8. Friday, October 12. A regular storm has been blowing from the east-south-east since yesterday evening. Last night the mill went to bits. The teeth broke off one of the tooth wheels which has been considerably worn by a year's use. The velocity of the wind was over forty feet this morning and it is long since I have heard it blow as it is doing this evening. We must be making good progress north just now. Perhaps October is not to be such a bad month as I expected from our experiences of last year. It was out snow-showing before dinner. The snow was whistling about my ears. I had not much trouble in getting back the wind sought to that. A tremendous snow squall is blowing just now. The moon stands low in the southern sky sending a dull glow through the driving masses. One has to hold on to one's cap. This is a real dismal polar night such as one imagines it to oneself sitting at home far away in the south. But it makes me cheerful to come on deck, for I feel that we are moving onward. Saturday October 13th. Same wind today, velocity up to thirty-nine feet and higher, but Hansen has taken an observation this evening in spite of it. He is, as always, a fine, indefatigable fellow. We are going northwest, eighty-one degrees, thirty-two minutes, eight seconds north latitude, one hundred eighteen degrees, twenty-eight minutes east longitude. Sunday October 14th. Still the same storm going on. I am reading of the continual sufferings which the earlier Arctic explorers had to contend with for every degree, even for every minute of their northward course. It gives me almost a feeling of contempt for us, lying here on sofas, warm and comfortable, passing the time, reading and writing and smoking and dreaming. While the storm is tugging and tearing at the rigging above us, and the whole sea is one mass of driving snow, through which we are carried, degree by degree northwards to the goal our predecessors struggle towards, spending their strength in vain. And yet, now sinks the sun, now comes the night. Monday October 15th. When snow-showing eastwards this morning, still against the same wind and the same snowfall. You have to pay careful attention to your course these days, as the ship is not visible any great distance, and if you did not find your way back, well... But the tracks remain pretty distinct, as the snowcrust is blown bare in most places, and the drifting snow does not fasten upon it. We are moving northwards, and meanwhile the Arctic night is making its slow and majestic entrance. The sun was low to-day. I did not see it, because of banks of cloud in the south, but it still sent its light up over the pale sky. There the full moon is now raining, bathing the great ice-plane and the drifting snow in its bright light. How a night such as this raises one's thoughts. It does not matter if one has seen the like a thousand times before. It makes the same solemn impression when it comes again. One cannot free one's mind from its power. It is like entering a still holy temple, where the spirit of nature hovers through the place on glittering silver beams, and the soul must fall down and adore. Adore the infinity of the universe. Wednesday, October 17th. We are employed in taking deep-water temperatures. It is a doubtful pleasure at this time of year. Sometimes the water lifter gets coated with ice, so that it will not close down below in the water, and has therefore to hang for ever so long each time. Sometimes it freezes tight during the observation after it is brought up, so that the water will not run out of it into the sample bottles, not to mention all the bother there is getting the apparatus ready to lower. We are lucky if we do not require to take the whole thing into the galley every time to thaw it. It is slow work. The temperatures have sometimes to be read by lantern-light. The water samples are not so reliable because they freeze in the lifter, but the thing can be done, and we must just go on doing it. The same easterly wind is blowing, and we are drifting onwards. Our latitude this evening is about 81 degrees, 47 minutes north. Thursday, October 18th. I continue taking the temperatures of the water, rather a cool amusement with a thermometer down to minus 29 degrees Celsius, 20.2 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, and a wind blowing. Your fingers are apt to get a little stiff and numb when you have to manipulate the wet or ice-covered metal screws with bare hands, and have to read off the thermometer with a magnifying glass in order to ensure accuracy to the 100th part of a degree, and then to bottle the samples of water, which you have to keep close against your breast to prevent the water from freezing. It is a nice business. There was a lovely aurora borealis at eight o'clock this evening. It wound itself like a fiery serpent in a double coil across the sky. The tail was about ten degrees above the horizon in the north. Then it turned off with many windings in an easterly direction, then round again, and westwards in the form of an arch from 30 degrees to 40 degrees above the horizon, sinking down again to the west and rolling itself up into a ball from which several branches spread out over the sky. The arches were in active motion while pencils of streamers shot out swiftly from the west towards the east, and the whole serpent kept incessantly undulating into fresh curves. Gradually it mounted up over the sky nearly to the zenith, while at the same time the uppermost bend or arch separated into several fainter undulations. The ball in the northeast glowed intensely, and brilliant streamers shot upwards to the zenith from several places in the arches, especially from the ball and