THE SAILMAKER BUSY 135 



his treasure to the shore party. He could not under- 

 stand what we wanted with a sewing-machine at Fram- 

 heim. The first thing he did when the Fram reached 

 Buenos Aires was to explain to the local representative 

 of the Singer Sewing Machine Company how absolutely 

 necessary it was to have his loss made good. His gift 

 of persuasion helped him again, and he got a new 

 machine. 



For that matter, it was not surprising that Ronne 

 was fond of his machine. He could use it for all sorts 

 of things sailmaker's, shoemaker's, saddler's, and tailor's 

 work was all turned out with equal celerity. He estab- 

 lished his workshop in the chart-house, and there the 

 machine hummed incessantly through the tropics, the 

 west wind belt, and the ice-floes too; for, quick as our 

 sailmaker was with his fingers, the orders poured in 

 even more quickly. Ronne was one of those men 

 whose ambition it is to get as much work as possible 

 done in the shortest possible time, and with increasing 

 astonishment he saw that here he would never be 

 finished; he might go at it as hard as he liked there 

 was always something more. To reckon up all that 

 he delivered from his workshop during these months 

 would take us too long; it is enough to say that all the 

 work was remarkably well done, and executed with 

 admirable rapidity. Perhaps one of the things he 

 personally prided himself most on having made was 

 the little three-man tent which was afterwards left at 



