“Why will it not snow? Christmas is near, and what is 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 move among. 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 in it, 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, though we have 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, 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 jaws round 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 saw how 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.
