death-wound,
but just as Nansen was about to strike his harpoon into him he sank.
They had better luck, however, with two others which lay bellowing on
the ice and gradually went to sleep, unconscious that their minutes were
numbered. Nansen says that it seemed like murder to shoot them, and that
he never forgot their brown, imploring, melancholy eyes as they lay
supporting their heads on their tusks and coughing up blood. Then the
great brutes were flayed, and their flesh, blubber, and hides carried
into the hut. When they brought out the sledges and knives, Nansen
thought it might be as well to take the kayaks with them also. And that
was fortunate, for while they stood cutting up as in a slaughter-house,
a strong, biting land wind sprang up, their ice-floe parted from the
land ice and drifted away from the island. Dark-green water and white
foaming surge yawned behind them. There was no time to think. They were
drifting out to sea as fast as they could. But to go back empty-handed
would have been too vexatious; so they cut off a quarter of a hide and
dragged it with some lumps of blubber to the kayaks. They reached the
land in safety, dead tired after an adventurous row, and sought the
shelter of the hut.

In the night came a bear mamma with two large cubs, and made a thorough
inspection of the outside of the hut. The mother was shot and the cubs
made off to the shore, plunged in, and swam out to a slab of ice which
would just bear them, and scrambled up. There they stood moaning and
whining, and wondering why their mother stayed so long on shore. One
tumbled over the edge, but climbed up again on to the slippery floe and
the clean salt water ran off his fur. They drifted away with the wind
and soon looked like two white spots on the almost black water. Nansen
and Johansen wanted their meat, the more because the bears had torn and
mangled all the walrus meat lying outside the hut. The kayaks were
pushed out and were soon on the farther side of the floe with the bear
cubs. They were chased into the water and followed all the way to the
beach, where they were shot.

Things now began to look better--three bears all at once! Then the first
walrus came to the surface again, and while he was being skinned another
came to look on and had to join him. It was disgusting work to flay the
huge brutes. Both the men had their worn clothes smeared with train-oil
and blood, so that they were soaked right through. Ivory and glauco