338 Chapter VI. 



after the walrus ; and Mogstad and Peter had gone three 

 miles east, and it was as broad as ever there. 



"Wednesday, January 24th. At supper this evening 

 Peter told some of his remarkable Spitzbergen stories 

 about his comrade Andreas Bek. 'Well, you see, it was 

 up about Dutchman's Island, or Amsterdam Island, that 

 Andreas Bek and I were on shore and got in among 

 all the graves. We thought we'd like to see what was 

 in them, so we broke up some of the coffins, and there 

 they lay. Some of them had still flesh on their jaws 

 and noses, and some of them still had their caps on their 

 heads. Andreas, he was a devil of a fellow, you see, and 

 he broke up the coffins and got hold of the skulls, and 

 rolled them about here and there. Some of them he set 

 up for targets and shot at. Then he wanted to see if 

 there was marrow left in their bones, so he took and 

 broke a thigh-bone and, sure enough, there was marrow ; 

 he took and picked it out with a wooden pin.' 



" ' How could he do a thino- like that ? ' 



O 



" ' Oh, it was only a Dutchman, you know. But he 

 had a bad dream that night, had Andreas. All the dead 

 men came to fetch him, and he ran from them and got 

 right out on the bowsprit, and there he sat and yelled, 

 w r hile the dead men stood on the forecastle. And 

 the one with his broken thio-h-bone in his hand was 



O 



foremost, and he came crawling out, and wanted 

 Andreas to put it together again. But just then he 

 wakened. We were lying in the same berth, you see, 



