on board, and had no time to do anything then but seize his gun and go to Peter’s assistance.“When the bear left Peter and rushed after the dogs he soon had the whole pack about him again. Now he would make a spring and get one below him; but then all the rest would set upon him and jump on his back, so that he had to turn to defend himself. Then he would spring upon another dog, and the whole pack would be on him again. And so the dance went on, backward and forward over the ice, until they were once more close to the ship. A dog stood there, below the gangway, wanting to get on board; the bear made a spring on it, and it was there, by the ship’s side, that the villain met his fate.“An examination on board showed that the hook of ‘Svarten’s’ leash was pulled out quite straight; ‘Gammelen’s’ was broken through; but the third dog’s was only wrenched a little; it hardly looked as if the bear had done it. I had a slight hope that this dog might still be in life, but, though we searched well, we could not find it.“It was altogether a deplorable story. To think that we should have let a bear scramble on board like this, and should have lost three dogs at once! Our dogs are dwindling down; we have only 26 now. That was a wily demon of a bear, to be such a little one. He had crawled on board by the gangway, shoved away a box that was standing in front of it, taken the dog that stood nearest, and gone off with it. When he had satisfied the first pangs of his hunger, he had come back and fetched No. 2, and, if he had been allowed, he would have continued the performance until the deck was cleared of dogs. Then he would probably have come bumping down-stairs ‘and beckoned with cold hand’ in at the galley door to Juell. It must have been a pleasant feeling for ‘Svarten’ to stand there in the dark and see the bear come creeping in upon him.“When I went below after this bear affair, Juell said as I passed the galley door, ‘You’ll see that “Kvik” will have her pups to-day; for it’s always the way here on board, that things happen together.’ And, sure enough, when we were sitting in the saloon in the evening, Mogstad,who generally plays ‘master of the hounds,’ came and announced the arrival of the first. Soon there was another, and then one more. This news was a little balsam to our wounds. ‘Kvik’ has got a good warm box, lined with fur, up in the passage on the starboard; it is so warm there that she is lying sweating, and we hope that the young ones will live, in spite of 54 degrees of frost. It seems this evening as if every one had some hesitation in going out on the ice unarmed. Our bayonet-knives have been brought out, and I am providing myself with one. I must say that I felt quite certain that we should find no bears as far north as this in the middle of winter; and it never occurred to me, in making long excursions on the ice without so much as a penknife in my pocket, that I was liable to encounters with them. But, after Peter’s experience, it seems as if it might be as well to have, at any rate, a lantern to hit them with. The long bayonet-knife shall accompany me henceforth.“They often chaffed Peter afterwards about having screamed so horribly when the bear seized him. ‘H’m! I wonder,’ said he, ‘if there aren’t others that would have screeched just as loud. I had to yell after the fellows that were so afraid of frightening the bear that when they ran they covered seven yards at each stride.’“Thursday, December 14th. ‘Well, Mogstad, how many pups have you now?’ I asked at breakfast. ‘There are five now.’ But soon after he came down to tell me that there were at least twelve. Gracious! thatis good value for what we have lost. But we were almost as pleased when Johansen came down and said that he heard the missing dog howling on the ice far away to the northwest. Several of us went up to listen, and we could all hear him quite well; but it sounded as if he were sitting still, howling in despair. Perhaps he was at an opening in the ice that he could not get across. Blessing had also heard him during his night-watch, but then the sound had come more from a southwesterly direction. When Peter went after breakfast to feed the dogs, there was the lost one, standing below the gangway wanting to get on board. Hungry he was—he dashed straight into the food-dish—but otherwise hale and hearty.“This evening Peter came and said that he was certain he had heard a bear moving about and pawing the ice; he and Pettersen had stood and listened to him scraping at the snow crust. I put on my ‘pesk’ (a fur blouse), got hold of my double-barrelled rifle, and went on deck. The whole crew were collected aft, gazing out into the night. We let loose ‘Ulenka’ and ‘Pan,’ and went in the direction where the bear was said to be. It was pitch-dark, but the dogs would find the tracks if there was anything there. Hansen thought he had seen something moving about the hummock near the ship, but we found and heard nothing, and, as several of the others had by this time come out on the ice and could also discover nothing, we scrambled on board again. Itis extraordinary all the sounds that one can fancy one hears out on that great, still space, mysteriously lighted by the twinkling stars.“Friday, December 15th. This morning Peter saw a fox on the ice astern, and he saw it again later, when he was out with the dogs. There is something remarkable about this appearance of bears and foxes now, after our seeing no life for so long. The last time we saw a fox we were far south of this, possibly near Sannikoff Land. Can we have come into the neighborhood of land again?“I inspected ‘Kvik’s’ pups in the afternoon. There were thirteen, a curious coincidence—thirteen pups on December 13th, for thirteen men. Five were killed; ‘Kvik’ can manage eight, but more would be bad for her. Poor mother! she was very anxious about her young ones—wanted to jump up into the box beside them and take them from us. And you can see that she is very proud of them.“Peter came this evening and said that there must be a ghost on the ice, for he heard exactly the same sounds of walking and pawing as yesterday evening. This seems to be a populous region, after all.“According to an observation taken on Tuesday we must be pretty nearly in 79° 8′ north latitude. That was 8 minutes’ drift in the three days from Saturday; we are getting on better and better.A nocturnal visitantA nocturnal visitant(By H. Egidius, from a Photograph)“Why will it not snow? Christmas is near, and whatis Christmas without snow, thickly falling snow? We have not had one snowfall all the time we have been drifting. The hard grains that come down now and again are nothing. Oh the beautiful white snow, falling so gently and silently, softening every hard outline with its sheltering purity! There is nothing more deliciously restful, soft, and white. This snowless ice-plain is like a life without love—nothing to soften it. The marks of all the battles and pressures of the ice stand forth just as when they were made, rugged and difficult to moveamong. Love is life’s snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight—whiter and purer than snow itself. What is life without love? It is like this ice—a cold, bare, rugged mass, the wind driving it and rending it and then forcing it together again, nothing to cover over the open rifts, nothing to break the violence of the collisions, nothing to round away the sharp corners of the broken floes—nothing, nothing but bare, rugged drift-ice.“Saturday, December 16th. In the afternoon Peter came quietly into the saloon, and said that he heard all sorts of noises on the ice. There was a sound to the north exactly like that of ice packing against land, and then suddenly there was such a roar through the air that the dogs started up and barked. Poor Peter! They laugh at him when he comes down to give an account of his many observations; but there is not one among us as sharp as he is.“Wednesday, December 20th. As I was sitting at breakfast, Peter came roaring that he believed he had seen a bear on the ice, ‘and that “Pan” set off the moment he was loosed.’ I rushed on to the ice with my gun. Several men were to be seen in the moonlight, but no bear. It was long before ‘Pan’ came back; he had followed him far to the northwest.“Sverdrup and ‘Smith Lars’ in partnership have made a great bear-trap, which was put out on the ice to-day. As I was afraid of more dogs than bears being caught init, it was hung from a gallows, too high for the dogs to jump up to the piece of blubber which hangs as bait right in the mouth of the trap. All the dogs spend the evening now sitting on the rail barking at this new man they see out there on the ice in the moonlight.“Thursday, December 21st. It is extraordinary, after all, how the time passes. Here we are at the shortest day, thoughwehave no day. But now we are moving on to light and summer again. We tried to sound to-day; had out 2100 metres (over 1100 fathoms) of line without reaching the bottom. We have no more line; what is to be done? Who could have guessed that we should find such deep water? There has been an arch of light in the sky all day, opposite the moon; so it is a lunar rainbow, but without color, so far as I have been able to see.Sverdrup’s bear-trap (moonlight). December 20, 1893Sverdrup’s bear-trap (moonlight). December 20, 1893(From a photograph)“Friday, December 22d. A bear was shot last night. Jacobsen saw it first, during his watch. He shot at it. It made off; and he then went down and told about it in the cabin. Mogstad and Peter came on deck; Sverdrup was called, too, and came up a little later. They saw the bear on his way towards the ship again; but he suddenly caught sight of the gallows with the trap on the ice to the west, and went off there. He looked well at the apparatus, then raised himself cautiously on his hind-legs, and laid his right paw on the cross-beam just beside the trap, stared for a little, hesitating, at the delicious morsel, but did not at all like the ugly jawsround it. Sverdrup was by this time out at the deck-house, watching in the sparkling moonshine. His heart was jumping—he expected every moment to hear the snap of his trap. But the bear shook his head suspiciously, lowered himself cautiously on to all-fours again, and sniffed carefully at the wire that the trap was fastened by, following it along to where it was made fast to a great block of ice. He went round this, and sawhow cleverly it was all arranged, then slowly followed the wire back, raised himself up as before, with his paw on the beam of the gallows, had a long look at the trap, and shook his head again, probably saying to himself, ‘These wily fellows have planned this very cleverly for me.’ Now he resumed his march to the ship. When he was within 60 paces of the bow Peter fired. The bear fell, but jumped up and again made off. Jacobsen, Sverdrup, and Mogstad all fired now, and he fell among some hummocks. He was flayed at once, and in the skin there was only the hole of one ball, which had gone through him from behind the shoulder-blade. Peter, Jacobsen, and Mogstad all claimed this ball. Sverdrup gave up his claim, as he had stood so far astern. Mogstad, seeing the bear fall directly after his shot, called out, ‘I gave him that one’; Jacobsen swears that it was he that hit; and Bentzen, who was standing looking on, is prepared to take his oath anywhere that it was Peter’s ball that did the deed. The dispute upon this weighty point remained unsettled during the whole course of the expedition.“He stared, hesitating, at the delicious morsel”“He stared, hesitating, at the delicious morsel”(Drawn by H. Egidius)“Beautiful moonlight. Pressure in several directions. To-day we carried our supply of gun-cotton and cannon and rifle powder on deck. It is safer there than in the hold. In case of fire or other accident, an explosion in the hold might blow the ship’s sides out and send us to the bottom before we had time to turn round. Some we put on the forecastle, some on the bridge.From these places it would be quickly thrown on to the ice.“Saturday, December 23d. What we call in Norway ‘Little Christmas-eve.’ I went a long way west this morning, coming home late. There was packed up ice everywhere, with flat floes between. I was turned by a newly formed opening in the ice, which I dared not cross on the thin layer of fresh ice. In the afternoon, as a first Christmas entertainment, we tried an ice-blasting with four prisms of gun-cotton. A hole was made with one of the large iron drills we had brought with us for this purpose, and the charge, with the end of the electric connecting wire, was sunk about a foot below the surface of the ice. Then all retired, the knob was touched, there was a dull crash, and water and pieces of ice were shot up into the air. Although it was 60 yards off, it gave the ship a good jerk that shook everything on board, and brought the hoar-frost down from the rigging. The explosion blew a hole through the four-feet-thick ice, but its only other effect was to make small cracks round this hole.