Against the Ice by Ejnar Mikkelsen
Author:Ejnar Mikkelsen [Mikkelsen, Ejnar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2022-01-11T00:00:00+00:00
What could have happened to Iver? Probably he had bagged something and was letting his joy resound over hill and dale; yet he had been so peculiar those last few days that I wondered whether the combination of hunger, toil, water and disappointment had not broken his courage and affected his brain. A cold shiver ran down my back at the thought. I had to find out; I had to know the reason for this gay song in the midst of our wretchedness. I yodelled an answer and listened anxiously till Iver replied: âTwelve ptarmigan,â and the mountains echoed the cry and flung it back a hundredfold: twelve, twelve, twelve â from mountain to mountain across the whole land.
I felt so weak at the knees that I had to sit down on a stone. I could scarcely believe that fortune at last had smiled on us. To the mind of a famished man, twelve ptarmigan was a mass of meat and meant not only relief, but freedom from hunger. I got to my feet and hurried at a stiff-legged trot across the mountain to where Iver sat on a stone, his face beaming with delight, and in front of him lay twelve lovely ptarmigan â several daysâ freedom from gnawing hunger.
We were so happy, Iver and I. We wanted to yodel, to awaken the echoes and hear life around us; for the sun was shining and when we got back to the tent, we were going to cook ptarmigan; we would only cook them a little though, we were agreed on that, for to have cooked them properly would have taken too long for people in our state.
But the musk oxen? No, we never saw anything but their tracks, which perhaps were years old. It was also obvious, from the multitude of tracks, that there were hares in those parts, but we very seldom saw one.
You can do very well on ptarmigan, however, provided there are enough of them, and there we had twelve, inconceivable wealth! Iver guiltily confessed that he had gobbled up the bloody head of one of the birds, had thus had something that I had been unable to share. And how we ate! Boiled ptarmigan is tasty, and ptarmigan soup not to be despised. Add to that a jug of tea, and what more could man desire? Nothing. But yes: rest and sleep, and that too we had in more than full measure, for, being relieved of the nervous tension of the last month, we overslept and had to wait almost a whole day before the nightâs frost made it possible to continue. We made what use we could of the enforced wait by going out hunting again in the sparkling sunshine. This time, the only animals or birds we saw were a hare, which we got, and a flapping snow-owl that we missed.
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