from the bend farthest away in the northeast. The illumination was now at its highest, the color being principally a strong yellow, though at some spots it verged towards a yellowish red while at other places it was a greenish white. When the upper wave reached the zenith, the phenomenon lost something of its brilliancy, dispersing little by little, leaving merely a faint indication of an aurora in the southern sky. On coming up again on deck later in the evening I found nearly the whole of the aurora collected in the southern half of the sky. A low arch, five degrees in height, could be seen far down in the south over the dark segment of the horizon. Between this and the zenith were four other vague wavy arches, the topmost of which passed right across it, here and there vivid streamers shot flaming upwards especially from the undermost arch in the south. No arch was to be seen in the northern part of the sky, only streamers every here and there. Tonight as usual there are traces of aurora to be seen over the whole sky, light mists or streamers are often plainly visible and the sky seems to be constantly covered with a luminous veil in which every here and there are dark holes. There is scarcely any night or rather I may safely say there is no night on which no trace of aurora can be discerned as soon as the sky becomes clear or even when there is simply a rift in the clouds large enough for it to be seen. And as a rule we have strong light phenomena dancing in ceaseless unrest over the firmament. They mainly appear however in the southern part of the sky. Friday October 19th, a fresh breeze from east southeast, drifting northwards at a good pace. Soon we shall probably have passed the long looked for 82 degrees and that will not be far from 82 degrees 27 minutes when the from will be the vessel that will have penetrated farthest to the north on this globe. But the barometer is falling the wind probably will not remain in that quarter long but will shift round to the west. I only hope for this once the barometer may prove a false profit. I have become rather sanguine things have been going pretty well for so long and October a month which last year's experience had made me dread has been a month of marked advance if only it doesn't end badly. The wind today however was to cost a life. The mill which had been repaired after the mishap to the cogwheel the other day was set going again. In the afternoon a couple of the puppies began fighting over a bone when one of them fell underneath one of the cogwheels on the axle of the mill and was dragged in between it and the deck. Its poor little body nearly made the whole thing come to a standstill and unfortunately no one was on the spot to stop it in time. I heard the noise and rushed on deck the puppy had just been drawn out nearly dead the hole of its stomach was torn open. It gave a faint whine and was at once put out of its misery.  Then came the thigh bone of a bear trembling along the deck from the galley.  Fate is inexorable. Sunday October 31st North latitude 82 degrees 0.2 minutes east longitude 114 degrees nine minutes. It is late in the evening and my head is bewildered as if I had been indulging in a regular debauch but it was a debauch of a very innocent nature. A grand banquet today to celebrate the 82nd degree of latitude. The observation gave 82 degrees 0.2 minutes last night and we have now certainly drifted a little farther north. Honeycakes, gingerbread were baked for the occasion. First-class honeycakes too you may take my word for it and then after a refreshing snowshoe run came a festal banquet. Notices were stuck up in the saloon requesting the guests to be punctual at dinnertime for the cook had exerted himself to the utmost of his power. The following deeply felt lines by an anonymous poet also appeared on a placard. When dinner is punctually served at the time no fear that the milk soup will surely be prime but the vions are spoiled if you come too late the fish pudding will lie on your chest a dead weight. What's preserved in tin cases there can be no doubt if you wait long enough will force its way out. Even meat of the ox of the sheep or of swine very different in this from the juice of the vine. Ramourney and armour and thorn and hair this good meats have preserved and they taste not amiss so I'll add just a word friends of warning to you if you want a good dinner come at one not at two. The lyric melancholy which here finds utterance must have been the outcome of many bitter disappointments and furnishes a valuable internal evidence as to the anonymous author's profession. Meanwhile the guests assembled with tolerable punctuality the only exception being your humble servant who was obliged to take some photographs in the rapidly waning daylight. The menu was splendid one oxtail soup two fish pudding with melted butter and potatoes three turtle with marrow fat peas etc etc four rice with malter cloudberries and cream crown malt extract after dinner coffee and honey cakes after supper which also was excellent there was a call for music which was liberally supplied throughout the whole evening by various accomplished performers on the organ among whom Benson specially distinguished himself his late experiences on the ice with the crank handle having put him in first rate training every now and then the music dragged a bit as though it were being hauled up from an abyss some one thousand or fifteen hundred fathoms deep then it would cook in and get more lively as it came nearer to the surface at last the excitement rose to such a pitch that Pettersen and I had to get up and have a dance a waltz and a polka or two and we really executed some