A TRAGEDY OF THE FAR NORTH 



Three feet from the flames the rocks were white with a 

 thick coat of hoar-frost, and the walls and roof glittered 

 like a bed of diamonds. It was a strange little den, and to 

 me it seemed colder than out of doors. The brilliant fire 

 was but mockery. Fairly well illuminated was the end 

 of the hut where we sat, but beyond was a gloomy recess 

 from which the light of the flames was cut off by a pier of 

 rocks which served as a support for the roof. There was 

 no window. 



Bjoervig told me about Bentzen. The poor fellow had 

 been taken ill early in November. All through that month 

 and December he had been unable to get out of the house, 

 and most of the time he spent lying in his bag. Occasion- 

 ally he was delirious. Death came the day after New 

 Year. Paul paused, and for lack of something else to say 

 I asked him where he had buried the body. 



" I have not buried him, sir," was the reply, " He lies in 

 there," pointing to the dark end of the hut. 



" Why did you not bury him, Paul? " 



" Because, sir, I promised him I wouldn't." 



I shall never forget that moment. At first the words 

 just uttered did not appear to mean very much — only that 

 a dead man had not been buried. Gradually the full pro- 

 portions of the tragedy dawned upon my consciousness. 

 This man with the soot-blackened face had been com- 

 pelled to pass two months of the Arctic night in this 

 cavern with no other companion than the body of his 

 friend. I lit a little oil-lamp and made my way into the 

 dark end of the hut On the floor at my feet lay a one- 

 man sleeping-bag of reindeer skin, empty, with a blanket 

 tumbled over it, and showing signs of occupancy the 

 night before. Just beyond, within arm's reach, lay a sim- 

 ilar bag. This one was occupied. The flap at the top had 

 been pulled carefully over the face of the sleeper within. 

 Bag and contents were frozen as hard as a rock. 



There, side by side, the quick and the dead had slept 

 for eight weeks! 



As I looked at this weird scene amid the shadows under 

 the scintillating roof of hoar-frost, and thought of the long 

 days that were as black as night and the long nights that 

 were no blacker than the days, that this thing had been so, 



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