“The bear must have followed on our tracks like a cat, and hiding behind blocks of ice, have slunk after us while we were busy clearing the loose ice away in the channel, with our backs turned toward it. We could see by its tracks that it had wormed its way on its stomach over a ridge in our rear, under cover of an ice-mound in close proximity to Johansen’s kayak.
“While Johansen, without of course suspecting anything, or even looking behind him, was stooping down to lay hold of the hauling-rope, he got a glimpse of some animal lying in a crouching posture at the stern of the kayak. He thought at first it was only the dog Suggen; but before he had time to notice how large it was, he received a blow over the right ear that made him ‘silly,’ and over he went on his back. He now tried to defend himself the best he could with his bare fists, and with one hand gripped the brute by the throat, never once relaxing his hold.
“Just as the bear was about to bite him on the head, he uttered those memorable words, ‘Look sharp!’ The bear kept watching me intently, wondering no doubt what I was up to, when all at once it happily caught sight of one of the dogs, and immediately turned toward it. Johansen now let go his hold of the brute’s throat, and wriggled himself away, while the bear gave poor Suggen a smack with his paw that made him howl as he used to do when he got a thrashing. Kaifas, too, got a smack on the nose. Meanwhile Johansen had got on his feet, and just as I fired had got hold of his gun, which was sticking up out of the hole in the kayak. The only damage done was that the bear had scraped a little of the grime and dirt off Johansen’s right cheek, so that he goes with a white stripe on it now, besides a scratch on one hand. Kaifas, too, had his nose scratched.”
On reaching land they had to shoot Kaifas and Suggen, the sole survivors of their twenty-six faithful companions. It was a hard task. Johansen took Nansen’s dog Kaifas in a leash behind a hummock, while Nansen did the same with Johansen’s Suggen. Their two guns went off simultaneously, and the two men stood friendless, alone in the desert of ice. They did not say many words to each other on meeting.
Along the coast of the land they discovered there was open water, of which they availed themselves, first lashing their kayaks together so that they formed in fact a double kayak.
They rowed for several days, and were fortunate enough to shoot a walrus; but they had no idea what land it was, or where they were.
One evening, however, the channel closed up, and no more open water was to be found. But on Aug. 13 it opened up again, and they were able to push on. After twenty-four hours it closed once more, and they had to drag the kayaks on the sleigh overland. On the evening of Aug. 18 they reached one of the islands they had been steering for, and for the first time for two years had bare earth under their feet. Here they revelled in “the joys of country life,”—now jumping over the rocks, or gathering moss and specimens of the flora, etc.,—and hoisted the Norwegian flag.
In its summer dress this northern land seemed to them to be a perfect paradise; plenty of seals, sea-birds, flowers, and mud—and in front the blue sea.
They were, therefore, loath to leave it, but onward they must proceed, if they wished to reach home that autumn. But fate willed it otherwise.