“Sunday, December 24th (Christmas-eve), 67 degrees of cold (-37° C.). Glittering moonlight and the endless stillness of the Arctic night. I took a solitary stroll over the ice. The first Christmas-eve, and how far away! The observation shows us to be in 79° 11′ north latitude. There is no drift. Two minutes farther south than six days ago.”I.—Promenade in times of peace with Sverdrup’s patent foot-gearI.—Promenade in times of peace with Sverdrup’s patent foot-gear(From the “Framsjaa”)There are no further particulars given of this day in the diary; but when I think of it, how clearly it all comes back to me! There was a peculiar elevation of mood on board that was not at all common among us. Every man’s inmost thoughts were with those at home; but his comrades were not to know that, and so there was more joking and laughing than usual. All the lamps and lights we had on board were lit, and every corner of the saloon and cabins was brilliantly illuminated. The bill of fare for the day, of course, surpassed any previous one—food was the chief thing we had to hold festival with. The dinner was a very fine one indeed; so was the supper, and after it piles of Christmas cakes came on the table; Juell had been busy making them for several weeks. After that we enjoyed a glass of toddy and a cigar, smoking in the saloon being, of course, allowed. The culminating point of the festival came when two boxes with Christmas presents were produced. The one was from Hansen’s mother, the other from hisfiancée—Miss Fougner. It was touching to see the childlike pleasure with which each man received his gift—it might be a pipe or a knife or some little knickknack—he felt that it was like a message from home. After this there were speeches; and then theFramsjaaappeared, with an illustrated supplement, selections from which are given. The drawings are the work of the famous Arctic draughtsman, Huttetu. Here are two verses from the poem for the day:“When the ship’s path is stopped by fathom-thick ice,And winter’s white covering is spread,When we’re quite given up to the power of the stream,Oh! ’tis then that so often of home we must dream.“We wish them all joy at this sweet Christmas-tide,Health and happiness for the next year,Ourselves patience to wait; ’twill bring us to the Pole,And home the next spring, never fear!”There were many more poems, among others one giving some account of the principal events of the last weeks, in this style:“Bears are seen, and dogs are born,Cakes are baked, both small and large;Henriksen, he does not fall,Spite of bear’s most violent charge;Mogstad with his rifle clicks,Jacobsen with long lance sticks,”II.—“Fram” fellows on the war-path: difference between the Sverdrup and the Lapp foot-gearII.—“Fram” fellows on the war-path: difference between the Sverdrup and the Lapp foot-gear(From the “Framsjaa”)and so on. There was a long ditty on the subject of the “Dog Rape on board theFram:”“Up and down on a night so cold,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Walk harpooner and kennelman bold,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Our kennelman swings, I need hardly tell,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,The long, long lash you know so well,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Our harpooner, he is a man of light,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,A burning lantern he grasps tight,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,They as they walk the time beguile,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,With tales of bears and all their wile,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom.“Now suddenly a bear they see,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Before whom all the dogs do flee,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Kennelman, like a deer, runs fast,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Harpooner slow comes in the last,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,”and so on.III.—“Fram” fellows still on the war-pathIII.—“Fram” fellows still on the war-path(From the “Framsjaa”)Among the announcements are—“Instruction in Fencing.“In consequence of the indefinite postponement of our departure, a limited number of pupils can be received for instruction in both fencing and boxing.“Majakoft,“Teacher of Boxing,“Next door to the Doctor’s.”Again—“On account of want of storage room, a quantity of old clothes are atpresent for sale, by private arrangement, at No. 2 Pump Lane.13Repeated requests to remove them having been of no effect, I am obliged to dispose of them in this way. The clothes are quite fresh, having been in salt for a long time.”After the reading of the newspaper came instrumental music and singing, and it was far on in the night before we sought our berths.“Monday, December 25th (Christmas-day). Thermometer at 36° Fahr. below zero (-38° C.). I took a walk south in the beautiful light of the full moon. At a newly made crack I went through the fresh ice with one leg and got soaked; but such an accident matters very little in this frost. The water immediately stiffens into ice; it does not make one very cold, and one feels dry again soon.“They will be thinking much of us just now at home and giving many a pitying sigh over all the hardships we are enduring in this cold, cheerless, icy region. But I am afraid their compassion would cool if they could look in upon us, hear the merriment that goes on, and see all our comforts and good cheer. They can hardly be better off at home. I myself have certainly never lived a more sybaritic life, and have never had more reason to fear the consequences it brings in its train. Just listen to to-day’s dinner menu:1. Ox-tail soup;2. Fish-pudding, with potatoes and melted butter;3. Roast of reindeer, with pease, French beans, potatoes, and cranberry jam;4. Cloudberries with cream;5. Cake and marchpane (a welcome present from the baker to the expedition; we blessed that man).And along with all this that Ringnes bock-beer which is so famous in our part of the world. Was this the sort of dinner for men who are to be hardened against the horrors of the Arctic night?“Every one had eaten so much that supper had to be skipped altogether. Later in the evening coffee was served, with pineapple preserve, gingerbread, vanilla-cakes, cocoanut macaroons, and various other cakes, all the work of our excellent cook, Juell; and we ended up with figs, almonds, and raisins.“Now let us have the breakfast, just to complete the day: coffee, freshly baked bread, beautiful Danish butter, Christmas cake, Cheddar cheese, clove-cheese, tongue, corned-beef, and marmalade. And if any one thinks that this is a specially good breakfast because it is Christmas-day he is wrong. It is just what we have always, with the addition of the cake, which is not part of the every-day diet.“Add now to this good cheer our strongly built, safe house, our comfortable saloon, lighted up with the large petroleum lamp and several smaller ones (when we have no electric light), constant gayety, card-playing, and books in any quantity, with or without illustrations, good and entertaining reading, and then a good, sound sleep—what more could one wish?“ ... But, O Arctic night, thou art like a woman, a marvellously lovely woman. Thine are the noble, pure outlines of antique beauty, with its marble coldness. On thy high, smooth brow, clear with the clearness of ether, is no trace of compassion for the little sufferings of despised humanity; on thy pale, beautiful cheek no blush of feeling. Among thy raven locks, waving out into space, the hoar-frost has sprinkled its glittering crystals. The proud lines of thy throat, thy shoulders’ curves, are so noble, but, oh! unbendingly cold; thy bosom’s white chastity is feelingless as the snowy ice. Chaste, beautiful, and proud, thou floatest through ether over the frozen sea, thy glittering garment, woven of aurora beams, covering the vault of heaven. But sometimes I divine a twitch of pain on thy lips, and endless sadness dreams in thy dark eye.“Oh, how tired I am of thy cold beauty! I long to return to life. Let me get home again, as conqueror or as beggar; what does that matter? But let me get home to begin life anew. The years are passing here, and what do they bring? Nothing but dust, dry dust, which the first wind blows away; new dust comes in its place, and the next wind takes it too. Truth? Why should we always make so much of truth? Life is more than cold truth, and we live but once.
“‘Warning!!!“‘I think it is my duty to warn the public that a travelling watchmaker has been making the round of this neighborhood lately, getting watches to repair, and not returning them to their owners. How long is this to be allowed to go on under the eyes of the authorities?“‘The watchmaker’s appearance is as follows: Middle height, fair, gray eyes, brown full beard, round shoulders, and generally delicate-looking.“‘A. Juell.11“‘The person above notified was in our office yesterday, asking for work, and we consider it right to add the following particulars as completing the description. He generally goes about with a pack of mongrel curs at his heels; he chews tobacco, and of this his beard shows traces. This is all we have to say, as we did not consider ourselves either entitled or called upon to put him under the microscope.“‘Ed.Framsjaa.’“Yesterday’s observation placed us in 79° 0′ north latitude, 139° 14′ east longitude. At last, then, we have got as far north again as we were in the end of September, and now the northerly drift seems to be steady: 10 minutes in 4 days.“Monday, December 11th. This morning I took a long excursion to westward. It is hard work struggling over the packed ice in the dark, something like scrambling about a moraine of big boulders at night. Once I took a step in the air, fell forward, and bruised my right knee. It is mild to-day, only 9½° below zero (-23° C.). This evening there was a strange appearance of aurora borealis—white, shining clouds, which I thought at first must be lit up by the moon, but there is no moon yet. They were light cumuli, or cirro-cumuli, shifting into a brightly shining mackerel sky. I stood and watched them as long as my thin clothing permitted, but there was no perceptible pulsation, no play of flame; they sailed quietly on. The light seemed to be strongest in the southeast, where there were also dark clouds to be seen. Hansen said that it moved over later into the northern sky; clouds came and went, and for a time there were many white shining ones—‘white as lambs,’ he called them—but no aurora played behind them.“In this day’s meteorological journal I find noted for 4P.M.: ‘Faint aurora borealis in the north. Some distinct branchings or antlers (they are of ribbon crimped like blond) in some diffused patches on the horizon inthe N.N.E.’ In his aurora borealis journal Hansen describes that of this evening as follows: ‘About 8 P.M. an aurora borealis arch of light was observed, stretching from E.S.E. to N.W., through the zenith; diffused quiet intensity 3–4 most intense in N.W. The arch spread at the zenith by a wave to the south. At 10 o’clock there was a fainter aurora borealis in the southern sky; eight minutes later it extended to the zenith, and two minutes after this there was a shining broad arch across the zenith with intensity 6. Twelve seconds later flaming rays shot from the zenith in an easterly direction. During the next half-hour there was constant aurora, chiefly in bands across or near the zenith, or lower in the southern sky. The observation ended about 10.38. The intensity was then 2, the aurora diffused over the southern sky. There were cumulus clouds of varying closeness all the time. They came up in the southeast at the beginning of the observation, and disappeared towards the end of it; they were closest about 10 minutes past 10. At the time that the broad shining arch through the zenith was at its highest intensity the cumulus clouds in the northwest shone quite white, though we were unable to detect any aurora borealis phenomena in this quarter. The reflection of light on the ice-field was pretty strong at the same time. In the aurora borealis the cumulus clouds appeared of a darker color, almost the gray of wool. The colors of the aurora were yellowish, bluish white, milky blue—cold coloring.’ Accordingto the meteorological journal there was still aurora borealis in the southern sky at midnight.“Tuesday, December 12th. Had a long walk southeast this morning. The ice is in much the same condition there as it is to the west, packed or pressed up into mounds, with flat floes between. This evening the dogs suddenly began to make a great commotion on deck. We were all deep in cards, some playing whist, others ‘marriage.’ I had no shoes on, so said that some one else must go up and see what was the matter. Mogstad went. The noise grew worse and worse. Presently Mogstad came down and said that all the dogs that could get at the rail were up on it, barking out into the dark towards the north. He was sure there must be an animal of some sort there, but perhaps it was only a fox, for he thought he had heard the bark of a fox far in the north; but he was not sure. Well,—it must be a devil of a fox to excite the dogs like that. As the disturbance continued, I at last went up myself, followed by Johansen. From different positions we looked long and hard into the darkness in the direction in which the dogs were barking, but we could see nothing moving. That something must be there was quite certain; and I had no doubt that it was a bear, for the dogs were almost beside themselves. ‘Pan’ looked up into my face with an odd expression, as if he had something important to tell me, and then jumped up on the rail and barked away to the north.The dogs’ excitement was quite remarkable; they had not been so keen when the bear was close in to the side of the ship. However, I contented myself with remarking that the thing to do would be to loose some dogs and go north with them over the ice. But these wretched dogs won’t tackle a bear, and besides it is so dark that there is hardly a chance of finding anything. If it is a bear he will come again. At this season, when he is so hungry, he will hardly go right away from all the good food for him here on board. I struck about with my arms to get a little heat into me, then went below and to bed. The dogs went on barking, sometimes louder than before. Nordahl, whose watch it was, went up several times, but could discover no reason for it. As I was lying reading in my berth I heard a peculiar sound; it was like boxes being dragged about on deck, and there was also scraping, like a dog that wanted to get out, scratching violently at a door. I thought of ‘Kvik,’ who was shut up in the chart-room. I called into the saloon to Nordahl that he had better go up again and see what this new noise was. He did so, but came back saying that there was still nothing to be seen. It was difficult to sleep, and I lay long tossing about. Peter came on watch. I told him to go up and turn the air-sail to the wind, to make the ventilation better. He was a good time on deck doing this and other things, but he also could see no reason for the to-do the dogs were still making. He had to go forward, and thennoticed that the three dogs nearest the starboard gangway were missing. He came down and told me, and we agreed that possibly this might be what all the excitement was about; but never before had they taken it so to heart when some of their number had run away. At last I fell asleep, but heard them in my sleep for a long time.Plate VI.Plate VI.At Sunset, 22nd September 1893. Water-Colour Sketch.“Wednesday, December 13th. Before I was rightly awake this morning I heard the dogs ‘at it’ still, and the noise went on all the time of breakfast, and had, I believe, gone on all night. After breakfast Mogstad and Peter went up to feed the wretched creatures and let them loose on the ice. Three were still missing. Peter came down to get a lantern; he thought he might as well look if there were any tracks of animals. Jacobsen called after him that he had better take a gun. No, he did not need one, he said. A little later, as I was sitting sorrowfully absorbed in the calculation of how much petroleum we had used, and how short a time our supply would last if we went on burning it at the same rate, I heard a scream at the top of the companion. ‘Come with a gun!’ In a moment I was in the saloon, and there was Peter tumbling in at the door, breathlessly shouting, ‘A gun! a gun!’ The bear had bitten him in the side. I was thankful that it was no worse. Hearing him put on so much dialect,12I had thoughtit was a matter of life and death. I seized one gun, he another, and up we rushed, the mate with his gun after us. There was not much difficulty in knowing in what direction to turn, for from the rail on the starboard side came confused shouts of human voices, and from the ice below the gangway the sound of a frightful uproar of dogs. I tore out the tow-plug at the muzzle of my rifle, then up with the lever and in with a cartridge; it was a case of hurry. But, hang it! there is a plug in at this end too. I poked and poked, but could not get a grip of it. Peter screamed: ‘Shoot, shoot! Mine won’t go off!’He stood clicking and clicking, his lock full of frozen vaseline again, while the bear lay chewing at a dog just below us at the ship’s side. Beside me stood the mate, groping after a tow-plug which he also had shoved down into his gun, but now he flung the gun angrily away and began to look round the deck for a walrus spear to stick the bear with. Our fourth man, Mogstad, was waving an empty rifle (he had shot away his cartridges), and shouting to some one to shoot the bear. Four men, and not one that could shoot, although we could have prodded the bear’s back with our gun-barrels. Hansen, making a fifth, was lying in the passage to the chart-room, groping with his arm through a chink in the door for cartridges; he could not get the door open because of ‘Kvik’s’ kennel. At last Johansen appeared and sent a ball straight down into the bear’s hide. That did some good. The monster let gothe dog and gave a growl. Another shot flashed and hissed down on the same spot. One more, and we saw the white dog the bear had under him jump up and run off, while the other dogs stood round, barking. Another shot still, for the animal began to stir a little. At this moment my plug came out, and I gave him a last ball through the head to make sure. The dogs had crowded round barking as long as he moved, but now that he lay still in death they drew back terrified. They probably thought it was some new ruse of the enemy. It was a little thin one-year-old bear that had caused all this terrible commotion.“While it was being flayed I went off in a northwesterly direction to look for the dogs that were still missing. I had not gone far when I noticed that the dogs that were following me had caught scent of something to the north and wanted to go that way. Soon they got frightened, and I could not get them to go on; they kept close in to my side or slunk behind me. I held my gun ready, while I crawled on all-fours over the pack-ice, which was anything but level. I kept a steady lookout ahead, but it was not far my eyes could pierce in that darkness. I could only just see the dogs, like black shadows, when they were a few steps away from me. I expected every moment to see a huge form rise among the hummocks ahead, or come rushing towards me. The dogs got more and more cautious; one or two of them sat down, but they probably felt that it would be a shameto let me go on alone, so followed slowly after. Terrible ice to force one’s way over. Crawling along on hands and knees does not put one in a very convenient position to shoot from if the bear should make a sudden rush. But unless he did this, or attacked the dogs, I had no hope of getting him. We now came out on some flat ice. It was only too evident that there must be something quite near now. I went on, and presently saw a dark object on the ice in front of me. It was not unlike an animal. I bent down—it was poor ‘Johansen’s Friend,’ the black dog with the white tip to his tail, in a sad state, and frozen stiff. Beside him was something else dark. I bent down again and found the second of the missing dogs, brother of the corpse-watcher ‘Suggen.’ This one was almost whole, only eaten a little about the head, and it was not frozen quite stiff. There seemed to be blood all round on the ice. I looked about in every direction, but there was nothing more to be seen. The dogs stood at a respectful distance, staring and sniffing in the direction of their dead comrades. Some of us went, not long after this, to fetch the dogs’ carcasses, taking a lantern to look for bear tracks, in case there had been some big fellows along with the little one. We scrambled on among the pack-ice. ‘Come this way with the lantern, Bentzen; I think I see tracks here.’ Bentzen came, and we turned the light on some indentations in the snow; they were bear-paw marks, sure enough, but only the same littlefellow’s. ‘Look! the brute has been dragging a dog after him here.’ By the light of the lantern we traced the blood-marked path on among the hummocks. We found the dead dogs, but no footprints except small ones, which we all thought must be those of our little bear. ‘Svarten,’ alias ‘Johansen’s Friend,’ looked bad in the lantern-light. Flesh and skin and entrails were gone; there was nothing to be seen but a bare breast and back-bone, with some stumps of ribs. It was a pity that the fine strong dog should come to such an end. He had just one fault: he was rather bad-tempered. He had a special dislike to Johansen; barked and showed his teeth whenever he came on deck or even opened a door, and when he sat whistling in the top or in the crow’s-nest these dark winter days the ‘Friend’ would answer with a howl of rage from far out on the ice. Johansen bent down with the lantern to look at the remains.“‘Are you glad, Johansen, that your enemy is done for?’“‘No, I am sorry.’“‘Why?’“‘Because we did not make it up before he died.’“And we went on to look for more bear-tracks, but found none; so we took the dead dogs on our backs and turned homeward.“On the way I asked Peter what had really happened with him and the bear. ‘Well, you see,’ said he, ‘when I came along with the lantern we saw a few drops ofblood by the gangway; but that might quite well have been a dog that had cut itself. On the ice below the gangway we saw some bear-tracks, and we started away west, the whole pack of dogs with us, running on far ahead. When we had got away a bit from the ship, there was suddenly an awful row in front, and it wasn’t long before a great beast came rushing at us, with the whole troop of dogs around it. As soon as we saw what it was, we turned and ran our best for the ship. Mogstad, you see, had moccasins (komager) on, and knew his way better and got there before me. I couldn’t get along so fast with my great wooden shoes, and in my confusion I got right on to the big hummock to the west of the ship’s bow, you know. I turned here and lighted back to see if the bear was behind me, but I saw nothing and pushed on again, and in a minute these slippery wooden shoes had me flat on my back among the hummocks. I was up again quick enough; but when I got down on to the flat ice close to the ship I saw something coming straight for me on the right-hand side. First I thought it was a dog—it’s not so easy to see in the dark, you know. I had no time for a second thought, for the beast jumped on me and bit me in the side. I had lifted my arm like this, you see, and so he caught me here, right on the hip. He growled and hissed as he bit.’“‘What did you think then, Peter?’“‘What did I think? I thought it was all up with me. What was I to do? I had neither gun nor knife.But I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it that the thing broke, and went flying away over the ice. The moment he felt the blow he sat down and looked at me. I was just taking to my heels when he got up; I don’t know whether it was to grip me again or what it was for, but anyhow at that minute he caught sight of a dog coming and set off after it, and I got on board.’“‘I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it’”“‘I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it’”(Drawn by H. Egidius)“‘Did you scream, Peter?’“‘Scream! I screamed with all my might.’“And apparently this was true, for he was quite hoarse.“‘But where was Mogstad all this time?’“‘Well, you see, he had reached the ship long before me, but he never thought of running down and giving the alarm, but takes his gun from the round-house wall and thinks he’ll manage all right alone; but his gun wouldn’t go off, and the bear would have had time to eat me up before his nose.’“We were now near the ship, and Mogstad, who had heard the last part of the story from the deck, corrected it in so far that he had just reached the gangway when Peter began to roar. He jumped up and fell back three times before he got on board, and had no time to do anything then but seize his gun and go to Peter’s assistance.“When the bear left Peter and rushed after the dogs he soon had the whole pack about him again. Now he would make a spring and get one below him; but then all the rest would set upon him and jump on his back, so that he had to turn to defend himself. Then he would spring upon another dog, and the whole pack would be on him again. And so the dance went on, backward and forward over the ice, until they were once more close to the ship. A dog stood there, below the gangway, wanting to get on board; the bear made a spring on it, and it was there, by the ship’s side, that the villain met his fate.