138 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



honest desire to be sociable and cheerful, the conversation 

 soon flags. First one, then another, gets occupied with his 

 private thoughts and forgets his comrades, until a painful silence 

 calls us back to reality and we make a fresh attempt at liveliness. 

 But before long we are again eating our meal in silence. So it 

 happened on this Christmas Eve. The dinner was really 

 splendid, we took our time over it, and when we came to the 

 dessert we drank the health of absent friends. But even this 

 ceremony could not raise our cheerful spirits, and we were all 

 secretly longing to retire to the privacy of our bunk and think 

 of other Christmas Eves, long since gone by. At last, by 

 mutual consent, we gave up all attempts to make the evening 

 a success, and turned in, to think of home and the people we 

 most desired to be with, until the songs from the forecastle, 

 which reached us muffled by bulkheads and snow, made us sleep 

 and dream of the happy days of childhood, when Christmas was 

 Christmas. 



On December 25 we had a big feast in the cabin for the 

 Eskimos, who came in great number, dressed in such splendour 

 as their wardrobes allowed, washed clean, and combed. Also 

 the children were invited, as it was chiefly to be a festival for 

 the little ones. 



A big Christmas fairy, which Miss Hoffmann, the lady who 

 superintended the knitting of our woollen wear in Copenhagen, 

 had sent up to us, was the keynote of the day and excited a 

 great deal of interest. But no one wanted it ; all the little girls, 

 who would, we expected, only have been too eager to get hold 

 of it, for some reason or other became frightened and ran to their 

 mothers for protection. One of the boys, however, was bold 

 enough to claim it, having seen that it would be a really good 

 thing to tease the girls with, but as we did not know what 

 reason the children had for shunning it as they did, we thought 

 that it would not be wise to let him have it, and gave it to 

 Nagoorok, who was too small to protest, and Tullik seemed not 

 to mind. 



We fed the children on dates and sweets, gave them the 

 remnants of our Christmas cakes, besides giving everybody 

 deer steak, bread and butter, and jam. Jam they like very 

 much, and after we had opened several cans we had to appear 

 not to notice that some one was scraping an empty can for the 



