Note 2 — Chapter IV · We Say Good-bye to the “Fram”

How cold we were as we lay there shivering in the bag, waiting for the supper to be ready! I, who was cook, was obliged to keep myself more or less awake to see to the culinary operations, and sometimes I succeeded. At last the supper was ready, was portioned out, and, as always, tasted delicious. These occasions were the supreme moments of our existence—moments to which we looked forward the whole day long. But sometimes we were so weary that our eyes closed, and we fell asleep with the food on its way to our mouths. Our hands would fall back inanimate with the spoons in them and the food fly out on the bag. After supper we generally permitted ourselves the luxury of a little extra drink, consisting of water, as hot as we could swallow it, in which whey-powder had been dissolved. It tasted something like boiled milk, and we thought it wonderfully comforting; it seemed to warm us to the very ends of our toes. Then we would creep down into the bag again, buckle the flap carefully over our heads, lie close together, and soon sleep the sleep of the just. But even in our dreams we went on ceaselessly, grinding at the sledges and driving the dogs, always northward, and I was often awakened by hearing Johansen calling in his sleep to “Pan,” or “Barrabas,” or “Klapperslangen”: “Get on, you devil, you! Go on, you brutes! Sass, sass!2 Now the whole thing is going over!” and execrations less fit for reproduction, until I went to sleep again.