THE WINTER NIGHT 327 



to let me go on alone, so followed slowly after. Terrible 

 ice to force one's way over. Crawling along on hands 

 and knees does not put one in a very convenient posi- 

 tion to shoot from if the bear should make a sudden 

 rush. But unless he did this, or attacked the dogs, I 

 had no hope of getting him. We now came out on 

 some flat ice. It was only too evident that there must 

 be something quite near now. I went on, and presently 

 saw a dark object on the ice in front of me. It was not 

 unlike an animal. I bent down — it was poor ' Johan- 

 sen's Friend,' the black dog with the white tip to his tail, 

 in a sad state, and frozen stiff. Beside him was some- 

 thing else dark. I bent down again and found the sec- 

 ond of the missing dogs, brother of the corpse-watcher 

 ' Suggen.' This one was almost whole, only eaten a 

 little about the head, and it was not frozen quite stiff. 

 There seemed to be blood all round on the ice. I 

 looked about in every direction, but there was nothing 

 more to be seen. The dogs stood at a respectful dis- 

 tance, staring and sniffing in the direction of their dead 

 comrades. Some of us went, not long after this, to fetch 

 the dogs' carcasses, taking a lantern to look for bear 

 tracks, in case there had been some big fellows along 

 with the little one. We scrambled on among the pack- 

 ice. ' Come this way with the lantern, Bentzen ; I 

 think I see tracks here.' Bentzen came, and we turned 

 the light on some indentations in the snow ; they were 

 bear -paw marks, sure enough, but only the same little 



