“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 4 P.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 in the 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.’ According to 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 then noticed 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.
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,[12] I had thought it 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 go the 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 shame to 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 little fellow’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?’