"We now worked with even a better spirit than we had done before, for the idea of being settled on the island for life seemed to imply that we had need to look ahead farther than when our hopes of rescue had been strong.
"And first we finished the hut in which we were to live,--doing it not as if we were putting up a tent for temporary use, but as a man who has just come into possession of a large property puts up a fine house on it, that he may be comfortable for the remainder of his days.
"I have told you our hut was about twelve feet square, and that we had, after much hard labor, succeeded in closing it up perfectly, and in making it tight. Along the peak of it, where the two rocks came together, there was a crack which gave us much trouble; but at length we succeeded in pounding down into it, with the but-end of our narwhal horn, a great quantity of moss or turf, and thus closed it tight.
"I must tell you here, while we are on the subject of moss, and since I have spoken about it so often, that the moss grew on our island, as it does in all Arctic countries, with a richness that you never see here,--moss being, in truth, the characteristic vegetation of the Arctic regions. In the valley fronting us there was a bed of it several feet thick. Its fibres were very long,--as much, in some places, as four inches,--all of a single year's growth; and as it had gone on growing year after year, you will understand that there was layer after layer of it. In one place, at the side of the valley to the right as we went down towards the beach, it seemed to have died out after growing for many years; and when we discovered this, we were more rejoiced than we had been at any time since starting the fire; for the moss, being dead, had become dry and hard, and burned almost like peat, as we found when we came to try it in our fireplace; and when we added to it a little of our blubber, it made such a heat that we could not have desired anything better. Indeed, it made our hut so warm that we could leave the door and window both open until the weather became colder.
"One thing which gave us great satisfaction was the immense quantity of the dead moss which was in this bed,--so much, indeed, that, no matter how long we should live there, we could never burn up the hundredth part of it. At first there had not appeared to be much of it, but it developed more and more, like a coal mine, as we dug farther and farther into it.