80 NEW LAND. 



had a profession of their own in the old galley, where they pressed 

 dog-food into moulds. Fosheim, as I mentioned before, was 

 engaged in building the hut, to which was added the repairing of 

 the old sledges, and the making of new ones. 



Peder Hendriksen was the doctor's scientific assistant ; once a 

 fortnight they went off to the sound, to take the temperature of the 

 water. They had great difficulty at first in making a hole in the 

 ice, which was a couple of feet thick, but one fine day a seal took 

 possession of it, and ever afterwards it was kept open for them. 

 As a reward for its work as an ice-breaker, the seal was given a 

 stock-fish every day. I do not know if it appreciated its payment, 

 but, at any rate, every time they returned the fish was gone. 



A pleasant change in the long working days of the polar night 

 were birthdays and festivals. Orders were then issued to assemble 

 in ' full dress,' a command which was obeyed with great alacrity, 

 but which was necessarily more or less limited by circum- 

 stances. The first step, and the one which cost us most, was to 

 wash ourselves clean, a condition which the polar explorer looks 

 upon as the greatest luxury. Then came the next stage of trans- 

 formation, the attire. It may, perhaps, be conceded that full dress 

 on board the ' Fram ' was not always complete, not always quite 

 uniform ; but this only added to the richness and impressiveness 

 of the ensemble. Some of us did indeed appear in a white collar 

 and a neck-tie, as well as other civilized appurtenances ; while Bay 

 and Fosheim, in whom was personified any coxcombry that may have 

 been latent in the members of the expedition, were in a position - 

 to wear even clean cuffs. But, as a rule, we had to make use of 

 anything that came to hand by way of decorating our persons, such 

 as variegated bows, coloured pocket-handkerchiefs, artificial flowers, 

 and the like, and one of us even arrayed himself in a Norwegian flag. 

 Our spirits were in accordance; the doctor was indefatigable in 

 keeping things going, and Bay the same ; his good-humoured 

 Danish jokes and his comparatively elegant attire gave him a 

 peculiar position as a man of society and exponent of civilization. 

 Later on, certainly, he did fall off; he lost his clean cuffs, his 

 clothes became somewhat threadbare ; and in his most retrograde 

 period he was obliged even to borrow a coat of his ' colleague ' the 



