THE FOURTH WINTER AND SPRING. 361 



they were driven away from the carcase they lay down again to 

 await their turn. I hurried back to camp to fetch the dogs' 

 harness ; we put a connecting lanyard through the nose of the 

 mighty fallen, and set off. 



The dogs knew well enough that this meant food for them, and 

 the nearer we came to camp the harder they pulled. In fact, I 

 had to sit on the carcase to keep them back, and, jolting backwards 

 and forwards, on this new kind of conveyance I made my entrance 

 into camp, in the light spring night. The bear was at once 

 skinned, and the dogs had a meal. When they had finished, there 

 was hardly any space between their ribs. 



In order that the dogs might recover as much as possible, we 

 remained a day at ' Bjbrneleiren ' (Bear Camp), and broke camp 

 on Friday, April 18, with full music from the north wind. But, 

 though it was against us, our progress was not bad on the hard- 

 packed, snow, and in the evening we camped at our old ground 

 on the south side of Storoen. Not far off was a well-preserved 

 Eskimo house, which was now snowed down ; but we knew the 

 place from of old, dug our way into the house, and left some 

 things in it. We piled up some stones outside the door to keep 

 the foxes out. 



There had been a good deal of open water along the east coast 

 of Storoen, and three or four miles south of it we came into thin 

 autumn ice, which was much pressed up. It was very bad to 

 travel in, but there was bear-track upon bear-track. We also saw 

 two living examples of these animals, but we had not time to 

 think about them now, nor could we drive more food than we 

 already had with us. 



Next day we went on again northward, in lovely quiet weather, 

 but over the same kind of ice. We saw countless tracks of bears, 

 foxes, and wolves ; they had been marching backwards and for- 

 wards on the young ice round the island. At noon we passed a 

 point where two hares were sitting a little way above the crack ; 

 this was too much for me, and I had to go and shoot them. When 

 evening came, with bad weather, we had done a nice day's march, 

 and were able to camp a little way south of Maiodden. 



The bad weather continued, but we were so late that we were 



