man was making a fool of me.  I had carefully studied his face all the time to find the key to this riddle, and did not know whether to laugh or weep.  Lindstrom’s face was certainly serious enough; if it afforded a measure of the situation, I believe tears would have been appropriate.  But when my eye fell upon the thermograph and read, “Stavanger Preserving Co.’s finest rissoles,” I could contain myself no longer.  The comical side of it was too much for me, and I burst into a fit of laughter.  When my laughter was subdued, I heard the explanation.  The cylinder did not fit, so he had tried the tin, and it went splendidly.  The rissole-thermograph worked very well as far as -40deg.  C., but then it gave up.

Our forces were now divided into two working parties.  One of them was to dig out some forty seals we had lying about 3 feet under the snow; this took two days.  The heavy seals’ carcasses, hard as flint, were difficult to deal with.  The dogs were greatly interested in these proceedings.  Each carcass, on being raised to the surface, was carefully inspected; they were piled up in two heaps, and would provide food enough for the dogs for the whole winter.  Meanwhile the other party were at work under Hassel’s direction on a petroleum cellar.  The barrels which had been laid up at the beginning of February were now deep below the snow.  They now dug down at both ends of the store, and made a passage below the surface along the barrels; at the same time they dug far enough into the Barrier to give the requisite height for the barrels.  When the snow had been thrown out, one hole was walled up again, while a large entrance was constructed over the other.  Stubberud’s knowledge of vaulting came in useful here, and he has the credit of having built the splendid arched entrance to the oil-store.  It was a pleasure to go down into it; probably no one has had so fine a storehouse for petroleum before.  But Hassel did not stop here; he had the building fever on him in earnest.  His great project of connecting the coal and wood store with the house below the surface nearly took my breath away; it seemed to me an almost superhuman labour, but they did it.  The distance from the coal-tent to the house was about ten yards.  Here Hassel and Stubberud laid out their line so that it would strike the passage round the house at the south-east angle.  When they had done this, they dug a gigantic hole down into the Barrier half-way between the tent and the house, and then dug in both directions from here and soon finished the work.  But now Prestrud had an idea.  While the hole remained open he wished to avail himself of the opportunity of arranging an observatory for his pendulum apparatus, and he made a very good one.  He did it by digging at right angles to the passage, and had his little observatory between the coal-tent and the house.  When all the snow was cleared out, the big hole was covered over again, and now we could go from the kitchen direct to the coal-store without going out.  First