ight across the
island. On the farther side of it we saw a man standing on a hillock,
and not far from him a herd of five or six reindeer. As it never
occurred to us to doubt that the man was in the act of stalking these,
we avoided going in that direction, and soon he and his reindeer
disappeared to the west. I heard afterwards that he had never seen
the deer. As it was evident that when the reindeer to the south of us
were startled they would have to come back across this valley, and as
the island at this part was so narrow that we commanded the whole of
it, we determined to take up our posts here and wait. We accordingly
got in the lee of some great boulders, out of the wind. In front of
Sverdrup was a large flock of geese, near the mouth of the stream,
close down by the shore. They kept up an incessant gabble, and the
temptation to have a shot at them was very great; but, considering
the reindeer, we thought it best to leave them in peace. They gabbled
and waddled away down through the mud and soon took wing.

The time seemed long. At first we listened with all our ears--the
reindeer must come very soon--and our eyes wandered incessantly
backward and forward along the slope on the other side of the
valley. But no reindeer came, and soon we were having a struggle to
keep our eyes open and our heads up--we had not had much sleep the
last few days. They must be coming! We shook ourselves awake, and
gave another look along the bank, till again the eyes softly closed
and the heads began to nod, while the chill wind blew through our
wet clothes, and I shivered with cold. This sort of thing went on for
an hour or two, until the sport began to pall on me, and I scrambled
from my shelter along towards Sverdrup, who was enjoying it about as
much as I was. We climbed the slope on the other side of the valley,
and were hardly at the top before we saw the horns of six splendid
reindeer on a height in front of us. They were restless, scenting
westward, trotting round in a circle, and then sniffing again. They
could not have noticed us as yet, as the wind was blowing at right
angles to the line between them and us. We stood a long time watching
their manoeuvres, and waiting their choice of a direction, but they
had apparently great difficulty in making it. At last off they swung
south and east, and off we went southeast as hard as we could go,
to get across their course before they got scent of us. Sverdrup had
got well ahead, an