us
gulls, noisy and greedy, collected from far and near and picked up all
the offal. They would soon fly south, the sea would be covered with ice,
and the Polar night would be so dismal and silent.

It took a week to get the new hut ready. The shoulder blade of a walrus
fastened to a ski served as spade. A walrus tusk tied to a broken ski
staff made an excellent hoe. Then they raised the walls of the hut, and
inside they dug into the ground and made a sort of couch for both of
them, which they covered with bearskin. After two more walruses had been
shot they had plenty of roofing material, which they laid over the trunk
of driftwood. A bear came, indeed, and pulled down everything, but it
cost him dear, and afterwards the roof was strengthened with a weight of
stones. To make a draught through the open fireplace they set up on the
roof a chimney of ice. Then they moved into the new hut, which was to be
their abode through the long winter.

On October 15 they saw the sun for the last time. The bears vanished,
and did not return till the next spring. But foxes were left, and they
were extremely inquisitive and thievish. They stole their sail thread
and steel wire, their harpoon and line, and it was quite impossible to
find the stolen goods again. What they wanted with a thermometer which
lay outside it is hard to conceive, for it must have been all the same
to the foxes how many degrees of temperature there were in their earths.
All winter they were up on the roof pattering, growling, howling, and
quarrelling. There was a pleasant rattling up above, and the two men
really would not have been without their fox company.

One can hardly say that the days passed slowly, for the whole winter
was, of course, one long night. It was so silent and empty, and an
oppressive, solemn stillness reigned during the calm night. Sometimes
the aurora blazed in a mysterious crown in the sky, at other times so
dark, and the stars glittered with inconceivable brilliance. The
weather, however, was seldom calm. Usually the wind howled round the
bare rocks lashed by millions of storms since the earliest times, and
snow swished outside and built up walls close around the hut.

The endlessly long night passed slowly on. The men ate and slept, and
walked up and down in the darkness to stretch their limbs. Then came
Christmas with its old memories. They clean up, sweep and brush, and
take up a foot's depth of frozen refuse from the floor of the hu