“An examination on board showed that the hook of ‘Svarten’s’ leash was pulled out quite straight; ‘Gammelen’s’ was broken through; but the third dog’s was only wrenched a little; it hardly looked as if the bear had done it. I had a slight hope that this dog might still be in life, but, though we searched well, we could not find it.“It was altogether a deplorable story. To think that we should have let a bear scramble on board like this, and should have lost three dogs at once! Our dogs are dwindling down; we have only 26 now. That was a wily demon of a bear, to be such a little one. He had crawled on board by the gangway, shoved away a box that was standing in front of it, taken the dog that stood nearest, and gone off with it. When he had satisfied the first pangs of his hunger, he had come back and fetched No. 2, and, if he had been allowed, he would have continued the performance until the deck was cleared of dogs. Then he would probably have come bumping down-stairs ‘and beckoned with cold hand’ in at the galley door to Juell. It must have been a pleasant feeling for ‘Svarten’ to stand there in the dark and see the bear come creeping in upon him.“When I went below after this bear affair, Juell said as I passed the galley door, ‘You’ll see that “Kvik” will have her pups to-day; for it’s always the way here on board, that things happen together.’ And, sure enough, when we were sitting in the saloon in the evening, Mogstad,who generally plays ‘master of the hounds,’ came and announced the arrival of the first. Soon there was another, and then one more. This news was a little balsam to our wounds. ‘Kvik’ has got a good warm box, lined with fur, up in the passage on the starboard; it is so warm there that she is lying sweating, and we hope that the young ones will live, in spite of 54 degrees of frost. It seems this evening as if every one had some hesitation in going out on the ice unarmed. Our bayonet-knives have been brought out, and I am providing myself with one. I must say that I felt quite certain that we should find no bears as far north as this in the middle of winter; and it never occurred to me, in making long excursions on the ice without so much as a penknife in my pocket, that I was liable to encounters with them. But, after Peter’s experience, it seems as if it might be as well to have, at any rate, a lantern to hit them with. The long bayonet-knife shall accompany me henceforth.“They often chaffed Peter afterwards about having screamed so horribly when the bear seized him. ‘H’m! I wonder,’ said he, ‘if there aren’t others that would have screeched just as loud. I had to yell after the fellows that were so afraid of frightening the bear that when they ran they covered seven yards at each stride.’“Thursday, December 14th. ‘Well, Mogstad, how many pups have you now?’ I asked at breakfast. ‘There are five now.’ But soon after he came down to tell me that there were at least twelve. Gracious! thatis good value for what we have lost. But we were almost as pleased when Johansen came down and said that he heard the missing dog howling on the ice far away to the northwest. Several of us went up to listen, and we could all hear him quite well; but it sounded as if he were sitting still, howling in despair. Perhaps he was at an opening in the ice that he could not get across. Blessing had also heard him during his night-watch, but then the sound had come more from a southwesterly direction. When Peter went after breakfast to feed the dogs, there was the lost one, standing below the gangway wanting to get on board. Hungry he was—he dashed straight into the food-dish—but otherwise hale and hearty.“This evening Peter came and said that he was certain he had heard a bear moving about and pawing the ice; he and Pettersen had stood and listened to him scraping at the snow crust. I put on my ‘pesk’ (a fur blouse), got hold of my double-barrelled rifle, and went on deck. The whole crew were collected aft, gazing out into the night. We let loose ‘Ulenka’ and ‘Pan,’ and went in the direction where the bear was said to be. It was pitch-dark, but the dogs would find the tracks if there was anything there. Hansen thought he had seen something moving about the hummock near the ship, but we found and heard nothing, and, as several of the others had by this time come out on the ice and could also discover nothing, we scrambled on board again. Itis extraordinary all the sounds that one can fancy one hears out on that great, still space, mysteriously lighted by the twinkling stars.“Friday, December 15th. This morning Peter saw a fox on the ice astern, and he saw it again later, when he was out with the dogs. There is something remarkable about this appearance of bears and foxes now, after our seeing no life for so long. The last time we saw a fox we were far south of this, possibly near Sannikoff Land. Can we have come into the neighborhood of land again?“I inspected ‘Kvik’s’ pups in the afternoon. There were thirteen, a curious coincidence—thirteen pups on December 13th, for thirteen men. Five were killed; ‘Kvik’ can manage eight, but more would be bad for her. Poor mother! she was very anxious about her young ones—wanted to jump up into the box beside them and take them from us. And you can see that she is very proud of them.“Peter came this evening and said that there must be a ghost on the ice, for he heard exactly the same sounds of walking and pawing as yesterday evening. This seems to be a populous region, after all.“According to an observation taken on Tuesday we must be pretty nearly in 79° 8′ north latitude. That was 8 minutes’ drift in the three days from Saturday; we are getting on better and better.A nocturnal visitantA nocturnal visitant(By H. Egidius, from a Photograph)“Why will it not snow? Christmas is near, and whatis Christmas without snow, thickly falling snow? We have not had one snowfall all the time we have been drifting. The hard grains that come down now and again are nothing. Oh the beautiful white snow, falling so gently and silently, softening every hard outline with its sheltering purity! There is nothing more deliciously restful, soft, and white. This snowless ice-plain is like a life without love—nothing to soften it. The marks of all the battles and pressures of the ice stand forth just as when they were made, rugged and difficult to moveamong. Love is life’s snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight—whiter and purer than snow itself. What is life without love? It is like this ice—a cold, bare, rugged mass, the wind driving it and rending it and then forcing it together again, nothing to cover over the open rifts, nothing to break the violence of the collisions, nothing to round away the sharp corners of the broken floes—nothing, nothing but bare, rugged drift-ice.“Saturday, December 16th. In the afternoon Peter came quietly into the saloon, and said that he heard all sorts of noises on the ice. There was a sound to the north exactly like that of ice packing against land, and then suddenly there was such a roar through the air that the dogs started up and barked. Poor Peter! They laugh at him when he comes down to give an account of his many observations; but there is not one among us as sharp as he is.“Wednesday, December 20th. As I was sitting at breakfast, Peter came roaring that he believed he had seen a bear on the ice, ‘and that “Pan” set off the moment he was loosed.’ I rushed on to the ice with my gun. Several men were to be seen in the moonlight, but no bear. It was long before ‘Pan’ came back; he had followed him far to the northwest.“Sverdrup and ‘Smith Lars’ in partnership have made a great bear-trap, which was put out on the ice to-day. As I was afraid of more dogs than bears being caught init, it was hung from a gallows, too high for the dogs to jump up to the piece of blubber which hangs as bait right in the mouth of the trap. All the dogs spend the evening now sitting on the rail barking at this new man they see out there on the ice in the moonlight.“Thursday, December 21st. It is extraordinary, after all, how the time passes. Here we are at the shortest day, thoughwehave no day. But now we are moving on to light and summer again. We tried to sound to-day; had out 2100 metres (over 1100 fathoms) of line without reaching the bottom. We have no more line; what is to be done? Who could have guessed that we should find such deep water? There has been an arch of light in the sky all day, opposite the moon; so it is a lunar rainbow, but without color, so far as I have been able to see.Sverdrup’s bear-trap (moonlight). December 20, 1893Sverdrup’s bear-trap (moonlight). December 20, 1893(From a photograph)“Friday, December 22d. A bear was shot last night. Jacobsen saw it first, during his watch. He shot at it. It made off; and he then went down and told about it in the cabin. Mogstad and Peter came on deck; Sverdrup was called, too, and came up a little later. They saw the bear on his way towards the ship again; but he suddenly caught sight of the gallows with the trap on the ice to the west, and went off there. He looked well at the apparatus, then raised himself cautiously on his hind-legs, and laid his right paw on the cross-beam just beside the trap, stared for a little, hesitating, at the delicious morsel, but did not at all like the ugly jawsround it. Sverdrup was by this time out at the deck-house, watching in the sparkling moonshine. His heart was jumping—he expected every moment to hear the snap of his trap. But the bear shook his head suspiciously, lowered himself cautiously on to all-fours again, and sniffed carefully at the wire that the trap was fastened by, following it along to where it was made fast to a great block of ice. He went round this, and sawhow cleverly it was all arranged, then slowly followed the wire back, raised himself up as before, with his paw on the beam of the gallows, had a long look at the trap, and shook his head again, probably saying to himself, ‘These wily fellows have planned this very cleverly for me.’ Now he resumed his march to the ship. When he was within 60 paces of the bow Peter fired. The bear fell, but jumped up and again made off. Jacobsen, Sverdrup, and Mogstad all fired now, and he fell among some hummocks. He was flayed at once, and in the skin there was only the hole of one ball, which had gone through him from behind the shoulder-blade. Peter, Jacobsen, and Mogstad all claimed this ball. Sverdrup gave up his claim, as he had stood so far astern. Mogstad, seeing the bear fall directly after his shot, called out, ‘I gave him that one’; Jacobsen swears that it was he that hit; and Bentzen, who was standing looking on, is prepared to take his oath anywhere that it was Peter’s ball that did the deed. The dispute upon this weighty point remained unsettled during the whole course of the expedition.“He stared, hesitating, at the delicious morsel”“He stared, hesitating, at the delicious morsel”(Drawn by H. Egidius)“Beautiful moonlight. Pressure in several directions. To-day we carried our supply of gun-cotton and cannon and rifle powder on deck. It is safer there than in the hold. In case of fire or other accident, an explosion in the hold might blow the ship’s sides out and send us to the bottom before we had time to turn round. Some we put on the forecastle, some on the bridge.From these places it would be quickly thrown on to the ice.“Saturday, December 23d. What we call in Norway ‘Little Christmas-eve.’ I went a long way west this morning, coming home late. There was packed up ice everywhere, with flat floes between. I was turned by a newly formed opening in the ice, which I dared not cross on the thin layer of fresh ice. In the afternoon, as a first Christmas entertainment, we tried an ice-blasting with four prisms of gun-cotton. A hole was made with one of the large iron drills we had brought with us for this purpose, and the charge, with the end of the electric connecting wire, was sunk about a foot below the surface of the ice. Then all retired, the knob was touched, there was a dull crash, and water and pieces of ice were shot up into the air. Although it was 60 yards off, it gave the ship a good jerk that shook everything on board, and brought the hoar-frost down from the rigging. The explosion blew a hole through the four-feet-thick ice, but its only other effect was to make small cracks round this hole.“Sunday, December 24th (Christmas-eve), 67 degrees of cold (-37° C.). Glittering moonlight and the endless stillness of the Arctic night. I took a solitary stroll over the ice. The first Christmas-eve, and how far away! The observation shows us to be in 79° 11′ north latitude. There is no drift. Two minutes farther south than six days ago.”I.—Promenade in times of peace with Sverdrup’s patent foot-gearI.