WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 215 



where we might have to stay indefinitely. Still, two days may 

 alter the aspect of ice entirely : Svendsen details all this to 

 us with the stump of a pencil on the white wood of our new 

 captive's cage to which he puts his black nose and ivory 

 teeth and crushes splinters, now and then using his claws. 

 He must know us all now, but they naturally are not very 

 friendly yet and the deep, musical vibration of their growls 

 coming right aft from the waist, sound sometimes a little 

 like curses " not loud but deep." We can stand that, but 

 when the note changes to something like " For the Lord's 

 sake let me out," to freedom and the wide floe, we have to 

 harden our hearts and think of little children at home. 



At lunch we talk bear and other sport and Arctic caches. 

 The last a subject that is fascinating. The first I ever heard 

 of was from one of Leigh Smith's men of the Eira. We 

 were in the tropics, he was steering when he spoke of it, 

 with longing. He had wintered with Leigh Smith in Franz 

 Josef Land before that part became popular, and as he 

 steered he told me how, before leaving for their forty days' 

 voyage in an open boat to Norway (they had lost their ship 

 in an ice squeeze), they buried the spare rifles, musical 

 instruments, and champagne. How one's teeth watered as 

 we heard of these " beakers, cooled a long age in the deep 

 delved " snow, and little did my companion Bruce or I ever 

 think we would be near that cache ; but five years later 

 Bruce was up there, and found the rifles, musical-boxes and 

 champagne bottles were there, just as described, but alas 

 the bottles were burst ! Gisbert tells me he also saw 

 the same cache ten years later, and he knows of a finer 



one still, still untouched by the A Z expedition. 



It is also in Franz Josef Land a cave in rock, blasted out, 

 and covered with a timber door so thick that not all the 

 polar bears in the Arctic, good carpenters as they are, could 

 open it. That is the Duke d'Abruzzi's cache, and there are 

 others ; one, I think, on Shannon Island, which we aim at 

 getting to and which we will add to, if not in need of pro- 

 visions, and draw on if we are in distress. The idea is to 

 add to such a store if you can, for the benefit of anyone really 

 in need. It is a wicked thing, however, to draw on a cache, 