very tasteful pod to do on the limited floor of the saloon then Almondson also was swept into the mazes of the dance while the others played cards meanwhile refreshments were served in the form of preserved peaches dried bananas figs honey cakes etc etc in short we made a jovial evening of it and why should we not we are progressing merrily towards our goal we are already halfway between the new Siberian islands and frost joseph land and there is not a soul on board who doubts that we shall accomplish what we came out to do so long live merriment but the endless stillness of the polar night holds its sway aloft the moon half full shines over the ice and the stars sparkle brilliantly overhead there are no restless northern lights and the south wind sighs mournfully through the rigging a deep peaceful stillness prevails everywhere it is the infinite loveliness of death nirvana Monday october 22nd it is beginning to be cold now the thermometer was minus 34.6 degrees celsius 30.2 degrees fahrenheit below zero last night and this evening it is minus 36 degrees celsius 32.8 degrees fahrenheit below zero a lovely aurora this evening 1130 a brilliant corona encircled the zenith with a wreath of streamers in several layers one outside the other then larger and smaller sheaves of streamers spread over the sky especially low down towards southwest and east southeast all of them however tended upwards towards the corona which shown like a halo i stood watching it a long while every now and then i could discern a dark patch in its middle at the point where all the rays converged it lay a little south of the pole star and approached cassiopeia in the position it then occupied but the halo kept smoldering and shifting just as if a gale in the upper strata of the atmosphere were playing the bellows to it presently fresh streamers shot out of the darkness outside the inner halo followed by other bright shafts of light in a still wider circle and meanwhile the dark space in the middle was clearly visible at other times it was entirely covered with masses of light then it appeared as if the storm abated and the whole turned pale and glowed with a faint whitish hue for a little while only to shoot wildly up once more and to begin the same dance over again then the entire mass of light around the corona began to rock to and fro in large waves over the zenith and the dark central point where upon the gale seemed to increase and whirled the streamers into an inextricable tangle till they merged into a luminous vapor that enveloped the corona and drowned it in a deluge of light so that neither it nor the streamers nor the dark center could be seen nothing in fact but a chaos of shining mist again it became paler and i went below at midnight there was hardly anything of the aurora to be seen friday october 26th yesterday evening we were in 82 degrees three minutes north latitude today the from is two years old the sky has been overcast during the last two days and it has been so dark at midday that i thought we should soon have to stop our snowshoe expeditions but this morning brought us clear still weather and i went out on a delightful trip to the westward where there had been a good deal of fresh packing but nothing of any importance in honor of the occasion we had a particularly good dinner with fried halibut turtle pork chops with haraco beans and green peas plum pudding real burning plum pudding for the first time with custard sauce and wound up with strawberries as usual the beverages consisted of wine that is to say lime juice with water and sugar and crown malt extract i fear there was a general overtaxing of the digestive apparatus after dinner coffee and honey cakes with which nordall stood cigarettes general holiday this evening it has begun to blow from the north but probably this does not mean much i must hope so at all events and trust that we shall soon get a south wind again but it is not the mild zephyr we yearn for not the breath of the blushing dawn no a cold biting south wind roaring with all the force of the polar sea so that the from the two-year-old from may be buried in the snowstorm and all round her be but a reeking frost it is this we are waiting for this that will drift us onwards to our goal today then from thou art two years old i said at the dinner table that if a year ago we were unanimous in believing that the from was a good ship we had much better grounds for that belief today for safely and surely she is carrying us onwards even if the speed be not excessive and so we drank the from's good health and good progress i did not say too much had i said all that was in my heart my words would not have been so measured for to say the truth we all of us dearly love the ship as much as it is possible to love any impersonal thing and why should we not love her no mother can give her young more warmth and safety under her wings than she affords to us she is indeed like a home to us we all rejoice to return to her from out on the icy plains and when i have been far away and have seen her masts rising over the everlasting mantle of snow how often has my heart glowed with warmth towards her to the builder of this home grateful thoughts often travel during the still nights he i feel certain sits yonder at home often thinking of us but he knows not where his thought can seek the from in the great white tract around the pole but he knows his child and though all else lose faith in her he will believe that she will hold out yes call an archer could you see us now you would know that your faith in her is not misplaced i am sitting alone in my birth and my thoughts glide back over the two years that have passed what