Streamers of Aurora Borealis, 28th November 1893. Pastel Sketch.
At length, however, we got clear, and now discovered, to our joy, that by exerting our utmost strength we could just force the kayaks on against the wind. It was a hard pull, and our arms ached; but still we crept slowly on towards land. The sea was choppy and bad, but our kayaks were good sea-boats; and even mine, with the bullet-hole in it, did so well that I kept to some extent dry. The wind came now and then in such gusts that we felt as if it might lift us out of the water and upset us; but gradually, as we drew nearer in under the high cliffs, it became quieter, and at last, after a long time, we reached the shore, and could take breath. We then rowed in smoother water along the shore up to our camping-place. It was with genuine satisfaction that we clambered on shore that night, and how unspeakably comfortable it was to be lying again snugly within four walls in our little den, wet though we were! A good potful of meat was prepared, and our appetite was ravenous. It was, indeed, with sorrow that we thought of the lost walruses now drifting out there in the storm; but we were glad that we were not still in their company.
I had not slept long, when I was awakened by Johansen, who said there was a bear outside. Even when only half awake, I heard a strange, low grunting just outside the doorway. I started up, seized my gun, and crept out. A she-bear with two large cubs was going up the shore; they had just passed close by our door. I aimed at the she-bear, but, in my haste, I missed her. She started and looked round; and as she turned her broadside to me I sent a bullet through her chest. She gave a fearful roar, and all three started off down the shore. There the mother dropped in a pool on the ice, but the young ones ran on and rushed into the sea, dashing up the foam as they went, and began to swim out. I hastened down to the mother, who was striving and striving to get out of the pool, but in vain. To save ourselves the labor of dragging the heavy animal out, I waited until she had drawn herself up on to the edge, and then put an end to her existence. Meanwhile the young ones had reached a piece of ice. It was very close quarters for two, and only just large enough to hold them; but there they sat, balancing and dipping up and down in the waves. Every now and then one of them fell off, but patiently clambered up again. They cried plaintively and incessantly, and kept looking towards land, unable to understand why their mother was so long in coming. The wind was still high, and they drifted quickly out to sea before it with the current. We thought they would at last swim to land to look for their mother, and that we must wait; we therefore hid ourselves among the stones, so that they should not be afraid of coming on our account. We could still hear them complaining, but the sound became more and more distant, and they grew smaller and smaller out there on the blue waves, till at last it was all we could do to distinguish them as two white dots far out upon the dark plain. We had long been tired of this, and went to our kayaks. But here a sad sight met our eyes. All the walrus flesh which we had brought home with so much trouble lay scattered about on the shore, torn and mangled; and every bit of fat or blubber to be found on it had been devoured. The bears must have been rummaging finely here while we slept. One of the kayaks in which the meat had been lying was thrown half into the water, the other high up among the stones. The bears had been right into them and dragged out the meat; but, fortunately, they were none the worse, so it was easy to forgive the bears, and we benefited by the exchange of bear’s flesh for walrus flesh.
We then launched the kayaks, and put off to chase the young ones to land. As soon as ever they saw us on the water they became uneasy, and while we were still some way off one of them took to the water. The other hesitated for a while, as if afraid of the water, while the first waited impatiently; but at last they both went in. We made a wide circuit round them, and began to drive them towards the land, one of us on each side of them. It was easy to make them go in whatever direction we wanted, and Johansen could not say enough in praise of this simple method of getting bears from one place to another. We did not need to row hard to keep up with them; we went slowly and easily, but surely, towards land. We saw several walruses in the vicinity, but fortunately escaped being attacked by any of them. From the very first it was evident how much better the bear that first went into the water swam, although it was the smaller and thinner. It waited, however, patiently for the other, and kept it company; but at last the pace of the latter became too slow for its companion, who struck out for the shore, the distance between the two growing greater and greater. They had kept incessantly turning their heads to look anxiously at us, and now the one that was left behind looked round even more helplessly than before. While I set off after the first bear, Johansen watched the second, and we drove them ashore by our den, and shot them there.
