From Job to Job around the World

by Alfred C. B. Fletcher

A Mr. Gilson of Pennsylvania, superintendent of the Arctic Coal Company, was Turner's roommate, and, with my advent, the foreign population of Tromso was raised to three. This scarcity of aliens made us conspicuous members of the community and a great source of curiosity. We three comprised the American staff of the company; and we all lived at the Grand Hotel. The hotel was a three-story frame building buried up to the window sills of the first floor in snow. It was conducted on purely Norwegian lines.

The average inhabitant of Tromso lives on an incessant diet of fish and boiled potatoes, with an occasional piece of cheese or canned "salt horse." Breakfast is almost an unknown meal, and when it does take place it is seldom held earlier than ten o'clock. Dinner follows at two-thirty in the afternoon and supper at nine in the evening. This is a most distressing schedule when one wishes to keep office hours and accomplish some work during the day. By a special arrangement with the proprietor of the hotel we were able to have our breakfast served in our rooms each morning at half-past eight. Cheese and bread being the usual diet, we could not expect any great variety of food at this meal. On their arrival several months ago, Turner had expressed a wish for soft boiled eggs and Gilson for fried eggs, and these, accompanied with bread and coffee, had been the menu of the initial meal of the day ever since. When I arrived there must have been great confusion in the kitchen among the cooks and waiters to determine what odd notions I might have about eating. However, without consulting me, the maid appeared on my first morning with one soft boiled egg and one fried egg, and this was my assortment for breakfast every day of my month's stay in the hotel.

Bath-tubs seem to be a rarity in Norway, and the town of Tromso had the distinction of possessing one bath house. Our hotel and all private houses, with few exceptions, did not contain a tub. To add to this scarcity, the one bath house only opened its doors to bathers on one day of the week. We American residents were three of its most regular patrons. Bathing in a wash-basin is an unsatisfactory process as well as an extremely awkward one. However, we were forced to this means of cleansing ourselves during the interval that the bath-tubs of the village reposed behind closed doors.

The morning after my arrival I reported for work at the company's office. I was at first assigned to arranging and card indexing a tangled pile of machinery catalogues and supply hand-books. I next prepared a systematic card index of all the articles of merchandise that the company had purchased during the previous years of its existence. I finally became sufficiently familiar with the business to assist in the buying of the food and mining supplies for the summer season at the mine.

The office was a crowded little space on the ground floor of a frame building on the main street of Tromso, and consisted of three small rooms. In addition to the three Americans the staff included a chief clerk and an office boy. The chief clerk was a Norwegian who had served as an American soldier in the Philippines and who spoke excellent English. He was an invaluable man and acted as the channel through which all business of the office was transacted, for the Americans, not knowing Norwegian, had to have him translate all letters and contracts and interpret all conversations. The office boy was a young native who had acquired a fair smattering of English. Although an industrious lad he was frequently drawn from his work in amazement at what he considered the outlandish and freakish mannerisms of the Americans.

The office was busy buying supplies for the summer and coming winter seasons at the mine on Spitzbergen, making contracts for the sale of coal, chartering ships and hiring men as miners and labourers.

Spitzbergen is entirely frozen in eight months of the year, and the mine had an open season, or time when the coal could be shipped out, of four months. It was necessary to have a winter crew and a summer crew. The winter men, who numbered about one hundred, were now on the island and were out of touch with the world, with the exception of communication by means of a wireless station operated by the Norwegian government. This crew did nothing but mine, and the coal was placed in a stock pile alongside of the wharf. A new force of two hundred men was taken to the mine at the opening of the summer season and the huge task of shipping out the coal mined during the winter was undertaken.

The company chartered all its eight boats with the exception of one, the William D. Munroe, which it owned. This ship was in dry-dock undergoing a thorough and expensive overhauling under the numerous and many unnecessary instructions from officials and inspectors of the Norwegian government. The company chartered the other seven tramp steamers at the rate of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a day, procuring them through ship brokers in London and Newcastle.

The coal mined was bituminous with a low percentage of ash and was considered exceptionally good fuel for steamers. The demand for it much exceeded the supply, the production at this time being only twenty-five thousand tons a year, and there was a good market for it at five and six dollars a ton delivered. The larger part of the output was sold to Norwegian steamship companies, most of it being consigned to Christiania, Christiansund, Bergen and Trondhjem. Several cargoes were despatched to Archangel, on the White Sea, for a Russian concern.

Aside from business I found much time to devote to the social life of Tromso. On the second evening after my arrival I received an invitation to attend a ski-ing party of young men and women. It was the plan to ski over the hills of the island back of Tromso to a small cabin about five miles distant, and there cook a meal over a log fire. I knew nothing about ski-ing and had never seen a pair of ski. When one of my Norwegian acquaintances offered to lend me a pair I was puzzled to know how any one could get over the snow with such fence rails strapped to his feet. I was perfectly willing to learn. I donned the two unfamiliar slats and, assisted by two pretty Norwegian women, who did not understand English, started out on the five-mile trip to the cabin. Ten miles was a long distance for a novice. The party numbered about twenty boys and girls, and they were soon far in the lead while my two female aides tussled with me in the rear. We proceeded smoothly enough (the arms of the two girls around my waist and mine, of course, around theirs) until we came to the first hill. This incline looked about a thousand miles long and almost vertically steep. My escorts were expert at the sport, but they did not have sufficient strength to prevent my causing a catastrophe. We started down the hill and in a few seconds were going at the speed of an express train. I never expected to reach the bottom in anything approaching a dignified position. About fifty yards of such travelling was all I could stand, and then the spill took place. I wasn't man enough to fall by myself, but had to drag the poor girls down with me. The three of us rolled down the hill together and landed, half buried in the snow, in the most undignified pile I ever was in. The party ahead returned to untangle and dig us out. It was a most intimate affair. One young woman was almost completely concealed, being half submerged in the snow, while I was so irregularly sprawled out on top of her that she had no possible means of being resurrected until I was removed. I, in turn, was pinned down—for the other young woman had one of her nether limbs so securely entwined around my neck that I felt roped to the earth. She, at the same time, was struggling in a vain effort to dislodge one of her ski from the snow where it had penetrated several feet. The three of us were securely anchored, and if we had tried to attain our relative positions by a deliberate plan we could not have been so successful.