demon is it that weaves the threads of our lives that makes us deceive ourselves and ever sends us forth on paths we have not ourselves laid out path the sun which we have no desire to walk was it a mere feeling of duty that impelled me oh no i was simply a child yearning for a great adventure out in the unknown who had dreamed of it so long that at last i believe it really awaited me and it has indeed fallen to my lot the great adventure of the ice deep and pure as infinity the silent starlit polar night nature itself in its profundity the mystery of life the ceaseless circling of the universe the feast of death without suffering without regret eternal in itself here in the great night thou standest in all thy naked pettiness face to face with nature and thou sittest devoutly at the feet of eternity intently listening and thou knowest god the all ruling the center of the universe all the riddles of life seem to grow clear to thee and thou laughest at thyself that thou couldst be consumed by brooding it is all so little so unutterably little whoso sees jojoba dies sunday november fourth at noon i had gone out on a snowshoe expedition and had taken some of the dogs with me presently i noticed that those that had been left behind at the ship began to bark those with me pricked up their ears and several of them started off back with you lanka at their head most of them soon stopped listening and looking behind them to see if i were following i wondered for a little while whether it could be a bear and then continued on my way but at length i could stand at no longer and set off homewards with the dogs dashing wildly on in front on approaching the ship i saw some of the men setting off with guns they were sverdrup yohansen mogsted and henrickson they had got a good start of me in the direction in which the dogs were barking before i too got hold of a gun and set off after them all at once i saw through the darkness the flash of a volley from those in front followed by another shot then several more until at last it sounded like regular platoon firing what the deuce could it be they were standing on the same spot and kept firing incessantly why on earth did they not advance nearer i hurried on thinking it was high time i came up with my snowshoes to follow the game which must evidently be in full flight meanwhile they advanced a little and then there was another flash to be seen through the darkness and so they went on two or three times one of the number at last dashed forward over the ice and fired straight down in front of him while another knelt down and fired towards the east were they trying their guns but surely it was a strange time for doing so and there were so many shots meanwhile the dogs tore around over the ice and gathered in clumps barking furiously at length i overtook them and saw three bears scattered over the ice a shebear and two cubs while the dogs lay over them worrying them like mad and tearing away at paws throat and tail eulanka especially was beside herself she had gripped one of the cubs by the throat and worried it like a mad thing so that it was difficult to get her away the bears had gone very leisurely away from the dogs which dared not come to sufficiently close quarters to use their teeth till the old shebear had been wounded and had fallen down the bears indeed had acted in a very suspicious manner it seemed just as if the shebear had some deep design some evil intent in her mind if she could only have lured the dogs near enough to her suddenly she halted let the cubs go on in front sniffed a little and then came back to meet the dogs who at the same time as if at a word of command all turned tail and set off towards the west it was then that the first shot was fired and the old bear tottered and fell headlong when immediately some of the dogs set to and tackled her one of the cubs then got its quietess while the other one was fired at and made off over the ice with three dogs after it they soon overtook it and pulled it down so that when mogs dead came up he was obliged first of all to get the dogs off before he could venture to shoot it was a glorious slaughter and by no means unwelcome for we had that very day eaten the last remains of our last bear in the shape of meat cakes for dinner the two cubs made lovely christmas pork in all probability these were the same bears whose tracks we had seen before sverdrup and i had followed on the tracks of three such animals on the last day of october and had lost them to north northwest of the ship apparently they had come from that quarter now when they wanted to shoot peter's gun as usual would not go off it had again been drenched with vaseline and he kept calling out shoot shoot mine won't go off afterwards on examining the gun i had taken with me to the fray i found there were no cartridges in it a nice account i should have given of myself had i come on the bears alone with that weapon monday november fifth as i was sitting at work last night i heard a dog on the deck howling fearfully i sprang up and found it was one of the puppies that had touched an iron bolt with its tongue and was frozen fast to it there the poor beast was straining to get free with its tongue stretched out so far that it looked like a thin rope proceeding out of its throat and it was howling piteously benson whose watch it was had come up but scarcely knew what to do he took hold of it however by the neck and held it close to the bolt so that its tongue was less extended after having warmed the bolt somewhat with his hand he managed to get the tongue free the poor little puppy seemed overjoyed at its release and to show its gratitude licked benson's hand with its