We had thus taken three bears on that day, and this was a good set-off against our walruses, which had drifted out to sea, and, what was no less fortunate, we found the sunken walrus from the day before floating just at the edge of the shore. We lost no time in towing it into a place of safety in a creek and making it fast. It made a difference to our winter store.
It was late before we turned in that night after having skinned the bears, laid them in a heap, and covered them with the skins to prevent the gulls from getting at them. We slept well, for we had to make up for two nights.
It was not until September 2d that we could set to work on the skinning of our walrus, which still lay in the water. Close to our den there was an opening in the strand-ice,[22] connecting the inner channel between the strand-ice and the land with the outer sea. It was in this opening that we had made it fast, and we hoped to be able to draw it on land here; the glacier-ice went with a gentle incline right out into the water, so that it seemed to promise well. We rounded off the edge of the ice, made a tackle by drawing the rope through a loop we cut in the skin of the head, used our broken-off runner of a sledge as a handspike at the end of the rope, and cut notches in the ice up the beach as a fulcrum for the handspike. But work and toil as we might, it was all we could do to get the huge head up over the edge of the ice. In the midst of this Johansen cried, “I say, look there!” I turned. A large walrus was swimming straight up the channel towards us. It did not seem to be in any hurry, but only opened wide its round eyes, and gazed in astonishment at us and at what we were doing. I suppose that, seeing a comrade, it had come in to see what we were doing with him. Quietly, slowly, and with dignity it came right up to the edge where we stood. Fortunately we had our guns with us, and when I approached with mine it only rose up in the water and gazed long and searchingly at me. I waited patiently until it turned a little, and then sent a bullet into the back of its head. It was stunned for a time, but soon began to move, so that more shots were required. While Johansen ran for cartridges and a harpoon I had to fight with it as I best could, and try to prevent it, with a stick, from splashing out of the channel again. At last Johansen returned, and I did for this walrus. We were delighted over our good fortune; but what the walrus wanted in that narrow channel we have always wondered. These animals must be uncommonly curious. While we were skinning the bears two days before, a walrus with its young one came close in to the edge of the ice and gazed at us; it dived several times, but always returned, and at last drew the whole of the forepart of its body up on to the ice in order to see better. This it did several times, and my approaching to within a few yards of it did not drive it away; it was only when I went up close to it with my gun that it suddenly came to its senses and threw itself backward into the water again, and we could see it far below moving off with its young one by its side.
We now had two great walruses with enormous tusks floating in our channel. We tried once more to drag one of them up, but the attempt was as unsuccessful as before. At last we saw that our only course was to skin them in the water; but this was neither an easy nor an agreeable task. When at last, late in the evening, we had got one side of one animal skinned, it was low-water; the walrus lay on the bottom, and there was no possibility of turning it over, no matter how we toiled and pulled. We had to wait for high tide the following day, in order to get at the other side.
While we were busy with the walruses that day we suddenly saw the whole fjord white with white whales gambolling all round as far as the eye could see. There was an incredible number of them. In the course of an hour they had entirely disappeared. Where they came from and whither they went I was not able to discover.
During the succeeding days we toiled at our task of skinning and cutting up the walruses, and bringing all up into a safe place on the beach. It was disgusting work, lying on the animals out in the water and having to cut down as far as one could reach below the surface of the water. We could put up with getting wet, for one gets dry in time; but what was worse was that we could not avoid being saturated with blubber and oil and blood from head to foot; and our poor clothes, that we should have to live in for another year before we could change, fared badly during those days. They so absorbed oil that it went right through to the skin. This walrus business was unquestionably the worst work of the whole expedition, and had it not been a sheer necessity we should have let the animals lie where they were; but we needed fuel for the winter, even if we could have done without the meat. When at last the task was completed, and we had two great heaps of blubber and meat on shore, well covered by the thick walrus hides, we were not a little pleased.