Of course, he now fell over the stool he had upset before.  Meanwhile there was a hissing sound, and a stifling smell of paraffin.  I was thinking of making my escape through the door, when suddenly, just as I suppose it happened on the first day of Creation, in an instant there was light.  But it was a light that defies description; it dazzled and hurt the eyes, it was so bright.  It was perfectly white and extremely agreeable —­ when one was not looking at it.  Evidently it was one of the 200-candle Lux lamps.  My admiration for Lindstrom had now risen to enthusiasm.  What would I not have given to be able to make myself visible, embrace him, and tell him what I thought of him!  But that could not be; I should not then be able to see life at Framheim as it really was.  So I stood still.  Lindstrom first tried to put straight what he had upset in his struggle with the lamp.  The spirit had, of course, run out of the bottle when it fell, and was now flowing all over the table.  This did not seem to make the slightest impression on him; a little scoop with his hand, and it all landed on Johansen’s clothes, which were lying close by.  This fellow seemed to be as well off for spirit as for paraffin.  Then he vanished into the kitchen, but reappeared immediately with plates, cups, knives and forks.  Lindstrom’s laying of the breakfast-table was the finest clattering performance I have ever heard.  If he wanted to put a spoon into a cup, he did not do it in the ordinary way; no, he put down the cup, lifted the spoon high in the air, and then dropped it into the cup.  The noise he made in this way was infernal.  Now I began to see why Amundsen had got up so early; he wanted to escape this process of laying the table, I expect.  But this gave me at once an insight into the good-humour of the gentlemen in bed:  if this had happened anywhere else, Lindstrom would have had a boot at his head.  But here —­ they must have been the most peaceable men in the world.

Meanwhile I had had time to look around me.  Close to the door where I was standing a pipe came down to the floor.  It struck me at once that this was a ventilating-pipe.  I bent down and put my hand over the opening; there was not so much as a hint of air to be felt.  So this was the cause of the bad atmosphere.  The next things that caught my eye were the bunks —­ nine of them:  three on the right hand and six on the left.  Most of the sleepers —­ if they could be regarded as such while the table was being laid —­ slept in bags —­ sleeping-bags.  They must have been warm enough.  The rest of the space was taken up by a long table, with small stools on two sides of it.  Order appeared to reign; most of the clothes were hung up.  Of course, a few lay on the floor, but then Lindstrom had been running about in the dark, and perhaps he had pulled them down.  On the table, by the window, stood a gramophone and some tobacco-boxes and ash-trays.  The furniture was not plentiful, nor was it in the style of Louis