bloody tongue and seemed as if it could not be grateful enough to its deliverer it is to be hoped that it will be some time before this puppy at any rate gets fast again in this way but such things happen every now and then sunday november 11th i am pursuing my studies as usual day after day and they lure me too deeper and deeper into the insoluble mystery that lies behind all these inquiries nay why keep revolving in this fruitless circle of thought better go out into the winter night the moon is up great and yellow and placid the stars are twinkling overhead through the drifting snow dust why not rock yourself into a winter night stream filled with memories of summer uh no the wind is howling too shrilly over the barren ice planes there are 33 degrees of cold and summer with its flowers is far far away i would give a year of my life to hold them in my embrace they loom far away in the distance as if i should never come back to them but the northern lights with their eternally shifting loveliness flame over the heavens each day and each night look at them drink oblivion and drink hope from them they are even as the aspiring soul of man restless as it is they will read the whole vault of heaven with their glittering fleeting light surpassing all else in their wild loveliness fairer than even the blush of dawn but whirling idly through empty space they bear no message of a coming day the sailor steers his course by a star could you but concentrate yourselves you too or northern lights might lend your aid to guide the wielded wanderer but dance on and let me enjoy you stretch a bridge across the gulf between the present and the time to come and let me dream far far ahead into the future oh thou mysterious radiance what art thou and whence come as thou yet why ask is it not enough to admire thy beauty and pause there can we at best get beyond the outward show of things what would it profit even if we could say that it is an electric discharge or currents of electricity through the upper regions of the air and were able to describe in minutest detail how it all came to be it would be mere words we know no more what an electric current really is than what the aurora borealis is happy is the child we with all our views and theories are not in the last analysis a hair's breadth nearer the truth than it it Tuesday November 13th thermometer minus 38 degrees Celsius minus 36.4 degrees Fahrenheit the ice is packing in several quarters during the day and the roar is pretty loud now that the ice has become colder it can be heard from afar a strange roar which would sound uncanny to anyone who did not know what it was a delightful snowshoe run in the light of the full moon is life a veil of tears is it such a deplorable fate to dash off like the wind with all the dogs skipping around one over the boundless expanse of ice through a night like this in the fresh crackling frost while the snowshoes glide over the smooth surface so that you scarcely know you are touching the earth and the stars hang high in the blue vault above this is more indeed than one has any right to expect of life it is a fairy tale from another world from a life to come and then to return home to one's cozy study cabin kindle the stove light the lamp fill a pipe stretch oneself on the sofa and send dreams out into the world with the curling clouds of smoke is that a dire inflection thus I catch myself sitting staring at the fire for hours together dreaming myself away a useful way of employing the time but at least it makes it slip unnoticed by until the dreams are swept away in an ice blast of reality and I sit here in the midst of desolation and nervously set to work again Wednesday November 14th how marvelous are these snowshoe runs through this silent nature the ice fields stretch all around bathed in the silver moonlight here in their dark cold shadows project from the hummocks whose sides faintly reflect the twilight far far out a dark line marks the horizon formed by the packed up ice over it a shimmer of silvery vapor and above all the boundless deep blue starry sky where the full moon sails through the ether but in the south is a faint glimmer of day low down of a dark glowing red hue and higher up a clear yellow and pale green arch that loses itself in the blue above the hole melts into a pure harmony one and indescribable at times one longs to be able to translate such scenes into music what mighty chords one would require to interpret them silent oh so silent you can hear the vibrations of your own nerves I seem as if I were gliding over and over these planes into infinite space is this not an image of what is to come eternity and peace are here nirvana must be cold and bright as such an eternal star night what are all our research and understanding in the midst of this infinity friday november 16th in the forenoon I went out with spare drop on snowshoes in the moonlight and we talked seriously of the prospects of our drift and of the proposed expedition northwards over the ice in the spring in the evening we went into the matter more thoroughly in his cabin I stated my views in which he entirely coincided I have of late been meditating a great deal on what is the proper course to pursue supposing the drift does not take us so far north by the month of march as I had anticipated but the more I think of it the more firmly am I persuaded that it is the thing to do for if it be right to set out at 85 degrees it must be no less right to set out at 82 degrees or 83 degrees in either case we should penetrate into more northerly regions than we should otherwise reach and this becomes all the more desirable if the from herself does not get so far north