life and death. I seized one gun,
he another, and up we rushed, the mate with his gun after us. There
was not much difficulty in knowing in what direction to turn, for from
the rail on the starboard side came confused shouts of human voices,
and from the ice below the gangway the sound of a frightful uproar
of dogs. I tore out the tow-plug at the muzzle of my rifle, then up
with the lever and in with a cartridge; it was a case of hurry. But,
hang it! there is a plug in at this end too. I poked and poked,
but could not get a grip of it. Peter screamed: 'Shoot, shoot! Mine
won't go off!' He stood clicking and clicking, his lock full of frozen
vaseline again, while the bear lay chewing at a dog just below us at
the ship's side. Beside me stood the mate, groping after a tow-plug
which he also had shoved down into his gun, but now he flung the gun
angrily away and began to look round the deck for a walrus spear to
stick the bear with. Our fourth man, Mogstad, was waving an empty
rifle (he had shot away his cartridges), and shouting to some one
to shoot the bear. Four men, and not one that could shoot, although
we could have prodded the bear's back with our gun-barrels. Hansen,
making a fifth, was lying in the passage to the chart-room, groping
with his arm through a chink in the door for cartridges; he could
not get the door open because of 'Kvik's' kennel. At last Johansen
appeared and sent a ball straight down into the bear's hide. That
did some good. The monster let go the dog and gave a growl. Another
shot flashed and hissed down on the same spot. One more, and we saw
the white dog the bear had under him jump up and run off, while the
other dogs stood round, barking. Another shot still, for the animal
began to stir a little. At this moment my plug came out, and I gave
him a last ball through the head to make sure. The dogs had crowded
round barking as long as he moved, but now that he lay still in death
they drew back terrified. They probably thought it was some new ruse
of the enemy. It was a little thin one-year-old bear that had caused
all this terrible commotion.

"While it was being flayed I went off in a northwesterly direction
to look for the dogs that were still missing. I had not gone far
when I noticed that the dogs that were following me had caught scent
of something to the north and wanted to go that way. Soon they got
frightened, and I could not get them to go on; they kept close in to
my side or slunk behi