SCHEI'S NARRATIVE. 473 



to notice me, and I then went close up to it. It did not move it 

 was stone dead ! 



' After this I slowly came to myself, and realized that I had 

 shot my first and my second reindeer. I had something now with 

 which to score off the others on board ! I then thought of my poor 

 hungry dogs, and rejoiced on their account. I went up to fetch 

 my glasses and various other things where I had first lain and 

 shot, and, to my shame and annoyance, found six empty cartridge 

 cases lying about ; but I had my two reindeer, and to judge of 

 distance in certain conditions is difficult, and can only be learned 

 by practice, which I had not. 



' Thanks to the fine weather, the reindeer were soon skinned, 

 and I perspiring down under a load of marrow-bones and pieces of 

 venison rolled up in one of the skins. But I perspired willingly, 

 and the hour and a half s walk to camp was over almost before I 

 knew anything about it. 



' Hendriksen had for once tried in vain for a seal, which was 

 lying up on the ice, and greeted me with the news that the sign 

 of the times had come, when I met him on his way home. We 

 had often talked of what a good feed the dogs should have as soon 

 as the seals began to take to the ice. Meanwhile I said nothing 

 about my shoot, but as we approached the tent, he noticed 

 the bundle of reindeer- skin. He stared at it till he was so near 

 that he could be certain what it was. " Hast thou shot a deer ? " 

 he asked, in his northern dialect. " Well, well, well. Hast thou 

 shot two ? What a gorge the dogs shall have ! " 



' Our spirits were unusually high that evening, raised by the 

 marrow-bone soup and a dram, and an animated conversation on 

 reindeer-shooting on King Oscar Land and Spitzbergen continued 

 until far into the night. 



' The day afterwards the dogs were to " have their gorge," and 

 they had it till nothing remained but a few well-gnawed bones. 



' I had the annoyance at this time of losing a dog. It was a 

 puppy, and did not belong to the team. It had been lent to me 

 in the place of my old " Bas," of honoured memory, who had died 

 of old age and sickness. The puppy came up with us to be fed, 

 but was lost on the way back, and had not turned up the following 



