98 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
hair curl. They have given me the exact bearings of a 
cache they made before leaving Franz-Joseph Land in the 
boats. There is a musical box that plays eight tunes 
lying there now, under the snow, two Remingtons, a 
splendid camera, and a bottle of champagne. We can do 
without the musical box or the camera, but that champagne, 
cooled a long age in the deep delved snow, how we should 
enjoy it just now! They told another tale, rather grisly, 
perhaps, and we must hope slightly exaggerated. The 
festive three were roaming on the shores of Spitzbergen 
when they happened on a settlement of dead Danes, each 
settler lay in his long and narrow house on the top of the 
frozen ground, and each had a bottle of rum by his jowl 
to give him heart at the sound of the last trump. This is 
the manner of the Danes, I am told, or perhaps of the 
Lapps, I forget which — at any rate, Lapps or Danes, the 
rum was rum and strong at that, and it was long hours 
afterwards when my three friends epened their eyes and 
found themselves still in the land of the dead. Can't you 
picture these Danes when they awaken ? — Great Scott ! — 
won't they be angry? 