as we had hoped if we cannot actually reach the pole why we must turn back before reaching it the main consideration as I must constantly repeat is not to reach that exact mathematical point but to explore the unknown parts of the polar sea whether these be near to or more remote from the pole I said this before setting out and I must keep it continually in mind certainly there are many important observations to be made on board during the further drift of the ship many which I would dearly like to carry on myself but all the more important of these will be made equally well here even though two of our number leave the ship and there can scarcely be any doubt that the observations we shall make farther north will not many times outweigh in value those I could have made during the remainder of the time on board so far then it is absolutely desirable that we set out then comes the question what is the best time to start that the spring march at the latest is the only season for such a venture there can be no doubt at all but shall it be next spring suppose at the worst we have not advanced farther than to 83 degrees north latitude and 110 degrees east longitude then something might be said for waiting till the spring of 1896 but I cannot but think that we should thus in all probability let slip the propitious moment the drifting could not be so wearingly slow but that after another year had elapsed we should be far beyond the point from which the sledge expedition ought to set out if I measure the distance we have drifted from November of last year with the compasses and mark off the same distance ahead by next November we should be north of France Joseph land and a little beyond it it is conceivable of course that we were no farther advanced in February 1896 either but it is more likely from all I can make out that the drift will increase rather than diminish as we work westwards and consequently in February 1896 we should have got too far while even if one could imagine a better starting point than that which the from will probably offer us by March 1st 1895 it will at all events be a possible one it must consequently be the safest plan not to wait for another spring such then are the prospects before us of pushing through the distance from this proposed starting point to Cape Fligley which is the nearest no land I sat down at about 370 miles consequently not much more than the distance we covered in Greenland and that would be easy work enough over this ice even if it did become somewhat bad towards land if once a coast is reached any reasonable being can surely manage to subsist by hunting whether large or small game whether bears or sandhoppers thus we can always make for Cape Fligley or Petterman's land which lies north of it if our situation becomes untenable the distance will of course be increased the farther we advance northwards but at no point whatever between here and the pole is it greater than we can and will manage with the help of our dogs a line of retreat is therefore secured though there are those doubtless who hold that a barren coast where you must first scrape your food together before you can eat it is a poor retreat for hungry men but that is really an advantage for such a retreat would not be too alluring a wretched invention for sooth for people who wish to push on is a line of retreat and everlasting inducement to look behind when they should have enough to do in looking ahead but now for the expedition itself it will consist of 28 dogs two men and 2100 pounds of provisions and equipments the distance to the pole from 83 degrees is 483 miles is it too much to calculate that we may be able to accomplish that distance in 50 days I do not of course know what the staying powers of the dogs may be but that with two men to help they should be able to do nine and a half miles a day with 75 pounds each for the first few days sound sufficiently reasonable even if they are not very good ones this then can scarcely be called a wild calculation always of course supposing the ice to be as it is here and there is no reason why it should not be it indeed steadily improves the farther north we get and it also improves with the approach of spring in 50 days then we should reach the pole in 65 days we went 345 miles over the inland ice of Greenland at an elevation of more than 8000 feet without dogs and with defective provisions and could certainly have gone considerably farther in 50 days we shall have consumed a pound of pemicana day for each dog that is 1400 pounds altogether and two pounds of provisions for each man daily is 200 pounds as some fuel also will have been consumed during this time the freight on the sledges will have diminished to less than 500 pounds but a burden like this is nothing for 28 dogs to draw so that they ought to go ahead like a gale of wind during the latter part of the time and thus do it in less than the 50 days however let us suppose that it takes this time if all has gone well we shall now direct our course for the seven islands north of spitsbergen that is nine degrees or 620 miles but if we are not in first rate condition it will be safer to make for Cape Fligley or the land to the north of it let us suppose we decide on this route we set out from the from on march 1st if circumstances are favorable we should start sooner and therefore arrive at the pole april 30th we shall have about 500 pounds of our provisions left enough for another 50 days but we can spare none for the dogs we must therefore begin killing some of them either for food for the others or for ourselves giving our provisions to them even if my figures are somewhat too low I may assume that by the time 