Second Autumn in the Ice. 477 



so inexpressibly forlorn, so far, far removed from the 

 noise and unrest of men and all their striving. What 

 is life thus isolated ? A strange, aimless process ; and 

 man a machine which eats, sleeps, awakes ; eats and 

 sleeps again, dreams dreams, but never lives. Or is life 

 really nothing else ? And is it just one more phase of 

 the eternal martyrdom, a new mistake of the erring 

 human soul, this banishing of one's self to the hopeless 

 wilderness, only to long there for what one has left 

 behind ? Am I a coward ? Am I afraid of death ? Oh, 

 no ! but in these nio-hts such lono-ino- can come over 



o <_> o 



one for all beauty, for that which is contained in a single 

 word, and the soul flees from this interminable and rigid 

 world of ice. When one thinks how short lite is, and 

 that one came away from it all of one's own free will, and 

 remembers, too, that another is suffering- the pain of 

 constant anxiety, 'true, true till death.' 'Oh, mankind, 

 thy ways are passing strange ! We are but as flakes of 

 foam, helplessly driven over the tossing sea.' 



"Wednesday, October loth. Exactly 33 years old, 

 then. There is nothing to be said to that, except that 

 life is moving on, and will never turn back. They have 

 all been touchingly nice to me to-day, and we have held 

 fete. They surprised me in the morning by having the 

 saloon ornamented with flags. They had hung the 

 * Union' above Sverdrup's place.* W T e accused Amundsen 



* An allusion, no doubt, to his political opinions (Trans.}. 



