“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! that is 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. It is 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 visitant
(By H. Egidius, from a Photograph)