Note 16 — Chapter IX · The Journey Southward

I had hardly slept two hours that night, and not much more the night before. I tried to sleep, but there was no rest to be had; I might just as well dress and go on board. As I drew near the vessel I was greeted with ringing cheers by the whole crew gathered on the deck, where I was heartily received by the excellent Captain Brown, commander of the Windward; by Dr. Bruce and Mr. Wilton, who were both to winter with Jackson, and by the ship’s company. We went below into the roomy, snug cabin, and all kinds of news were eagerly swallowed by listening ears, while an excellent breakfast with fresh potatoes and other delicacies glided down past a palate which needed less than that to satisfy it. There were remarkable pieces of news indeed. One of the first was that now they could photograph people through doors several inches thick. I confess I pricked up my ears at this information. That they could photograph a bullet buried in a person’s body was wonderful too, but nothing to this. And then we heard that the Japanese had thrashed the Chinese, and a good deal more. Not least remarkable, we thought, was the interest which the whole world now seemed to take in the Arctic regions. Spitzbergen had become a tourist country; a Norwegian steamship company (the Vesteraalen) had started a regular passenger service to it,16 a hotel had been built up there, and there was a post-office and a Spitzbergen stamp. And then we heard that Andrée was there waiting for wind to go to the Pole in a balloon. If we had pursued our course to Spitzbergen we should thus have dropped into the very middle of all this. We should have found a hotel and tourists, and should have been brought home in a comfortable modern steamboat, very different from the whaling-sloop we had been talking of all the winter, and, indeed, all the previous year. People are apt to think that it would be amusing to see themselves, and I form no exception to this rule. I would have given a good deal to see us in our unwashed, unsophisticated condition, as we came out of our winter lair, plumping into the middle of a band of English tourists, male and female. I doubt whether there would then have been much embracing or shaking of hands, but I don’t doubt that there would have been a great deal of peering through ventilators or any other loophole that could have been found.