i 9 2 SPITSBERGEN chap, xiii 



breakfasts and twenty suppers in twenty-one days. Perhaps 

 we overdid economy in provisions. We rationed ourselves 

 on the most scientific principles, and the food we took 

 abolished hunger at periodic intervals, but we began to 

 doubt whether it was so sustaining as a generous diet of 

 ordinary meats and other less scientifically combined pre- 

 parations. At all events, for some not precisely discoverable 

 cause, we were suffering from a peculiar slackness, and 

 fatigue came quickly upon us. It may have been the fault 

 of the weather, or the damp, or the climate, or the lack of 

 sun. The air of Spitsbergen is not stimulating. It resembles 

 that of a moist English spring, when the ground is clammy 

 beneath a dripping sky. 



So we lay late in bed, listening to the call of a purple 

 sandpiper, or writing rhymes, and all the while it was really 

 a vague reluctance to put on our wet stockings that was the 

 most potent factor in postponing our start. Why one should 

 have such an objection to wet stockings was a problem I 

 could not solve. Ten minutes after the day's march began 

 the driest hose must be as wet as the wettest, for stream- 

 wading was a continual necessity. The fact however remains, 

 and is here veraciously recorded. The day's march was a 

 dull enough affair and long. The old tracks were practically 

 retrodden, the ponies being left to their own devices much 

 of the way and giving no trouble. Spits plodded steadily. 

 Bergen's method was to make periodic halts and then trot 

 on and catch up with his companion — the quaintest little trot 

 imaginable. 



It was wonderful how the rivers had gone down in our 

 absence. Acres of channels were dry and the deep places 

 were grown shallow, — a blissful change. Nevertheless there 

 was water enough to pass, and the loads got so thoroughly 

 wetted that, as Garwood said, the only dry thing left in his 

 bundle was his Norwegian grammar. There were some 