—Promenade in times of peace with Sverdrup’s patent foot-gear(From the “Framsjaa”)There are no further particulars given of this day in the diary; but when I think of it, how clearly it all comes back to me! There was a peculiar elevation of mood on board that was not at all common among us. Every man’s inmost thoughts were with those at home; but his comrades were not to know that, and so there was more joking and laughing than usual. All the lamps and lights we had on board were lit, and every corner of the saloon and cabins was brilliantly illuminated. The bill of fare for the day, of course, surpassed any previous one—food was the chief thing we had to hold festival with. The dinner was a very fine one indeed; so was the supper, and after it piles of Christmas cakes came on the table; Juell had been busy making them for several weeks. After that we enjoyed a glass of toddy and a cigar, smoking in the saloon being, of course, allowed. The culminating point of the festival came when two boxes with Christmas presents were produced. The one was from Hansen’s mother, the other from hisfiancée—Miss Fougner. It was touching to see the childlike pleasure with which each man received his gift—it might be a pipe or a knife or some little knickknack—he felt that it was like a message from home. After this there were speeches; and then theFramsjaaappeared, with an illustrated supplement, selections from which are given. The drawings are the work of the famous Arctic draughtsman, Huttetu. Here are two verses from the poem for the day:“When the ship’s path is stopped by fathom-thick ice,And winter’s white covering is spread,When we’re quite given up to the power of the stream,Oh! ’tis then that so often of home we must dream.“We wish them all joy at this sweet Christmas-tide,Health and happiness for the next year,Ourselves patience to wait; ’twill bring us to the Pole,And home the next spring, never fear!”There were many more poems, among others one giving some account of the principal events of the last weeks, in this style:“Bears are seen, and dogs are born,Cakes are baked, both small and large;Henriksen, he does not fall,Spite of bear’s most violent charge;Mogstad with his rifle clicks,Jacobsen with long lance sticks,”II.—“Fram” fellows on the war-path: difference between the Sverdrup and the Lapp foot-gearII.—“Fram” fellows on the war-path: difference between the Sverdrup and the Lapp foot-gear(From the “Framsjaa”)and so on. There was a long ditty on the subject of the “Dog Rape on board theFram:”“Up and down on a night so cold,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Walk harpooner and kennelman bold,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Our kennelman swings, I need hardly tell,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,The long, long lash you know so well,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Our harpooner, he is a man of light,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,A burning lantern he grasps tight,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,They as they walk the time beguile,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,With tales of bears and all their wile,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom.“Now suddenly a bear they see,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Before whom all the dogs do flee,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Kennelman, like a deer, runs fast,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Harpooner slow comes in the last,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,”and so on.III.—“Fram” fellows still on the war-pathIII.—“Fram” fellows still on the war-path(From the “Framsjaa”)Among the announcements are—“Instruction in Fencing.“In consequence of the indefinite postponement of our departure, a limited number of pupils can be received for instruction in both fencing and boxing.“Majakoft,“Teacher of Boxing,“Next door to the Doctor’s.”Again—“On account of want of storage room, a quantity of old clothes are atpresent for sale, by private arrangement, at No. 2 Pump Lane.13Repeated requests to remove them having been of no effect, I am obliged to dispose of them in this way. The clothes are quite fresh, having been in salt for a long time.”After the reading of the newspaper came instrumental music and singing, and it was far on in the night before we sought our berths.“Monday, December 25th (Christmas-day). Thermometer at 36° Fahr. below zero (-38° C.). I took a walk south in the beautiful light of the full moon. At a newly made crack I went through the fresh ice with one leg and got soaked; but such an accident matters very little in this frost. The water immediately stiffens into ice; it does not make one very cold, and one feels dry again soon.“They will be thinking much of us just now at home and giving many a pitying sigh over all the hardships we are enduring in this cold, cheerless, icy region. But I am afraid their compassion would cool if they could look in upon us, hear the merriment that goes on, and see all our comforts and good cheer. They can hardly be better off at home. I myself have certainly never lived a more sybaritic life, and have never had more reason to fear the consequences it brings in its train. Just listen to to-day’s dinner menu:1. Ox-tail soup;2. Fish-pudding, with potatoes and melted butter;3. Roast of reindeer, with pease, French beans, potatoes, and cranberry jam;4. Cloudberries with cream;5. Cake and marchpane (a welcome present from the baker to the expedition; we blessed that man).And along with all this that Ringnes bock-beer which is so famous in our part of the world. Was this the sort of dinner for men who are to be hardened against the horrors of the Arctic night?“Every one had eaten so much that supper had to be skipped altogether. Later in the evening coffee was served, with pineapple preserve, gingerbread, vanilla-cakes, cocoanut macaroons, and various other cakes, all the work of our excellent cook, Juell; and we ended up with figs, almonds, and raisins.“Now let us have the breakfast, just to complete the day: coffee, freshly baked bread, beautiful Danish butter, Christmas cake, Cheddar cheese, clove-cheese, tongue, corned-beef, and marmalade. And if any one thinks that this is a specially good breakfast because it is Christmas-day he is wrong. It is just what we have always, with the addition of the cake, which is not part of the every-day diet.“Add now to this good cheer our strongly built, safe house, our comfortable saloon, lighted up with the large petroleum lamp and several smaller ones (when we have no electric light), constant gayety, card-playing, and books in any quantity, with or without illustrations, good and entertaining reading, and then a good, sound sleep—what more could one wish?“ ... But, O Arctic night, thou art like a woman, a marvellously lovely woman. Thine are the noble, pure outlines of antique beauty, with its marble coldness. On thy high, smooth brow, clear with the clearness of ether, is no trace of compassion for the little sufferings of despised humanity; on thy pale, beautiful cheek no blush of feeling. Among thy raven locks, waving out into space, the hoar-frost has sprinkled its glittering crystals. The proud lines of thy throat, thy shoulders’ curves, are so noble, but, oh! unbendingly cold; thy bosom’s white chastity is feelingless as the snowy ice. Chaste, beautiful, and proud, thou floatest through ether over the frozen sea, thy glittering garment, woven of aurora beams, covering the vault of heaven. But sometimes I divine a twitch of pain on thy lips, and endless sadness dreams in thy dark eye.“Oh, how tired I am of thy cold beauty! I long to return to life. Let me get home again, as conqueror or as beggar; what does that matter? But let me get home to begin life anew. The years are passing here, and what do they bring? Nothing but dust, dry dust, which the first wind blows away; new dust comes in its place, and the next wind takes it too. Truth? Why should we always make so much of truth? Life is more than cold truth, and we live but once.
“‘Warning!!!“‘I think it is my duty to warn the public that a travelling watchmaker has been making the round of this neighborhood lately, getting watches to repair, and not returning them to their owners. How long is this to be allowed to go on under the eyes of the authorities?“‘The watchmaker’s appearance is as follows: Middle height, fair, gray eyes, brown full beard, round shoulders, and generally delicate-looking.“‘A. Juell.11“‘The person above notified was in our office yesterday, asking for work, and we consider it right to add the following particulars as completing the description. He generally goes about with a pack of mongrel curs at his heels; he chews tobacco, and of this his beard shows traces. This is all we have to say, as we did not consider ourselves either entitled or called upon to put him under the microscope.“‘Ed.Framsjaa.’
“‘Warning!!!
“‘I think it is my duty to warn the public that a travelling watchmaker has been making the round of this neighborhood lately, getting watches to repair, and not returning them to their owners. How long is this to be allowed to go on under the eyes of the authorities?
“‘The watchmaker’s appearance is as follows: Middle height, fair, gray eyes, brown full beard, round shoulders, and generally delicate-looking.
“‘A. Juell.11
“‘The person above notified was in our office yesterday, asking for work, and we consider it right to add the following particulars as completing the description. He generally goes about with a pack of mongrel curs at his heels; he chews tobacco, and of this his beard shows traces. This is all we have to say, as we did not consider ourselves either entitled or called upon to put him under the microscope.
“‘Ed.Framsjaa.’
“Yesterday’s observation placed us in 79° 0′ north latitude, 139° 14′ east longitude. At last, then, we have got as far north again as we were in the end of September, and now the northerly drift seems to be steady: 10 minutes in 4 days.
“Monday, December 11th. This morning I took a long excursion to westward. It is hard work struggling over the packed ice in the dark, something like scrambling about a moraine of big boulders at night. Once I took a step in the air, fell forward, and bruised my right knee. It is mild to-day, only 9½° below zero (-23° C.). This evening there was a strange appearance of aurora borealis—white, shining clouds, which I thought at first must be lit up by the moon, but there is no moon yet. They were light cumuli, or cirro-cumuli, shifting into a brightly shining mackerel sky. I stood and watched them as long as my thin clothing permitted, but there was no perceptible pulsation, no play of flame; they sailed quietly on. The light seemed to be strongest in the southeast, where there were also dark clouds to be seen. Hansen said that it moved over later into the northern sky; clouds came and went, and for a time there were many white shining ones—‘white as lambs,’ he called them—but no aurora played behind them.
“In this day’s meteorological journal I find noted for 4P.M.: ‘Faint aurora borealis in the north. Some distinct branchings or antlers (they are of ribbon crimped like blond) in some diffused patches on the horizon inthe N.N.E.’ In his aurora borealis journal Hansen describes that of this evening as follows: ‘About 8 P.M. an aurora borealis arch of light was observed, stretching from E.S.E. to N.W., through the zenith; diffused quiet intensity 3–4 most intense in N.W. The arch spread at the zenith by a wave to the south. At 10 o’clock there was a fainter aurora borealis in the southern sky; eight minutes later it extended to the zenith, and two minutes after this there was a shining broad arch across the zenith with intensity 6. Twelve seconds later flaming rays shot from the zenith in an easterly direction. During the next half-hour there was constant aurora, chiefly in bands across or near the zenith, or lower in the southern sky. The observation ended about 10.38. The intensity was then 2, the aurora diffused over the southern sky. There were cumulus clouds of varying closeness all the time. They came up in the southeast at the beginning of the observation, and disappeared towards the end of it; they were closest about 10 minutes past 10. At the time that the broad shining arch through the zenith was at its highest intensity the cumulus clouds in the northwest shone quite white, though we were unable to detect any aurora borealis phenomena in this quarter. The reflection of light on the ice-field was pretty strong at the same time. In the aurora borealis the cumulus clouds appeared of a darker color, almost the gray of wool. The colors of the aurora were yellowish, bluish white, milky blue—cold coloring.’ Accordingto the meteorological journal there was still aurora borealis in the southern sky at midnight.
