Next Nielsen told a story about Norwegians sailing to the Arctic on a scientific expedition. Just before the long polar night of darkness set in there arose a necessity for the ship and crew to return to Norway. Two men must be left in the Arctic to care for the supplies until the ship came back. The captain called for volunteers. There were two young men in the crew, and from childhood they had been playmates, schoolmates, closer than brothers, and inseparable even in manhood. One of these young men said to his friend: "I'll stay if you will." And the other quickly agreed. After the ship sailed, and the land of the midnight sun had become icy and black, one of these comrades fell ill, and soon died. The living one placed the body in the room with the ship supplies, where it froze stiff; and during all the long polar night of solitude and ghastly gloom he lived next to this sepulchre that contained his dead friend. When the ship returned the crew found the living comrade an old man with hair as white as snow, and never in his life afterward was he seen to smile.
These stories stirred my emotions like Doyle's tale about Jones' Ranch. How wonderful, beautiful, terrible and tragical is human life! Again I heard the still, sad music of humanity, the eternal beat and moan of the waves upon a lonely shingle shore. Who would not be a teller of tales?
Copple followed Nielsen with a story about a prodigious feat of his own--a story of incredible strength and endurance, which at first I took to be a satire on Nielsen's remarkable narrative. But Copple seemed deadly serious, and I began to see that he possessed a strange simplicity of exaggeration. The boys thought Copple stretched the truth a little, but I thought that he believed what he told.
Haught was a great teller of tales, and his first story of the evening happened to be about his brother Bill. They had a long chase after a bear and became separated. Bill was new at the game, and he was a peculiar fellow anyhow. Much given to talking to himself! Haught finally rode to the edge of a ridge and espied Bill under a pine in which the hounds had treed a bear. Bill did not hear Haught's approach, and on the moment he was stalking round the pine, swearing at the bear, which clung to a branch about half way up. Then Haught discovered two more full-grown bears up in the top of the pine, the presence of which Bill had not the remotest suspicion. "Ahuh! you ole black Jasper!" Bill was yelling. "I treed you an' in a minnit I'm agoin' to assassinate you. Chased me about a hundred miles--! An' thought you'd fool me, didn't you? Why, I've treed more bears than you ever saw--! You needn't look at me like thet, 'cause I'm mad as a hornet. I'm agoin' to assassinate you in a minnit an' skin your black har off, I am--"