“In the Water Lay Walruses”
During this time the gulls were living in luxury. There was abundance of refuse, blubber, entrails, and other internal organs. They gathered in large flocks from all quarters, both ivory and glaucus gulls, and kept up a perpetual screaming and noise both night and day. When they had eaten as much as they could manage they generally sat out on the ice-hummocks and chattered together. When we came down to skin they withdrew only a very little way from the carcasses, and sat waiting patiently in long rows on the ice beside us, or, led on by a few bold officers, drew continually nearer. No sooner did a little scrap of blubber fall than two or three ivory-gulls would pounce upon it, often at our very feet, and fight over it until the feathers flew. Outside the fulmars were sailing in their silent, ghost-like flight to and fro over the surface of the water. Up and down the edge of the shore flocks of kittiwakes moved incessantly, darting like an arrow, with a dull splash, towards the surface of the water, whenever a little crustacean appeared there. We were particularly fond of these birds, for they kept exclusively to the marine animals and left our blubber alone; and then they were so light and pretty. But up and down along the shore the skua (Stercorarius crepidatus) chased incessantly, and every now and again we were startled by a pitiful cry of distress above our heads; it was a kittiwake pursued by a skua. How often we followed with our eyes that wild chase up in the air, until at last the kittiwake had to drop its booty, and down shot the skua, catching it even before it touched the water! Happy creatures that can move with such freedom up there! Out in the water lay walruses, diving and bellowing, often whole herds of them; and high up in the air, to and fro, flew the little auks in swarms; you could hear the whir of their wings far off. There were cries and life on all sides. But soon the sun will sink, the sea will close in, the birds will disappear one after another towards the south, the polar night will begin, and there will be profound, unbroken silence.
It was with pleasure that we at last, on September 7th, set to work to build our hut. We had selected a good site in the neighborhood, and from this time forward we might have been seen daily going out in the morning like other laborers, with a can of drinking-water in one hand and a gun in the other. We quarried stones up among the débris from the cliff, dragged them together, dug out the site, and built walls as well as we could. We had no tools worth mentioning; those we used most were our two hands. The cut-off sledge-runner again did duty as a pick with which to loosen the fast-frozen stones, and when we could not manage to dig up the earth on our site with our hands we used a snow-shoe staff with an iron ferrule. We made a spade out of the shoulder-blade of a walrus tied to a piece of a broken snow-shoe staff, and a mattock out of a walrus tusk tied to the crosstree of a sledge. They were poor things to work with, but we managed it with patience, and little by little there arose solid walls of stone with moss and earth between. The weather was growing gradually colder, and hindered us not a little in our work. The soil we had to dig in hardened, and the stones that had to be quarried froze fast; and there came snow too. But great was our surprise when we crept out of our den on the morning of the 12th of September to find the most delightful thaw, with 4° (C.) of heat (39.2° Fahr.). This was almost the highest temperature we had experienced throughout the expedition. On every side streams were tumbling in foaming falls down from mountain and glacier, humming along merrily among the stones down to the sea. Water trickled and tinkled everywhere; as if by a stroke of magic, life had returned to frozen nature, and the hill looked green all over. One could fancy one’s self far south, and forget that a long, long winter was drawing near. The day after, everything was changed again. The gentle gods of the south, who yesterday had put forth their last energies, had once more fled; the cold had returned, snow had fallen and covered every trace: it would not yield again. This little strip of bare ground, too, was in the power of the genii of the cold and darkness; they held sway now, right down to the sea. I stood looking out over it. How desolate and forsaken this spell-bound nature looked! My eye fell upon the ground at my feet. Down there among the stones, the poppy still reared its beautiful blossoms above the snow; the last rays of the departing sun would once more kiss its yellow petals, and then it would creep beneath its covering to sleep through the long winter, and awake again to new life in the spring. Ah to be able to do the same!
After a week’s work the walls of our hut were finished. They were not high, scarcely 3 feet above the ground; but we had dug down the same distance into the ground, so we reckoned that it would be high enough to stand up in. Now the thing was to get it roofed, but this was not so easy. The only materials we had towards it were, as before mentioned, the log we had found and the walrus hides. The log, which was quite 12 inches across, Johansen at last, after a day’s work, succeeded in cutting in two with our little axe, and with no less labor we rolled it up over the talus and on to the level, and it was laid on the roof as the ridgepiece. Then there were the hides; but they were stiff and frozen fast to the meat and blubber heaps which they covered. With much difficulty we at length loosened them by using wedges of walrus tusks, stone, and wood. To transport these great skins over the long distance to our hut was a no less difficult matter. However, by rolling them, carrying them, and dragging them we accomplished this too; but to get the frozen skins stretched over the hut was the worst of all. We got on pretty well with three half-skins, just managing to bend them a little; but the fourth half was frozen quite stiff, and we had to find a hole in the ice, and sink it in the sea, to thaw it.
