48 THE SIEGE OF THE NORTH POLE 



" I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for 

 Petersen to fire. McGarv hung upon his oar, and the 

 boat, slowly but noiselessly sagging ahead, seemed to me 

 within certain range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that 

 the poor fellow was paralysed by his anxiety, trying 

 vainly to obtain a rest for his gun against the cut-water 

 of the boat. The seal rose on his fore-flippers, gazed at 

 us for a moment with frightened curiosity, and coiled 

 himself for a plunge. At that instant, simultaneously 

 with the crack of our rifle, he relaxed his long length on 

 the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell 

 helpless to one side. 



" I would have ordered another shot, but no discipline 

 could have controlled the men. With a wild veil, each 

 vociferating according to his own impulse, they urged 

 both boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the 

 seal and bore him up to safer ice. The men seemed half 

 crazy ; I had not realised how much we were reduced by 

 absolute famine. They ran over the floe, crying and 

 laughing and brandishing their knives. It was not five 

 minutes before every man was sucking his bloody fingers 

 or mouthing long strips of raw blubber. 



"Not an ounce of this seal was lost. The intestines 

 found their way into the soup-kettles without any obser- 

 vance of the preliminary home-processes. The carti- 

 laginous parts of the fore-flippers were cut off in the 

 melee, and passed round to be chewed upon ; and even 

 the liver, warm and raw as it was, bade fair to be eaten 

 before it had seen the pot. That night, on the large 

 halting-floe, to which, in contempt of the dangers of 

 drifting, we happy men had hauled our boats, two entire 

 planks of the Red Eric were devoted to a grand cooking- 

 fire, and we enjoyed a rare and savage feast. 



"This was our last experience of the disagreeable 

 effects of hunger. In the words of George Stephenson, 



