344 NEW LAND. 



bear creeping up towards me under cover of the meat-heap. It 

 raised itself the moment it saw me, whereupon I fired at it, and 

 it responded with a growl, and ran away. I now went in and lay 

 down on one of my bags as' a mattress, with another as a coverlet 

 (I had two of them), with my head outside the tent-door, and my 

 gun in readiness beside me. I could still now and then hear the 

 growling at the old place. So things went on until half-past three, 

 when I heard the cubs swimming past below the tent. I am quite 

 certain that I heard the voice of an older animal with them ; but 

 I saw nothing, although I ran out of the tent and right down to 

 the ice-foot. After that I neither saw nor heard anything more of 

 the party. 



' By five o'clock it was considerably lighter. I then lighted 

 the " Primus," and warmed myself well ; but I was far too excited 

 as to the result of my nocturnal engagement to feel hunger or 

 thirst, so I did not cook myself any food, but ate a little 

 chocolate. 



' When I went out, the first thing I did was to examine the ground 

 near the tent. This looked very remarkable ; there were deep foot- 

 prints all about the place, among the pebbles and in the loose snow. 

 The ice-foot, which was now dry, as the water had fallen, looked 

 like the floor of a slaughter-house ; there were large puddles of 

 water mixed with blood down below the tent. It appeared as if 

 I had hit my mark with the second shot, for a broad trail of blood 

 led down from the place where the bear had stood. Of the bears 

 themselves I saw nothing whatever. I walked a good way south, 

 first of all, but saw no sign of them. On the way back, in spite 

 of the darkness, I descried something suspiciously yellowish- white 

 at the very edge of the ice-foot, and on closer investigation, it 

 turned out to be a full-grown she-bear. Whether it was alive or 

 dead I could not make out, but its resolute behaviour of the night 

 before had imbued me with so much respect that, for certainty's 

 sake, I gave it a shot in the head. It was, however, stone dead, 

 and had been so for such a long time that the outer part of the 

 paws was already somewhat frozen. 



' To skin the animal was no easy undertaking, as it was lying 

 in an extremely inconvenient position, with its hind quarters poised 