“Tuesday, December 12th. Had a long walk southeast this morning. The ice is in much the same condition there as it is to the west, packed or pressed up into mounds, with flat floes between. This evening the dogs suddenly began to make a great commotion on deck. We were all deep in cards, some playing whist, others ‘marriage.’ I had no shoes on, so said that some one else must go up and see what was the matter. Mogstad went. The noise grew worse and worse. Presently Mogstad came down and said that all the dogs that could get at the rail were up on it, barking out into the dark towards the north. He was sure there must be an animal of some sort there, but perhaps it was only a fox, for he thought he had heard the bark of a fox far in the north; but he was not sure. Well,—it must be a devil of a fox to excite the dogs like that. As the disturbance continued, I at last went up myself, followed by Johansen. From different positions we looked long and hard into the darkness in the direction in which the dogs were barking, but we could see nothing moving. That something must be there was quite certain; and I had no doubt that it was a bear, for the dogs were almost beside themselves. ‘Pan’ looked up into my face with an odd expression, as if he had something important to tell me, and then jumped up on the rail and barked away to the north.The dogs’ excitement was quite remarkable; they had not been so keen when the bear was close in to the side of the ship. However, I contented myself with remarking that the thing to do would be to loose some dogs and go north with them over the ice. But these wretched dogs won’t tackle a bear, and besides it is so dark that there is hardly a chance of finding anything. If it is a bear he will come again. At this season, when he is so hungry, he will hardly go right away from all the good food for him here on board. I struck about with my arms to get a little heat into me, then went below and to bed. The dogs went on barking, sometimes louder than before. Nordahl, whose watch it was, went up several times, but could discover no reason for it. As I was lying reading in my berth I heard a peculiar sound; it was like boxes being dragged about on deck, and there was also scraping, like a dog that wanted to get out, scratching violently at a door. I thought of ‘Kvik,’ who was shut up in the chart-room. I called into the saloon to Nordahl that he had better go up again and see what this new noise was. He did so, but came back saying that there was still nothing to be seen. It was difficult to sleep, and I lay long tossing about. Peter came on watch. I told him to go up and turn the air-sail to the wind, to make the ventilation better. He was a good time on deck doing this and other things, but he also could see no reason for the to-do the dogs were still making. He had to go forward, and thennoticed that the three dogs nearest the starboard gangway were missing. He came down and told me, and we agreed that possibly this might be what all the excitement was about; but never before had they taken it so to heart when some of their number had run away. At last I fell asleep, but heard them in my sleep for a long time.
Plate VI.Plate VI.At Sunset, 22nd September 1893. Water-Colour Sketch.
Plate VI.
At Sunset, 22nd September 1893. Water-Colour Sketch.
“Wednesday, December 13th. Before I was rightly awake this morning I heard the dogs ‘at it’ still, and the noise went on all the time of breakfast, and had, I believe, gone on all night. After breakfast Mogstad and Peter went up to feed the wretched creatures and let them loose on the ice. Three were still missing. Peter came down to get a lantern; he thought he might as well look if there were any tracks of animals. Jacobsen called after him that he had better take a gun. No, he did not need one, he said. A little later, as I was sitting sorrowfully absorbed in the calculation of how much petroleum we had used, and how short a time our supply would last if we went on burning it at the same rate, I heard a scream at the top of the companion. ‘Come with a gun!’ In a moment I was in the saloon, and there was Peter tumbling in at the door, breathlessly shouting, ‘A gun! a gun!’ The bear had bitten him in the side. I was thankful that it was no worse. Hearing him put on so much dialect,12I had thoughtit was a matter of life and death. I seized one gun, he another, and up we rushed, the mate with his gun after us. There was not much difficulty in knowing in what direction to turn, for from the rail on the starboard side came confused shouts of human voices, and from the ice below the gangway the sound of a frightful uproar of dogs. I tore out the tow-plug at the muzzle of my rifle, then up with the lever and in with a cartridge; it was a case of hurry. But, hang it! there is a plug in at this end too. I poked and poked, but could not get a grip of it. Peter screamed: ‘Shoot, shoot! Mine won’t go off!’He stood clicking and clicking, his lock full of frozen vaseline again, while the bear lay chewing at a dog just below us at the ship’s side. Beside me stood the mate, groping after a tow-plug which he also had shoved down into his gun, but now he flung the gun angrily away and began to look round the deck for a walrus spear to stick the bear with. Our fourth man, Mogstad, was waving an empty rifle (he had shot away his cartridges), and shouting to some one to shoot the bear. Four men, and not one that could shoot, although we could have prodded the bear’s back with our gun-barrels. Hansen, making a fifth, was lying in the passage to the chart-room, groping with his arm through a chink in the door for cartridges; he could not get the door open because of ‘Kvik’s’ kennel. At last Johansen appeared and sent a ball straight down into the bear’s hide. That did some good. The monster let gothe dog and gave a growl. Another shot flashed and hissed down on the same spot. One more, and we saw the white dog the bear had under him jump up and run off, while the other dogs stood round, barking. Another shot still, for the animal began to stir a little. At this moment my plug came out, and I gave him a last ball through the head to make sure. The dogs had crowded round barking as long as he moved, but now that he lay still in death they drew back terrified. They probably thought it was some new ruse of the enemy. It was a little thin one-year-old bear that had caused all this terrible commotion.
“While it was being flayed I went off in a northwesterly direction to look for the dogs that were still missing. I had not gone far when I noticed that the dogs that were following me had caught scent of something to the north and wanted to go that way. Soon they got frightened, and I could not get them to go on; they kept close in to my side or slunk behind me. I held my gun ready, while I crawled on all-fours over the pack-ice, which was anything but level. I kept a steady lookout ahead, but it was not far my eyes could pierce in that darkness. I could only just see the dogs, like black shadows, when they were a few steps away from me. I expected every moment to see a huge form rise among the hummocks ahead, or come rushing towards me. The dogs got more and more cautious; one or two of them sat down, but they probably felt that it would be a shameto let me go on alone, so followed slowly after. Terrible ice to force one’s way over. Crawling along on hands and knees does not put one in a very convenient position to shoot from if the bear should make a sudden rush. But unless he did this, or attacked the dogs, I had no hope of getting him. We now came out on some flat ice. It was only too evident that there must be something quite near now. I went on, and presently saw a dark object on the ice in front of me. It was not unlike an animal. I bent down—it was poor ‘Johansen’s Friend,’ the black dog with the white tip to his tail, in a sad state, and frozen stiff. Beside him was something else dark. I bent down again and found the second of the missing dogs, brother of the corpse-watcher ‘Suggen.’ This one was almost whole, only eaten a little about the head, and it was not frozen quite stiff. There seemed to be blood all round on the ice. I looked about in every direction, but there was nothing more to be seen. The dogs stood at a respectful distance, staring and sniffing in the direction of their dead comrades. Some of us went, not long after this, to fetch the dogs’ carcasses, taking a lantern to look for bear tracks, in case there had been some big fellows along with the little one. We scrambled on among the pack-ice. ‘Come this way with the lantern, Bentzen; I think I see tracks here.’ Bentzen came, and we turned the light on some indentations in the snow; they were bear-paw marks, sure enough, but only the same littlefellow’s. ‘Look! the brute has been dragging a dog after him here.’ By the light of the lantern we traced the blood-marked path on among the hummocks. We found the dead dogs, but no footprints except small ones, which we all thought must be those of our little bear. ‘Svarten,’ alias ‘Johansen’s Friend,’ looked bad in the lantern-light. Flesh and skin and entrails were gone; there was nothing to be seen but a bare breast and back-bone, with some stumps of ribs. It was a pity that the fine strong dog should come to such an end. He had just one fault: he was rather bad-tempered. He had a special dislike to Johansen; barked and showed his teeth whenever he came on deck or even opened a door, and when he sat whistling in the top or in the crow’s-nest these dark winter days the ‘Friend’ would answer with a howl of rage from far out on the ice. Johansen bent down with the lantern to look at the remains.
“‘Are you glad, Johansen, that your enemy is done for?’
“‘No, I am sorry.’
“‘Why?’
“‘Because we did not make it up before he died.’
“And we went on to look for more bear-tracks, but found none; so we took the dead dogs on our backs and turned homeward.
“On the way I asked Peter what had really happened with him and the bear. ‘Well, you see,’ said he, ‘when I came along with the lantern we saw a few drops ofblood by the gangway; but that might quite well have been a dog that had cut itself. On the ice below the gangway we saw some bear-tracks, and we started away west, the whole pack of dogs with us, running on far ahead. When we had got away a bit from the ship, there was suddenly an awful row in front, and it wasn’t long before a great beast came rushing at us, with the whole troop of dogs around it. As soon as we saw what it was, we turned and ran our best for the ship. Mogstad, you see, had moccasins (komager) on, and knew his way better and got there before me. I couldn’t get along so fast with my great wooden shoes, and in my confusion I got right on to the big hummock to the west of the ship’s bow, you know. I turned here and lighted back to see if the bear was behind me, but I saw nothing and pushed on again, and in a minute these slippery wooden shoes had me flat on my back among the hummocks. I was up again quick enough; but when I got down on to the flat ice close to the ship I saw something coming straight for me on the right-hand side. First I thought it was a dog—it’s not so easy to see in the dark, you know. I had no time for a second thought, for the beast jumped on me and bit me in the side. I had lifted my arm like this, you see, and so he caught me here, right on the hip. He growled and hissed as he bit.’
“‘What did you think then, Peter?’
“‘What did I think? I thought it was all up with me. What was I to do? I had neither gun nor knife.But I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it that the thing broke, and went flying away over the ice. The moment he felt the blow he sat down and looked at me. I was just taking to my heels when he got up; I don’t know whether it was to grip me again or what it was for, but anyhow at that minute he caught sight of a dog coming and set off after it, and I got on board.’
“‘I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it’”“‘I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it’”(Drawn by H. Egidius)
“‘I took the lantern and gave him such a whack on the head with it’”
(Drawn by H. Egidius)
“‘Did you scream, Peter?’
“‘Scream! I screamed with all my might.’
“And apparently this was true, for he was quite hoarse.
