A WOEF WINTER. 115 



After this there was another run on night-watches. 



We now saw that shooting was of no use. No more birthdays 

 were at hand, and Bay did not think it worth while to try his 

 luck too often. He knew what he was about. It was plain 

 we must go differently to work if we meant to get hold of any 

 of these rascals, and we began to think about other methods of 

 capture. 



We tried placing snares by the refuse-heap, which was their 

 paradise : they refused to go into them. After that the mate, 

 Peder, and I put a gin out on the point. In the moonlight it 

 looked like a gallows, and the point consequently came to be 

 called ' Galgeodden,' or ' Gallows Point.' But the wolf is a 

 cautious general ; he walked round the snare, and probably studied 

 the apparatus as deeply as we did when constructing it, but he 

 kept at a respectful distance. 



So snares were given up ; and we came to the conclusion that 

 traps would be the thing, but material to make them with was 

 the difficulty. We could not afford new wood ; ice was dismissed 

 as useless, seeing that these creatures have a special faculty for 

 scratching their way through anything of the kind, and stone it 

 was impossible to get hold of. But then Olseii and Fosheim 

 persuaded some one to give them two of the big boxes in which 

 the fat was kept, and these they joined together, lined with tin, 

 and furnished with doors which were heavily weighted with lead. 

 The trap was then placed out on a large sandbank, on the east 

 side of the fjord. 



Stolz and Hassel hit on an entirely new patent method of their 

 own. They fished for them. They baited an enormous halibut- 

 hook with blubber, and in the afternoon, when the dogs had gone 

 back to their kennels, threw it out near the refuse-heap. The 

 hook was attached by a long line to the clapper of the ship's bell, 

 by which means it was intended that the wolf should give notice 

 when it was hooked. It really happened once or twice that one 

 of them took the bait, but as a wolf never eats its prey on the 

 spot, but always takes it a little distance away before beginning 

 to gnaw it, the line was tightened, and the whole of the alarm 

 apparatus in full swing before he had hooked himself. The 



