28 SPITSBERGEN 



bow formed out of the root of the fir tree. More 

 nails were forged into arrow-heads, tied with sinew on 

 to light sticks cut with the knife, the shafts being 

 feathered from the feathers of seafowl. With these 

 weapons they shot, before they had finished, two hun- 

 dred and fifty reindeer, and they kept the skins, as they 

 did also those of a large number of blue and white 

 foxes, as we shall see in the sequel. In their own 

 protection they killed nine bears, the only one they 

 deliberately attacked being the first. 



To be sure of keeping their fire alight they modelled 

 a lamp out of clay, which they filled with deer-fat, 

 with twisted linen for a wick ; but the clay was too 

 porous, the fat ran through it; so they made another 

 lamp of the same stuff, dried it in the air, heated it red 

 hot, and cooled it in a sort of thin starch made of flour 

 and water, strengthening the pottery by pasting linen 

 rags over it. The result was so successful that they 

 made a second lamp as a reserve. Some wreckage 

 gave them a little cordage and a quantity of oakum, 

 which came in for lamp-wicks. The lamp, like the 

 sacred fire, was never allowed to go out. To make 

 themselves clothes, they soaked skins in fresh water till 

 the hair could be pulled off easily, and rubbed them 

 well, and then rubbed deer fat into them until they 

 were pliant and supple. Some of the skins they pre- 

 pared as furs. Out of nails they, after many failures, 

 made awls and needles, getting the eyes by piercing the 

 heads with the point of the knife, and smoothing and 

 pointing them by rounding and whetting them on a 

 stone. 



For six years they lived in this desert place. Then 



