But they were on their legs again in a moment, and set off as fast as they could go across the river after the bear. Not many minutes afterwards the whole pack came running up, but when they were driven away from the carcase, they lay down again to await their turn. I hurried back to camp to fetch the dog harness; we put a lanyard through the nose of the mighty fallen, and set off. The dogs knew well enough that this meant food for them, and the nearer we came to camp the harder they pulled. In fact, I had to sit on the carcase to keep them back, and, jolting backwards and forwards, on this new kind of conveyance I made my entrance into camp, in the light spring night." But bears were few, compared with the musk oxen, which, with the reindeer and hares, and with the wolves and foxes, and stoats and lemmings, seals and walruses, narwhals and white whales, represented the Arctic mammalia. The most singular experience met with was perhaps the sledge journey through the ice tunnel on the return across the Simmons Peninsula in 1900. Descending a valley which became narrower and narrower Sverdrup and Fosheim began to think it was going to end in a canyon, but without any warning they were stopped by a high wall of ice, perpendicular and inaccessible to any one without wings. Looking about, Sverdrup found a large hole which proved to be the beginning of a tunnel through the glacier. Through this lofty vault they sped. From the roof hung threateningly above their heads gigantic blocks of ice, seamed and cleft and glittering sinisterly; and all around were icicles like steel-bright spears and lances piercing downwards on them. Along the walls were caves after caves, with pillars in rows like giants in rank; and over all shone a ghostly whitish light which became bluish as they went. "I dared not speak," says Sverdrup. "It seemed to me that in doing so I should be committing a deed of desecration; I felt like one who has impiously broken into something sacred which Nature had wished to keep closed to every mortal eye. I felt mean and contemptible as I drove through all this purity. The sledges jolted from block to block, awakening thunderous echoes in their passage: and it seemed as if all the spirits of the ice had been aroused and called to arms against the intruders on their church-like peace." CHAPTER X BOOTHIA