she turned round, snorted, and came storming right at me. I halted, and prepared to shoot in case she should come too near, and in the meantime the little one tramped on as fast as it could. The mother halted at the distance of a few paces from me, snorted and hissed again, looked round at the young one, and when the latter had got a good way on trotted after it. I ran on again and overtook the young one, and again the mother went through the same manoeuvres; she seemed to have the greatest possible desire to strike me to the earth, but then the young one had again got ahead a little, and she did not wait to do it, but trotted after. This was repeated several times, and then they began to clamber up the glacier, the mother in front, the young one after. But the latter did not get on very fast; it trudged along as well as it could in its mother's footprints in the deep snow. It reminded me exactly of a child in trousers, as it clambered up and kept looking round, half frightened, half curious. It was touching to see how incessantly the mother turned round to hasten it on, now and then jogging it with her head, hissing and snorting all the while at me standing quietly below and looking on. When they reached the crest the mother stopped and hissed worse than ever, and when she had let the young one pass her, they both disappeared over the glacier, and I went back to continue my work. For the last few weeks a feverish activity had reigned in our hut. We had become more and more impatient to make a start; but there was still a great deal to be done. We realized in bitter earnest that we had no longer the Fram's stores to fall back upon. On board the Fram there might be one or two things lacking; but here we lacked practically everything. What would we not have given even for a single box of dog-biscuits--for ourselves--out of the Fram's abundance? Where were we to find all that we needed? "For a sledge expedition one must lay in light and nourishing provisions, which at the same time afford as much variety as possible; one must have light and warm clothing, strong and practical sledges," etc., etc.--we knew by heart all these maxims of the Arctic text-book. The journey that lay before us, indeed, was not a very great one; the thing was simply to reach Spitzbergen and get on board the sloop; but it was long enough, after all, to make it necessary for us to take certain measures of precaution.