NANSEN AS A MIGHTY NIMROD 373 



There was no sense in thinking of waiting for light to shoot by. It was not 

 midnight, and I had that terrible mate to the north of me; besides, the wind 

 was not to be trusted. I held the rifle up against the sky to see the bead 

 clearly, and then lowered it on the reindeer. I_did this once, twice, thrice. 

 The bead was still far from clear, but, all the same, I thought I might hit, 

 and pulled the trigger. The two deer gave a sudden start, looked round in 

 astonishment, and bolted off a little way south. There they stood still again, 

 and at this moment were joined by a third deer, which had been standing 

 rather farther north. I fired off all the cartridges in the magazine, and all to 

 the same good purpose. The creatures started and moved off a little at each 

 shot and then trotted farther south. Presently they made another halt, to 

 take a long careful look at me ; and I dashed off westward as hard as I could 

 run, to turn them. Now they were off straight in the direction where some 

 of my comrades ought to be. I expected every moment to hear shots and see 

 one or two of the animals fall; but away they ambled southward, quite un- 

 checked. At last, far to the south, crack went a rifle. I could see by the 

 smoke that it was at too low a range; so in high dudgeon I shouldered my 

 rifle and lounged in the direction of the shot. It was pleasant to see such a 

 good result for all one's trouble. 



"No one was to be seen anywhere. At length I met Sverdrup; it was 

 he who had fired. Soon Blessing joined us, but all the others had long since 

 left their posts. While Blessing went back to the boat and his botanizing 

 box, Sverdrup and I went on to try our luck once more. A little farther 

 south we came to a valley stretching right across the island. On the farther 

 side of it we saw a man standing on a hillock, and not far from him a herd 

 of five or six reindeer. As it never occurred to us to doubt that the man 

 was in the act of stalking these, we avoided going in that direction, and soon 

 he and his reindeer disappeared to the west. I heard afterwards that he 

 had never seen the deer. As it was evident that when the reindeer to the 

 south of us were startled they would have to come back across this valley, 

 and as the island at this part was so narrow that we commanded the whole 

 of it, we determined to take up our posts here and wait. We accordingly 

 got in the lee of some great boulders, out of the wind. In front of Sverdrup 

 was a large flock of geese, near the mouth of the stream, close down by the 

 shore. They kept up an incessant gabble, and the temptation to have a shot 

 at them v^^as very great; but, considering the reindeer, we thought it best 

 to leave them in peace. They gabbled and waddled away down through the 

 mud and soon took wing. 