It was almost a cause for anxiety, I thought, that all this time we saw nothing of any bears. They were what we had to live upon all through the winter, and the six we had would not go far. I thought, however, that it might easily be accounted for, as the fjord-ice, to which the bear prefers to keep, had taken its departure on the day when we had nearly drifted out to sea with the walruses, and I thought that, when the ice now formed again, bears would appear once more. It was therefore a relief when one morning (September 23d) I caught sight of a bear in front of me, just as I came round the promontory to look at the skin that we had in soak in the sea. It was standing on the shore close by the skin. It had not seen me, and I quickly drew back to let Johansen, who was following with his gun, pass me, while I ran back to fetch mine. When I returned, Johansen lay on the same spot behind a stone, and had not fired. There were two bears, one by the hut and one by the shore; and Johansen could not get up to the one without being seen by the other. When I had gone after my gun the bear had turned its steps towards the hut; but just as it reached it Johansen suddenly saw two bear’s paws come quickly over the edge of the wall and hit out at the first bear, and a head followed immediately after. This fellow was busily gnawing at our roof hides, which he had torn down and bent, so that we had to put them into the sea too, to get them thawed. The first bear had to retreat to the shore once more, where we afterwards discovered it had drawn up our hide and had been scraping the fat off it. Under cover of some hummocks we now ran towards it. It noticed us, and set off running, and I was only able to send a bullet through its body from behind. Shouting out to Johansen that he must look after the other bear, I set off running, and after a couple of hours’ pursuit up the fjord I at last chased it up under the wall of a glacier, where it prepared to defend itself. I went right up to it, but it growled and hissed, and made one or two attacks on me from the elevation on which it stood before I finally put an end to its existence. When I got back Johansen was busy skinning the other bear. It had been alarmed by us when we attacked the first, and had gone a long way out over the ice; it had then returned to look for its companion, and Johansen had shot it. Our winter store was increasing.
The next day (September 24th), as we were setting out to work at our hut, we saw a large herd of walruses lying out on the ice. We had both had more than enough of these animals, and had very little inclination for them. Johansen was of candid opinion that we had no need for them, and could let them lie in peace; but I thought it was rather improvident to have food and fuel lying at one’s very door and make no use of them so we set off with our guns. To steal up to the animals, under cover of some elevations on the ice, was a matter of small difficulty, and we had soon come within 40 feet of them, and could lie there quietly and watch them. The point was to choose one’s victim, and make good use of one’s shot, so as not to waste cartridges. There were both old and young animals, and, having had more than enough of big ones, we decided to try for the two smallest that we could see; we thought we had no need of more than two. As we lay waiting for them to turn their heads and give us the chance of a good shot, we had plenty of opportunity to watch them. They are strange animals. They lay incessantly poking one another in the back with their huge tusks, both the big old ones and the little young ones. If one of them turned over a little, so as to come near and disturb his neighbor, the latter immediately raised itself, grunting, and dug its tusks into the back of the first. It was by no means a gentle caress, and it is well for them that they have such a thick hide; but, as it was, the blood ran down the backs of several of them. The other would, perhaps, start up too, and return the little attention in the same manner. But it was when another guest came up from the sea that there was a stir in the camp; they all grunted in chorus, and one of the old bulls that lay nearest to the new arrival gave him some well-meant blows. The new-comer, however, drew himself cautiously up, bowed respectfully, and little by little drew himself in among the others, who also then gave him as many blows as time and circumstances would permit, until they finally composed themselves again, and lay quiet until another interruption came. We waited in vain for the animals we had picked out to turn their heads enough to let us get a good shot; but as they were comparatively small we thought that a bullet in the middle of the forehead might be enough for them, and at last we fired. They started up, however, and turned over, half stunned, into the water. Then there was a commotion! The whole herd quickly raised their ugly heads, glared at us, and one by one plunged out over the edge of the ice. We had hastily loaded again, and as it was not difficult now to get a good shot we fired, and there lay two animals, one young and one old. Most of the others dived, only one remaining quietly lying, and looking wonderingly, now at its two dead companions, and now at us as we came up to it. We did not quite know what to do; we thought that the two that were now lying there would give us more than enough to do, but nevertheless it was tempting to take this great monster as well, while we were about it. While Johansen was standing with his gun, considering whether he should fire or not, I took the opportunity of photographing both him and the walrus. It ended, however, in our letting it go unharmed; we did not think we could afford to sacrifice more cartridges upon it. Meantime the water beyond was seething with furious animals, as they broke up the ice round about and filled the air with their roaring. The big bull himself seemed especially anxious to get at us; he kept returning to the edge of the ice, getting half up on to it to grunt and bellow at us and look long at his dead comrades, whom he evidently wished to take with him. But we would not waste more cartridges upon them, and he threw himself back, only to return again immediately. Gradually the whole herd departed, and we could hear the big bull’s grunting becoming more and more distant; but suddenly his huge head appeared again at the edge of the ice, close to us, as he challenged us with a roar, and then disappeared again as quickly as he had come. This was repeated three or four times after our having in the intervals heard him far out; but at last he disappeared entirely, and we continued our work of skinning in peace. We very quickly skinned the smaller of the walruses; it was easy to manipulate compared to those we were accustomed to. The other, however, was a great fellow that could not be easily turned over in the hollow in the snow where he lay; so we contented ourselves with skinning one side from head to tail, and then went home again with our blubber and skins. We now thought we should have blubber enough for winter fuel, and had also abundance of skins for covering the roof of our hut.
“I Photographed Him and the Walrus”
The walruses still kept near us for some time. Every now and then we would hear some violent blows on the ice from beneath, two or three in succession, and then a great head would burst up with a crash through the ice. It would remain there for a time panting and puffing so that it would be heard a long way off, and then vanish again. On September 25th, while we were pulling our roof hides out of the water at a hole near the shore, we heard the same crashing in the ice a little farther out, and a walrus came up and then dived again. “Look there! It won’t be long before we have him in this hole.” The words were scarcely spoken, when our hide in the water was pushed aside and a huge head, with bristles and two long tusks, popped up in front of us. It gazed fixedly and wickedly at us standing there, then there was a tremendous splash and it was gone.