"Meanwhile we killed time as best we could--chiefly by sleeping. On the early morning of the 21st, just as I lay thinking what would become of us if the ice should not slacken and we had no opportunity of adding to our larder--the chances, I thought, did not seem very promising--I heard something pawing and moving outside. It might, as usual, be the packing of the ice, but still I thought it was more like something on four legs. I jumped up, saying to Johansen that it must be a bear, and then I suddenly heard it sniffing by the tent wall. I peeped out through some holes in one side of it and saw nothing; then I went across to a big hole on the other side of the tent, and there I saw an enormous bear just outside. It caught sight of me, too, at the same moment and slunk away, but then stopped again and looked at the tent. I snatched my gun down from the tent-pole, stuck it through the hole, and sent the bear a ball in the middle of the chest. It fell forward; but raised itself again and struggled off, so I had to give it the contents of the other barrel in the side. It still staggered on, but fell down between some hummocks a little way off. An unusually large he-bear, and for the time all our troubles for food were ended. The wind, however, continued steadily from the same quarter. As there was not much shelter where we were encamped, and, furthermore, as we were uncomfortably near the ridge where the ice was continually packing, we removed and took up our abode farther in on the shore-ice, where we are still lying. Last night there was a bear about again, but not quite so near the tent.