ally was beside
herself. She had gripped one of the cubs by the throat, and worried
it like a mad thing, so that it was difficult to get her away. The
bears had gone very leisurely away from the dogs, which dared not
come to sufficiently close quarters to use their teeth till the old
she-bear had been wounded and had fallen down. The bears, indeed, had
acted in a very suspicious manner. It seemed just as if the she-bear
had some deep design, some evil intent, in her mind, if she could
only have lured the dogs near enough to her. Suddenly she halted,
let the cubs go on in front, sniffed a little, and then came back
to meet the dogs, who at the same time, as if at a word of command,
all turned tail and set off towards the west. It was then that the
first shot was fired, and the old bear tottered and fell headlong,
when immediately some of the dogs set to and tackled her. One of the
cubs then got its quietus, while the other one was fired at and made
off over the ice with three dogs after it. They soon overtook it and
pulled it down, so that when Mogstad came up he was obliged first of
all to get the dogs off before he could venture to shoot. It was a
glorious slaughter, and by no means unwelcome, for we had that very
day eaten the last remains of our last bear in the shape of meat-cakes
for dinner. The two cubs made lovely Christmas pork.

"In all probability these were the same bears whose tracks we had
seen before. Sverdrup and I had followed on the tracks of three such
animals on the last day of October, and had lost them to N.N.W. of
the ship. Apparently they had come from that quarter now.

"When they wanted to shoot, Peter's gun, as usual, would not go off;
it had again been drenched with vaseline, and he kept calling out:
'Shoot! shoot! Mine won't go off.' Afterwards, on examining the gun
I had taken with me to the fray, I found there were no cartridges in
it. A nice account I should have given of myself had I come on the
bears alone with that weapon!

"Monday, November 5th. As I was sitting at work last night I heard a
dog on the deck howling fearfully. I sprang up, and found it was one
of the puppies that had touched an iron bolt with its tongue and was
frozen fast to it. There the poor beast was, straining to get free,
with its tongue stretched out so far that it looked like a thin rope
proceeding out of its throat; and it was howling piteously. Bentzen,
whose watch it was, had come up, but scarcely knew what