And there are the smallest of all —­ like little balls of wool; they roll themselves in the snow and have great fun.  I am astonished that they can stand the cold as they do; I should never have thought that such young animals could live through the winter.  Afterwards I was told that they not only bore the cold well, but were far more hardy than the older ones.  While the grown-up dogs were glad to go into their tents in the evening, the little ones refused to do so; they preferred to sleep outside.  And they did so for a great part of the winter.

Now all the men have finished unchaining their dogs, and, with their lanterns in their hands, they move in various directions and disappear —­ apparently into the Barrier surface.  There will be many interesting things to see here in the course of the day —­ I can understand that.  What on earth became of all these people?  There we have Amundsen; he is left alone, and appears to be in charge of the dogs.  I go up to him and make myself known.

“Ah, I’m glad you came,” he says; “now I can introduce you to some of our celebrities.  To begin with, here is the trio —­ Fix, Lasse, and Snuppesen.  They always behave like this when I am out —­ could not think of leaving me in peace for an instant.  Fix, that big grey one that looks like a wolf, has many a snap on his conscience.  His first exploit was on Flekkero, near Christiansand, where all the dogs were kept for a month after they arrived from Greenland; there he gave Lindstrom a nasty bite when his back was turned.  What do you think of a bite of a mouth like that?”

Fix is now tame, and without a growl allows his master to take hold of his upper and under jaws and open his mouth —­ ye gods, what teeth!  I inwardly rejoice that I was not in Lindstrom’s trousers that day.

“If you notice,” he continues, with a smile, “you will see that Lindstrom still sits down cautiously.  I myself have a mark on my left calf, and a good many more of us have the same.  There are several of us who still treat him with respect.  And here we have Lassesen —­ that’s his pet name; he was christened Lasse —­ almost pure black, as you see.  I believe he was the wildest of the lot when they came on board.  I had him fastened up on the bridge with my other dogs, beside Fix —­ those two were friends from their Greenland days.  But I can tell you that when I had to pass Lasse, I always judged the distance first.  As a rule, he just stood looking down at the deck —­ exactly like a mad bull.  If I tried to make overtures, he didn’t move —­ stood quite still; but I could see how he drew back his upper lip and showed a row of teeth, with which I had no desire to become acquainted.  A fortnight passed in this way.  Then at last the upper lip sank and the head was raised a little, as though he wanted to see who it was that brought him food and water every day.  But the way from that to friendship was long and tortuous.  In the time that followed, I used to scratch him on the back with