courses--soup, meat, and dessert; or, soup, fish, and meat; or, fish,
meat, and dessert; or sometimes only fish and meat. With the meat we
always had potatoes, and either green vegetables or macaroni. I think
we were all agreed that the fare was good; it would hardly have been
better at home; for some of us it would perhaps have been worse. And we
looked like fatted pigs; one or two even began to cultivate a double
chin and a corporation. As a rule, stories and jokes circulated at
table along with the bock-beer.

After dinner the smokers of our company would march off, well fed and
contented, into the galley, which was smoking-room as well as kitchen,
tobacco being tabooed in the cabins except on festive occasions. Out
there they had a good smoke and chat; many a story was told, and not
seldom some warm dispute arose. Afterwards came, for most of us, a
short siesta. Then each went to his work again until we were summoned
to supper at 6 o'clock, when the regulation day's work was done. Supper
was almost the same as breakfast, except that tea was always the
beverage. Afterwards there was again smoking in the galley, while
the saloon was transformed into a silent reading-room. Good use was
made of the valuable library presented to the expedition by generous
publishers and other friends. If the kind donors could have seen us
away up there, sitting round the table at night with heads buried in
books or collections of illustrations, and could have understood how
invaluable these companions were to us, they would have felt rewarded
by the knowledge that they had conferred a real boon--that they had
materially assisted in making the Fram the little oasis that it was in
this vast ice desert. About half-past seven or eight cards or other
games were brought out, and we played well on into the night, seated
in groups round the saloon table. One or other of us might go to the
organ, and, with the assistance of the crank-handle, perform some of
our beautiful pieces, or Johansen would bring out the accordion and
play many a fine tune. His crowning efforts were "Oh, Susanna!" and
"Napoleon's March Across the Alps in an Open Boat." About midnight we
turned in, and then the night watch was set. Each man went on for an
hour. Their most trying work on watch seems to have been writing their
diaries and looking out, when the dogs barked, for any signs of bears
at hand. Besides this, every two hours or four hours the watch had
to go aloft o