es almost east and west. We could see
no end to it westward when we went after the walrus; and Mogstad and
Peter had gone three miles east, and it was as broad as ever there.

"Wednesday, January 24th. At supper this evening Peter told some of his
remarkable Spitzbergen stories--about his comrade Andreas Bek. 'Well,
you see, it was up about Dutchman's Island, or Amsterdam Island, that
Andreas Bek and I were on shore and got in among all the graves. We
thought we'd like to see what was in them, so we broke up some of
the coffins, and there they lay. Some of them had still flesh on
their jaws and noses, and some of them still had their caps on their
heads. Andreas, he was a devil of a fellow, you see, and he broke up
the coffins and got hold of the skulls, and rolled them about here
and there. Some of them he set up for targets and shot at. Then he
wanted to see if there was marrow left in their bones, so he took
and broke a thigh-bone--and, sure enough, there was marrow; he took
and picked it out with a wooden pin.'

"'How could he do a thing like that?'

"'Oh, it was only a Dutchman, you know. But he had a bad dream that
night, had Andreas. All the dead men came to fetch him, and he ran
from them and got right out on the bowsprit, and there he sat and
yelled, while the dead men stood on the forecastle. And the one with
his broken thigh-bone in his hand was foremost, and he came crawling
out, and wanted Andreas to put it together again. But just then he
wakened. We were lying in the same berth, you see, Andreas and me,
and I sat up in the berth and laughed, listening to him yelling. I
wouldn't waken him, not I. I thought it was fun to hear him getting
paid out a little.'

"'It was bad of you, Peter, to have any part in that horrid plundering
of dead bodies.'

"'Oh, I never did anything to them, you know. Just once I broke up a
coffin to get wood to make a fire for our coffee; but when we opened
it the body just fell to pieces. But it was juicy wood, that, better
to burn than the best fir-roots--such a fire as it made!'

"One of the others now remarked, 'Wasn't it the devil that used a
skull for his coffee-cup?'

"'Well, he hadn't anything else, you see, and he just happened to
find one. There was no harm in that, was there?'

"Then Jacobsen began to hold forth: 'It's not at all such an uncommon
thing to use skulls for shooting at, either because people fancy them
for targets, or because of some other reason; th