23 dogs have been killed we shall have traveled 41 days and still have five dogs left how far south shall we have advanced in this time the weight of baggage was to begin with less than 500 pounds that is to say less than 18 pounds for each dog to draw after 41 days this will at least have been reduced to 280 pounds by the consumption of provisions and fuel and by dispensing with sundry articles of our equipment such as sleeping bags tents etc etc which will have become superfluous there remain then 56 pounds for each of the five dogs if we draw nothing ourselves and should it be desirable our equipment might be still further diminished with a burden of from 18 to 56 pounds a piece the latter would only be towards the end the dogs would on an average be able to do 13 and four fifths miles a day even if the snow surface should become somewhat more difficult that is to say we shall have gone 565 miles to the south or we shall be 18 and a half miles past Cape Fligley on June 1st with five dogs and nine days provisions left but it is probable in the first place that we shall long before this have reached land and secondly so early as the first half of April the Austrians found open water by Cape Fligley and abundance of birds consequently in May and June we should have no difficulty as regards food not to mention that it would be strange indeed if we had not before that time went with a bear or a seal or some stray birds that we should now be pretty safe I consider a certain and we can choose whichever route we please either along the northwest coast of Franz Joseph land by Gillis land towards northeast island and spitsbergen and should circumstances prove favorable this would decidedly be my choice or we can go south through Austria sound towards the south coast of Franz Joseph land and thence to Novia's Emilia or Spitsbergen the latter by preference we may of course find Englishmen on Franz Joseph land but that we must not reckon on such then is my calculation have I made it recklessly no I think not the only difficulty would be if during the latter part of the journey in May we should find the surface like that we had here last spring at the end of May and should be considerably delayed by it but this would only be towards the very end of our time and at worst it could not be entirely impassable besides it would be strange if we could not manage to average 11 and a half miles a day during the whole of the journey with an average load for each dog from 30 to 40 pounds it would not be more however if our calculation should prove faulty we can always as aforesaid turned back at any moment what unforeseen obstacles may confront us one the ice may be more impracticable than was supposed two we may meet with land three the dogs may fail us may second or freeze to death four we ourselves may suffer from scurvy one and two that the ice may be more impracticable further north is certainly possible but hardly probable I can see no reason why it should be unless we have unknown lands to the north but should this be so very well we must take what chance we find the ice can scarcely be altogether impassable even markham was able to advance with his scurvy smitten people and the coasts of this land may possibly be advantageous for an advance it simply depends on their direction and extent it is difficult to say anything beforehand except that I think the depth of water we have here and the drift of the ice rendered improbable that we can have land of any extent at all close at hand in any case there must somewhere or other be a passage for the ice and at the worst we can follow that passage three there's always a possibility that the dogs may fail us but as may be seen I have not laid out any scheme of excessive work for them and even if one or two of them should prove failures that could not be the case with all with the food they have hitherto had they have got through the winter and the cold without mishap and the food they will get on the journey will be better in my calculations moreover I have taken no account of what we shall draw ourselves and even supposing all the dogs to fail us we could manage to get along by ourselves pretty well four the worst event would undeniably be that we ourselves should be attacked by scurvy and not withstanding our excellent health such a contingency is quite conceivable when it is born in mind how in the English North Pole expedition all the men with the exception of the officers suffered from scurvy when the spring and the sledge journeys began although as long as they were on board ship they had not the remotest suspicion that anything of the kind was lying in wait for them as far however as we are concerned I consider this contingency very remote in the first place the English expedition was remarkably unfortunate and hardly any others can show a similar experience although they may have undertaken sledge journeys of equal length for example McClintock's during the retreat of the Jeanette party so far as is known no one was attacked with scurvy Perry and Ostrup did not suffer from scurvy either moreover our supply of provisions has been more carefully selected and offers greater variety than has been the case in former expeditions not one of which has enjoyed such perfect health as ours I scarcely think therefore that we should take with us from the from any germs of scurvy and as regards the provisions for the sledge journey itself I have taken care that they shall consist of good all-round nutritious articles of food so that I can scarcely believe that they would be the means of developing an attack of this disease of course one must run some risk but in my opinion all possible