“‘But where was Mogstad all this time?’
“‘Well, you see, he had reached the ship long before me, but he never thought of running down and giving the alarm, but takes his gun from the round-house wall and thinks he’ll manage all right alone; but his gun wouldn’t go off, and the bear would have had time to eat me up before his nose.’
“We were now near the ship, and Mogstad, who had heard the last part of the story from the deck, corrected it in so far that he had just reached the gangway when Peter began to roar. He jumped up and fell back three times before he got on board, and had no time to do anything then but seize his gun and go to Peter’s assistance.
“When the bear left Peter and rushed after the dogs he soon had the whole pack about him again. Now he would make a spring and get one below him; but then all the rest would set upon him and jump on his back, so that he had to turn to defend himself. Then he would spring upon another dog, and the whole pack would be on him again. And so the dance went on, backward and forward over the ice, until they were once more close to the ship. A dog stood there, below the gangway, wanting to get on board; the bear made a spring on it, and it was there, by the ship’s side, that the villain met his fate.
“An examination on board showed that the hook of ‘Svarten’s’ leash was pulled out quite straight; ‘Gammelen’s’ was broken through; but the third dog’s was only wrenched a little; it hardly looked as if the bear had done it. I had a slight hope that this dog might still be in life, but, though we searched well, we could not find it.
“It was altogether a deplorable story. To think that we should have let a bear scramble on board like this, and should have lost three dogs at once! Our dogs are dwindling down; we have only 26 now. That was a wily demon of a bear, to be such a little one. He had crawled on board by the gangway, shoved away a box that was standing in front of it, taken the dog that stood nearest, and gone off with it. When he had satisfied the first pangs of his hunger, he had come back and fetched No. 2, and, if he had been allowed, he would have continued the performance until the deck was cleared of dogs. Then he would probably have come bumping down-stairs ‘and beckoned with cold hand’ in at the galley door to Juell. It must have been a pleasant feeling for ‘Svarten’ to stand there in the dark and see the bear come creeping in upon him.
“When I went below after this bear affair, Juell said as I passed the galley door, ‘You’ll see that “Kvik” will have her pups to-day; for it’s always the way here on board, that things happen together.’ And, sure enough, when we were sitting in the saloon in the evening, Mogstad,who generally plays ‘master of the hounds,’ came and announced the arrival of the first. Soon there was another, and then one more. This news was a little balsam to our wounds. ‘Kvik’ has got a good warm box, lined with fur, up in the passage on the starboard; it is so warm there that she is lying sweating, and we hope that the young ones will live, in spite of 54 degrees of frost. It seems this evening as if every one had some hesitation in going out on the ice unarmed. Our bayonet-knives have been brought out, and I am providing myself with one. I must say that I felt quite certain that we should find no bears as far north as this in the middle of winter; and it never occurred to me, in making long excursions on the ice without so much as a penknife in my pocket, that I was liable to encounters with them. But, after Peter’s experience, it seems as if it might be as well to have, at any rate, a lantern to hit them with. The long bayonet-knife shall accompany me henceforth.
“They often chaffed Peter afterwards about having screamed so horribly when the bear seized him. ‘H’m! I wonder,’ said he, ‘if there aren’t others that would have screeched just as loud. I had to yell after the fellows that were so afraid of frightening the bear that when they ran they covered seven yards at each stride.’
“Thursday, December 14th. ‘Well, Mogstad, how many pups have you now?’ I asked at breakfast. ‘There are five now.’ But soon after he came down to tell me that there were at least twelve. Gracious! thatis good value for what we have lost. But we were almost as pleased when Johansen came down and said that he heard the missing dog howling on the ice far away to the northwest. Several of us went up to listen, and we could all hear him quite well; but it sounded as if he were sitting still, howling in despair. Perhaps he was at an opening in the ice that he could not get across. Blessing had also heard him during his night-watch, but then the sound had come more from a southwesterly direction. When Peter went after breakfast to feed the dogs, there was the lost one, standing below the gangway wanting to get on board. Hungry he was—he dashed straight into the food-dish—but otherwise hale and hearty.
“This evening Peter came and said that he was certain he had heard a bear moving about and pawing the ice; he and Pettersen had stood and listened to him scraping at the snow crust. I put on my ‘pesk’ (a fur blouse), got hold of my double-barrelled rifle, and went on deck. The whole crew were collected aft, gazing out into the night. We let loose ‘Ulenka’ and ‘Pan,’ and went in the direction where the bear was said to be. It was pitch-dark, but the dogs would find the tracks if there was anything there. Hansen thought he had seen something moving about the hummock near the ship, but we found and heard nothing, and, as several of the others had by this time come out on the ice and could also discover nothing, we scrambled on board again. Itis extraordinary all the sounds that one can fancy one hears out on that great, still space, mysteriously lighted by the twinkling stars.
“Friday, December 15th. This morning Peter saw a fox on the ice astern, and he saw it again later, when he was out with the dogs. There is something remarkable about this appearance of bears and foxes now, after our seeing no life for so long. The last time we saw a fox we were far south of this, possibly near Sannikoff Land. Can we have come into the neighborhood of land again?
“I inspected ‘Kvik’s’ pups in the afternoon. There were thirteen, a curious coincidence—thirteen pups on December 13th, for thirteen men. Five were killed; ‘Kvik’ can manage eight, but more would be bad for her. Poor mother! she was very anxious about her young ones—wanted to jump up into the box beside them and take them from us. And you can see that she is very proud of them.
“Peter came this evening and said that there must be a ghost on the ice, for he heard exactly the same sounds of walking and pawing as yesterday evening. This seems to be a populous region, after all.
“According to an observation taken on Tuesday we must be pretty nearly in 79° 8′ north latitude. That was 8 minutes’ drift in the three days from Saturday; we are getting on better and better.
A nocturnal visitantA nocturnal visitant(By H. Egidius, from a Photograph)
A nocturnal visitant
(By H. Egidius, from a Photograph)
“Why will it not snow? Christmas is near, and whatis Christmas without snow, thickly falling snow? We have not had one snowfall all the time we have been drifting. The hard grains that come down now and again are nothing. Oh the beautiful white snow, falling so gently and silently, softening every hard outline with its sheltering purity! There is nothing more deliciously restful, soft, and white. This snowless ice-plain is like a life without love—nothing to soften it. The marks of all the battles and pressures of the ice stand forth just as when they were made, rugged and difficult to moveamong. Love is life’s snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight—whiter and purer than snow itself. What is life without love? It is like this ice—a cold, bare, rugged mass, the wind driving it and rending it and then forcing it together again, nothing to cover over the open rifts, nothing to break the violence of the collisions, nothing to round away the sharp corners of the broken floes—nothing, nothing but bare, rugged drift-ice.
“Saturday, December 16th. In the afternoon Peter came quietly into the saloon, and said that he heard all sorts of noises on the ice. There was a sound to the north exactly like that of ice packing against land, and then suddenly there was such a roar through the air that the dogs started up and barked. Poor Peter! They laugh at him when he comes down to give an account of his many observations; but there is not one among us as sharp as he is.
“Wednesday, December 20th. As I was sitting at breakfast, Peter came roaring that he believed he had seen a bear on the ice, ‘and that “Pan” set off the moment he was loosed.’ I rushed on to the ice with my gun. Several men were to be seen in the moonlight, but no bear. It was long before ‘Pan’ came back; he had followed him far to the northwest.
“Sverdrup and ‘Smith Lars’ in partnership have made a great bear-trap, which was put out on the ice to-day. As I was afraid of more dogs than bears being caught init, it was hung from a gallows, too high for the dogs to jump up to the piece of blubber which hangs as bait right in the mouth of the trap. All the dogs spend the evening now sitting on the rail barking at this new man they see out there on the ice in the moonlight.
“Thursday, December 21st. It is extraordinary, after all, how the time passes. Here we are at the shortest day, thoughwehave no day. But now we are moving on to light and summer again. We tried to sound to-day; had out 2100 metres (over 1100 fathoms) of line without reaching the bottom. We have no more line; what is to be done? Who could have guessed that we should find such deep water? There has been an arch of light in the sky all day, opposite the moon; so it is a lunar rainbow, but without color, so far as I have been able to see.
Sverdrup’s bear-trap (moonlight). December 20, 1893Sverdrup’s bear-trap (moonlight). December 20, 1893(From a photograph)
Sverdrup’s bear-trap (moonlight). December 20, 1893
(From a photograph)
“Friday, December 22d. A bear was shot last night. Jacobsen saw it first, during his watch. He shot at it. It made off; and he then went down and told about it in the cabin. Mogstad and Peter came on deck; Sverdrup was called, too, and came up a little later. They saw the bear on his way towards the ship again; but he suddenly caught sight of the gallows with the trap on the ice to the west, and went off there. He looked well at the apparatus, then raised himself cautiously on his hind-legs, and laid his right paw on the cross-beam just beside the trap, stared for a little, hesitating, at the delicious morsel, but did not at all like the ugly jawsround it. Sverdrup was by this time out at the deck-house, watching in the sparkling moonshine. His heart was jumping—he expected every moment to hear the snap of his trap. But the bear shook his head suspiciously, lowered himself cautiously on to all-fours again, and sniffed carefully at the wire that the trap was fastened by, following it along to where it was made fast to a great block of ice. He went round this, and sawhow cleverly it was all arranged, then slowly followed the wire back, raised himself up as before, with his paw on the beam of the gallows, had a long look at the trap, and shook his head again, probably saying to himself, ‘These wily fellows have planned this very cleverly for me.’ Now he resumed his march to the ship. When he was within 60 paces of the bow Peter fired. The bear fell, but jumped up and again made off. Jacobsen, Sverdrup, and Mogstad all fired now, and he fell among some hummocks. He was flayed at once, and in the skin there was only the hole of one ball, which had gone through him from behind the shoulder-blade. Peter, Jacobsen, and Mogstad all claimed this ball. Sverdrup gave up his claim, as he had stood so far astern. Mogstad, seeing the bear fall directly after his shot, called out, ‘I gave him that one’; Jacobsen swears that it was he that hit; and Bentzen, who was standing looking on, is prepared to take his oath anywhere that it was Peter’s ball that did the deed. The dispute upon this weighty point remained unsettled during the whole course of the expedition.
“He stared, hesitating, at the delicious morsel”“He stared, hesitating, at the delicious morsel”(Drawn by H. Egidius)
“He stared, hesitating, at the delicious morsel”
(Drawn by H. Egidius)
“Beautiful moonlight. Pressure in several directions. To-day we carried our supply of gun-cotton and cannon and rifle powder on deck. It is safer there than in the hold. In case of fire or other accident, an explosion in the hold might blow the ship’s sides out and send us to the bottom before we had time to turn round. Some we put on the forecastle, some on the bridge.From these places it would be quickly thrown on to the ice.
