The Winter Night. 355 



seems to me at times. When I look at the picture of 

 our beautiful home in the evening light, with my 

 wife standing in the garden, I feel as if it were 

 impossible that this could go on much longer. But 

 only the merciless fates know when we shall stand 

 there together again, feeling all life's sweetness as 



we look out over the smiling fjord, and 



Taking" everything into calculation, if I am to be 

 perfectly honest, I think this is a wretched state of 

 matters. We are now in about 80 N. lat., in 

 September we were in 79 ; that is, let us say, one 

 degree for five months. If we go on at this rate we 

 shall be at the Pole in forty-five, or say fifty, months, 

 and in ninety or one hundred months at 80 N. lat. 

 on the other side of it, with probably some prospect 

 of getting out of the ice and home in a month or two 

 more. At best, if things go on as they are doing now, 

 we shall be home in eight years. I remember Brogger 

 writing before I left, when I was planting small bushes 

 and trees in the garden for future generations, that no 

 one knew what length of shadow these trees would cast 

 by the time I came back. Well, they are lying under the 

 winter snow now, but in spring they will shoot and 

 grow again how often ? Oh ! at times this inactivity 

 crushes one's very soul ; one's life seems as dark as 

 the winter night outside ; there is sunlight upon no 

 part of it except the past and the far, far distant 

 future. I feel as if I must break through this dead- 



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