The hunt engaged their activities whenever signs of game were noted. Once a bear and her cub came from the land, and the mother was slain and added to their larder. An effort was made to keep the cub as a kind of pet. After a while she escaped and was caught swimming across a narrow lane of water. To keep her secure they fastened her to an ice-anchor, where she was at first very much frightened, but later she ate with avidity such meat as was thrown to her. To add to her comfort a snow house was built, with the floor strewed with shavings for her bed, but the record runs: "The young bear, as a genuine inhabitant of the arctic seas, despised the hut and bed, preferring to camp in the snow." Some days later she disappeared, and with the heavy chain doubtless sank to the bottom of the sea.
Nor were these castaways unmindful of the charms of arctic nature. Their narratives tell us of the common beauties around them--the snow-crystals glittering in the few hours of sunlight like millions of tiny diamonds. Night scenes were even more impressive, through wondrous views of the starry constellations and the recurring and evanescent gleams of the mystical aurora. Under the weird auroral light the white snow took at times a peculiar greenish tint, and with it, says an officer, "One could read the finest writing without trouble. One night it shone so intensely that the starlight waned and objects on our field cast shadows." But in its main aspects life on the ice-pack was full of dread in which nervous anxiety largely entered.
The barren peaks and rounded snow-capped land masses of the Greenland coast were usually in sight, and once they were astonished as they walked to see thousands of tiny leaves, possibly of the arctic willow, flying about them, signs of a snow-free fiord not far distant. Again the newly fallen snow for a considerable distance was covered with a reddish matter which Dr. Laube thought must be of volcanic origin carried through the air from Iceland two hundred miles away.
Of interest to the party were the visits of foxes, who came from the near-by land. Of the first it is said: "With tails high in air they shot over the ice-field like small craft sailing before the wind. For the first moment it seemed as if the wind had caught up a couple of large semicircles of whitish yellow paper and was wafting them along." One was shot as a specimen, but the later visitor in the middle of December was better treated. We are told that "the fox, white with a black-tipped tail, was particularly confiding, even bold. He scratched up the bear flesh buried in the snow, and carried it off to eat as we approached. He then quite unconcernedly took a walk on the roof of our house, and through the small window convinced himself as to what we were doing. Should we shoot it? No! It was a long time since we had seen such a fearless creature. At times we placed nets with a meat bait to tease him, but he always managed to get clear of them."