“Saturday, December 23d. What we call in Norway ‘Little Christmas-eve.’ I went a long way west this morning, coming home late. There was packed up ice everywhere, with flat floes between. I was turned by a newly formed opening in the ice, which I dared not cross on the thin layer of fresh ice. In the afternoon, as a first Christmas entertainment, we tried an ice-blasting with four prisms of gun-cotton. A hole was made with one of the large iron drills we had brought with us for this purpose, and the charge, with the end of the electric connecting wire, was sunk about a foot below the surface of the ice. Then all retired, the knob was touched, there was a dull crash, and water and pieces of ice were shot up into the air. Although it was 60 yards off, it gave the ship a good jerk that shook everything on board, and brought the hoar-frost down from the rigging. The explosion blew a hole through the four-feet-thick ice, but its only other effect was to make small cracks round this hole.
“Sunday, December 24th (Christmas-eve), 67 degrees of cold (-37° C.). Glittering moonlight and the endless stillness of the Arctic night. I took a solitary stroll over the ice. The first Christmas-eve, and how far away! The observation shows us to be in 79° 11′ north latitude. There is no drift. Two minutes farther south than six days ago.”
I.—Promenade in times of peace with Sverdrup’s patent foot-gearI.—Promenade in times of peace with Sverdrup’s patent foot-gear(From the “Framsjaa”)
I.—Promenade in times of peace with Sverdrup’s patent foot-gear
(From the “Framsjaa”)
There are no further particulars given of this day in the diary; but when I think of it, how clearly it all comes back to me! There was a peculiar elevation of mood on board that was not at all common among us. Every man’s inmost thoughts were with those at home; but his comrades were not to know that, and so there was more joking and laughing than usual. All the lamps and lights we had on board were lit, and every corner of the saloon and cabins was brilliantly illuminated. The bill of fare for the day, of course, surpassed any previous one—food was the chief thing we had to hold festival with. The dinner was a very fine one indeed; so was the supper, and after it piles of Christmas cakes came on the table; Juell had been busy making them for several weeks. After that we enjoyed a glass of toddy and a cigar, smoking in the saloon being, of course, allowed. The culminating point of the festival came when two boxes with Christmas presents were produced. The one was from Hansen’s mother, the other from hisfiancée—Miss Fougner. It was touching to see the childlike pleasure with which each man received his gift—it might be a pipe or a knife or some little knickknack—he felt that it was like a message from home. After this there were speeches; and then theFramsjaaappeared, with an illustrated supplement, selections from which are given. The drawings are the work of the famous Arctic draughtsman, Huttetu. Here are two verses from the poem for the day:
“When the ship’s path is stopped by fathom-thick ice,And winter’s white covering is spread,When we’re quite given up to the power of the stream,Oh! ’tis then that so often of home we must dream.“We wish them all joy at this sweet Christmas-tide,Health and happiness for the next year,Ourselves patience to wait; ’twill bring us to the Pole,And home the next spring, never fear!”
“When the ship’s path is stopped by fathom-thick ice,And winter’s white covering is spread,When we’re quite given up to the power of the stream,Oh! ’tis then that so often of home we must dream.
“When the ship’s path is stopped by fathom-thick ice,
And winter’s white covering is spread,
When we’re quite given up to the power of the stream,
Oh! ’tis then that so often of home we must dream.
“We wish them all joy at this sweet Christmas-tide,Health and happiness for the next year,Ourselves patience to wait; ’twill bring us to the Pole,And home the next spring, never fear!”
“We wish them all joy at this sweet Christmas-tide,
Health and happiness for the next year,
Ourselves patience to wait; ’twill bring us to the Pole,
And home the next spring, never fear!”
There were many more poems, among others one giving some account of the principal events of the last weeks, in this style:
“Bears are seen, and dogs are born,Cakes are baked, both small and large;Henriksen, he does not fall,Spite of bear’s most violent charge;Mogstad with his rifle clicks,Jacobsen with long lance sticks,”
“Bears are seen, and dogs are born,
Cakes are baked, both small and large;
Henriksen, he does not fall,
Spite of bear’s most violent charge;
Mogstad with his rifle clicks,
Jacobsen with long lance sticks,”
II.—“Fram” fellows on the war-path: difference between the Sverdrup and the Lapp foot-gearII.—“Fram” fellows on the war-path: difference between the Sverdrup and the Lapp foot-gear(From the “Framsjaa”)
II.—“Fram” fellows on the war-path: difference between the Sverdrup and the Lapp foot-gear
(From the “Framsjaa”)
and so on. There was a long ditty on the subject of the “Dog Rape on board theFram:”
“Up and down on a night so cold,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Walk harpooner and kennelman bold,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Our kennelman swings, I need hardly tell,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,The long, long lash you know so well,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Our harpooner, he is a man of light,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,A burning lantern he grasps tight,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,They as they walk the time beguile,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,With tales of bears and all their wile,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom.“Now suddenly a bear they see,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Before whom all the dogs do flee,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Kennelman, like a deer, runs fast,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Harpooner slow comes in the last,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,”
“Up and down on a night so cold,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Walk harpooner and kennelman bold,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;
“Up and down on a night so cold,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,
Walk harpooner and kennelman bold,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;
Our kennelman swings, I need hardly tell,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,The long, long lash you know so well,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Our harpooner, he is a man of light,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,A burning lantern he grasps tight,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,They as they walk the time beguile,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,With tales of bears and all their wile,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom.
Our kennelman swings, I need hardly tell,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,
The long, long lash you know so well,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;
Our harpooner, he is a man of light,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,
A burning lantern he grasps tight,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,
They as they walk the time beguile,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,
With tales of bears and all their wile,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom.
“Now suddenly a bear they see,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Before whom all the dogs do flee,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;Kennelman, like a deer, runs fast,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,Harpooner slow comes in the last,Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,”
“Now suddenly a bear they see,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,
Before whom all the dogs do flee,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom;
Kennelman, like a deer, runs fast,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,
Harpooner slow comes in the last,
Kvirre virre vip, bom, bom,”
and so on.
III.—“Fram” fellows still on the war-pathIII.—“Fram” fellows still on the war-path(From the “Framsjaa”)
III.—“Fram” fellows still on the war-path
(From the “Framsjaa”)
Among the announcements are—
“Instruction in Fencing.“In consequence of the indefinite postponement of our departure, a limited number of pupils can be received for instruction in both fencing and boxing.“Majakoft,“Teacher of Boxing,“Next door to the Doctor’s.”
“Instruction in Fencing.
“In consequence of the indefinite postponement of our departure, a limited number of pupils can be received for instruction in both fencing and boxing.
“Majakoft,“Teacher of Boxing,“Next door to the Doctor’s.”
“Majakoft,
“Teacher of Boxing,
“Next door to the Doctor’s.”
Again—
“On account of want of storage room, a quantity of old clothes are atpresent for sale, by private arrangement, at No. 2 Pump Lane.13Repeated requests to remove them having been of no effect, I am obliged to dispose of them in this way. The clothes are quite fresh, having been in salt for a long time.”
“On account of want of storage room, a quantity of old clothes are atpresent for sale, by private arrangement, at No. 2 Pump Lane.13Repeated requests to remove them having been of no effect, I am obliged to dispose of them in this way. The clothes are quite fresh, having been in salt for a long time.”
After the reading of the newspaper came instrumental music and singing, and it was far on in the night before we sought our berths.
“Monday, December 25th (Christmas-day). Thermometer at 36° Fahr. below zero (-38° C.). I took a walk south in the beautiful light of the full moon. At a newly made crack I went through the fresh ice with one leg and got soaked; but such an accident matters very little in this frost. The water immediately stiffens into ice; it does not make one very cold, and one feels dry again soon.
“They will be thinking much of us just now at home and giving many a pitying sigh over all the hardships we are enduring in this cold, cheerless, icy region. But I am afraid their compassion would cool if they could look in upon us, hear the merriment that goes on, and see all our comforts and good cheer. They can hardly be better off at home. I myself have certainly never lived a more sybaritic life, and have never had more reason to fear the consequences it brings in its train. Just listen to to-day’s dinner menu:
And along with all this that Ringnes bock-beer which is so famous in our part of the world. Was this the sort of dinner for men who are to be hardened against the horrors of the Arctic night?
“Every one had eaten so much that supper had to be skipped altogether. Later in the evening coffee was served, with pineapple preserve, gingerbread, vanilla-cakes, cocoanut macaroons, and various other cakes, all the work of our excellent cook, Juell; and we ended up with figs, almonds, and raisins.
“Now let us have the breakfast, just to complete the day: coffee, freshly baked bread, beautiful Danish butter, Christmas cake, Cheddar cheese, clove-cheese, tongue, corned-beef, and marmalade. And if any one thinks that this is a specially good breakfast because it is Christmas-day he is wrong. It is just what we have always, with the addition of the cake, which is not part of the every-day diet.
“Add now to this good cheer our strongly built, safe house, our comfortable saloon, lighted up with the large petroleum lamp and several smaller ones (when we have no electric light), constant gayety, card-playing, and books in any quantity, with or without illustrations, good and entertaining reading, and then a good, sound sleep—what more could one wish?
“ ... But, O Arctic night, thou art like a woman, a marvellously lovely woman. Thine are the noble, pure outlines of antique beauty, with its marble coldness. On thy high, smooth brow, clear with the clearness of ether, is no trace of compassion for the little sufferings of despised humanity; on thy pale, beautiful cheek no blush of feeling. Among thy raven locks, waving out into space, the hoar-frost has sprinkled its glittering crystals. The proud lines of thy throat, thy shoulders’ curves, are so noble, but, oh! unbendingly cold; thy bosom’s white chastity is feelingless as the snowy ice. Chaste, beautiful, and proud, thou floatest through ether over the frozen sea, thy glittering garment, woven of aurora beams, covering the vault of heaven. But sometimes I divine a twitch of pain on thy lips, and endless sadness dreams in thy dark eye.
“Oh, how tired I am of thy cold beauty! I long to return to life. Let me get home again, as conqueror or as beggar; what does that matter? But let me get home to begin life anew. The years are passing here, and what do they bring? Nothing but dust, dry dust, which the first wind blows away; new dust comes in its place, and the next wind takes it too. Truth? Why should we always make so much of truth? Life is more than cold truth, and we live but once.