“What are you talking about?” asked the doctor, laughing.  “Is there an oil-well on this island?”

“Not exactly an oil-well,” answered Erik, “but what will answer our purpose nearly as well, multitudes of fat walruses.  I wish to try an experiment, since we have one furnace especially adapted for burning oil.”

They began their labors by performing the last rites of the two dead men.  They tied weights to their feet and lowered them into the sea.  Then the “Alaska” made fast to the ice bank in such a manner as to follow its movements without sustaining any injury to herself.  They were able, with care, to carry on board again the provisions which they had landed, and which it was important for them not to lose.  That operation accomplished, they devoted all their energies to the pursuit of the walrus.

Two or three times a day, parties armed with guns and harpoons and accompanied by all their Greenland dogs landed on the ice bank, and surrounded the sleeping monsters at the mouth of their holes.  They killed them by firing a ball into their ears, then they cut them up, and placed the lard with which they were filled in their sleighs, and the dogs drew it to the “Alaska.”  Their hunting was so easy and so productive, that in eight days they had all the lard that they could carry.  The “Alaska,” still towed by the floating island, was now in the seventy-fourth degree; that is to say, she had passed Nova Zembla.

The ice island was now reduced at least one-half, and cracked by the sun was full of fissures, more or less extensive, evidently ready to go to pieces.  Erik resolved not to wait until this happened, and ordering their anchor to be lifted, he sailed away westward.

The lard was immediately utilized in the fire of the “Alaska,” and proved an excellent combustible.  The only fault was that it choked up the chimney, which necessitated a daily cleaning.  As for its odor, that would doubtless have been very disagreeable to southern passengers, but to a crew composed of Swedes and Norwegians, it was only a secondary inconvenience.

Thanks to this supply, the “Alaska” was able to keep up steam during the whole of the remainder of her voyage.  She proceeded rapidly, in spite of contrary winds, and arrived on the 5th of September in sight of Cape North or Norway.  They pursued their route with all possible speed, turned the Scandinavian Peninsula, repassed Skager-Rack, and reached the spot from which they had taken their departure.

On the 14th of September they cast anchor before Stockholm, which they had left on the tenth of the preceding February.

Thus, in seven months and four days, the first circumpolar periplus had been accomplished by a navigator of only twenty-two years of age.

This geographical feat, which so promptly completed the great expedition of Nordenskiold, would soon make a prodigious commotion in the world.  But the journals and reviews had not as yet had time to expatiate upon it.  The uninitiated were hardly prepared to understand it, and one person, at least, reviewed it with suspicion—­this was Kajsa.  The supercilious smile with which she listened to the story of their adventures was indescribable.