"It was not very long before Johansen and the others followed, with the kayaks and our things. Johansen related how these warm-hearted Englishmen had given him and the Norwegian flag a hearty cheer when they came up and saw it waving beside a dirty woollen shirt on a bamboo rod, which he had put up by my orders, so that I could find my way back to him. On the way hither they had not allowed him to touch the sledges, he had only to walk beside them like a passenger, and he said that, of all the ways in which we had travelled over drift-ice, this was without comparison the most comfortable. His reception in the hut was scarcely less hospitable than mine, and he soon went through the same transformation that I had undergone. I no longer recognize my comrade of the long winter night, and search in vain for any trace of the tramp who wandered up and down that desolate shore, beneath the steep talus and the dark basalt cliff, outside the low underground hut. The black, sooty troglodyte has vanished, and in his place sits a well-favored, healthy-looking European citizen in a comfortable chair, puffing away at a short pipe or a cigar, and with a book before him, doing his best to learn English. It seems to me that he gets fatter and fatter every day, with an almost alarming rapidity. It is indeed surprising that we have both gained considerably in weight since we left the Fram. When I came here I myself weighed about 14 1/2 stone, or nearly 22 pounds more than I did when I left the Fram; while Johansen weighs over 11 stone 11 pounds, having gained a little more than 13 pounds. This is the result of a winter's feeding on nothing but bear's meat and fat in an Arctic climate. It is not quite like the experiences of others in parallel circumstances; it must be our laziness that has done it. And here we are, living in peace and quietness, waiting for the ship from home and for what the future will bring us, while everything is being done for us to make us forget a winter's privations. We could not have fallen into better hands, and it is impossible to describe the unequalled hospitality and kindness we meet with on all hands, and the comfort we feel. Is it the year's privations and want of human society, is it common interests, that so draw us to these men in these desolate regions? I do not know; but we are never tired of talking, and it seems as if we had known one another for years, instead of having met for the first time a few days ago.