About ten this same morning we dropped anchor in Mary- 
Muss Bay, a roadstead near the center of the north Jan 
Mayen shore. 
Jan Mayen, it will be recalled, is a queer, spoon-shaped 
island, thirty-three miles long by twenty-three across at its 
broadest, and a mile and a half at the narrowest point. 
On the island, a house which was built for an Austrian 
meterological expedition in 1882 still stands. American 
canned foods, left by these folk a quarter of a century before, 
were tasted here and found good as new. 
Signs everywhere showed quite plainly how futile any hope 
of reaching Greenland this year had been. 
What is more, a month after our return to Tromsoe we 
learned that a small steamer, which had tried to reach the 
coast for walrus and seal, was beset by ice, and, likewise, 
failed of its purpose. 
So far as learned, in fact, no vessel of record reached East 
Greenland in all that twelve-month. 
August 24th, therefore, we held our last hunt, a white fox 
Aug. 24th and two blue fox comprising the bag. 
The day previous, Napoleon disappeared on the island, and, 
not having put in his appearance since then, to-day the Doctor 
[82] 
