136 FARTHES2' NORTH 



of smoking chocolate before him, a big lump of butter 

 in one hand and a biscuit in the other, and exclaimed, 

 " Now I am living like a prince !" He thereafter dis- 

 coursed at length on the exalting thought that he was 

 sitting in a tent in the middle of the Polar Sea. Poor fel- 

 low, he had begged and prayed to be allowed to come with 

 us on this expedition ; he would cook for us and make 

 himself generally useful, both as a tinsmith and black- 

 smith ; and then, he said, three would be company. I re- 

 gretted that I could not take more than one companion, 

 and he had been in the depths of woe for several days, but 

 now found comfort in the fact that he had, at any rate, 

 come part of the way with us, and was out on this great des- 

 ert sea, for, as he said, "not many people have done that." 

 The others had no sleeping-bag with them, so they 

 made themselves a cozy little hut of snow, into which 

 they crawled in their wolfskin garments, and had a 

 tolerably good night. I was awake early the next 

 morning; but when I crept out of the tent I found that 

 somebody else was on his legs before me, and this was 

 Pettersen, who, awakened by the cold, was now walking 

 up and down to warm his stiffened limbs. He had tried 

 it now, he said ; he never should have thought it possible 

 to sleep in the snow, but it had not been half bad. He 

 would not quite admit that he had been cold, and that 

 that was the reason why he had turned out so early. 

 Then we had our last pleasant breakfast together, got 

 the sledges ready, harnessed the dogs, shook hands with 