precautions have been taken and when that is done it is one's duty to go ahead there is yet another question that must be taken into consideration have I the right to deprive the ship and those who remain behind of the resources such an expedition entails the fact that there will be two men less is of little importance for the from can be handled quite as well with 11 men a more important point is that we shall have to take with us all the dogs except the seven puppies but they are amply supplied with sledge provisions and first class sledge equipments on board and it is inconceivable that in case anything happened to the from they should be unable to reach france joseph land or spitsbergen it is scarcely likely that in case they had to abandon her it would be further north and 85 degrees probably not even so far north but suppose they were obliged to abandon her at 85 degrees it would probably be about north of france joseph land when they would be 207 miles from Cape fliggly or if further to the east it would be some 276 miles from the seven islands and it is hard to believe that they could not manage a distance like that with our equipments now as before i am of opinion that the from will in all probability drift right across the polar basin and out on the other side without being stopped and without being destroyed but even if any accident should occur i do not see why the crew should not be able to make their way home in safety provided do measures of precaution are observed consequently i think there is no reason why a sledge expedition should not leave the from and i feel that as it promises such good results it ought certainly to be attempted end of file 18 end of farthest north volume one by free chaff nunson


So I would assume that we hear all of Python or maybe your company offered to pay for the trip and you couldn't say no We love Python because of its expression power and nice learning curve and it's a coding style The fact that many Language language features look like native languages the general straightforwardness of Python and general lack of Lack of hidden tricks makes it appealing both as the first language for people who just started Programming and as a new language for experienced developers practice shows that You can quickly start doing useful things in Python if you are already experienced Programmer, so I used to a program for Microsoft net and C sharp for five years before I got into my first Python project I didn't really know that much about Python I didn't had any formal training in Python or read any book on Python. So my approach was purely practical I was only interested in getting my task done and not really getting too deep into theories It was three years ago since that I learned a lot about Python But what I noticed that many tutorials books blog posts that feature advanced concept They usually use really impractical examples like for example how to generate Fibonacci numbers Who really generates Fibonacci numbers in production? So that's why I decided to make this talk and provide some Practical examples on usage of advanced language constructs in Python So I'm not really here today to teach you but more to provide interesting ideas examples to inspire you To practically use those constructs. So quick check Please raise your hands those who use yield keyword in production code last in within last year Wow, I'm surprised a lot of people good who wrote a Himself a decorator in last year in production. Okay, great. Who wrote context manager within last year? Okay So it's good. So you are more familiar with a theory so I can not really focus too much on it and jump to examples So for my examples in this talk, I used code from my projects that I worked on and I collected a code from different open source libraries so What is a terrible in Python all the definitions I took from my official glossary? So well, I'd use a pretty vague abstract definitions So what it practically is a terrible terrible is an object that has a teacher a method Where can it be used in Python? It can be used in For statement in the loop it can be used in least comprehensions or Ingenerator expressions or you can pass it to functions that expect it terrible like all any of some filter Whatever and I would like to draw your attention to it turtles for those who don't know it provides a lot of very useful functionality to work with the terrible thing interators So I said that it terrible returns iterator. So what's the iterator iterator? basically the whole functionality of iterator is to keep the current state of iteration like for example if we iterating our list is to remember the current element and that's being returned and Basically, only thing it has to do it has to provide a next method Which basically produces a new value on every iteration or raises a stop iteration exception If the iterator exhaust it well, how it can be created you can create a class implement method next and instantiated I Would like to point out this completely impractical Way and I won't be really talking about it. Then generator expression Generator expression looks very much like least comprehensions except that it use Around brackets. It's an important difference. Basically in least comprehensions you immediately force the creation of the whole list and Production of the whole various so it takes memory and it's not very actually useful and well So my strong opinion is that? For most of the time you should prefer generator expressions or least comprehensions because It saves memory and sometimes you don't even need the whole list of them Of the values then generator functions So generators generators is a function that has a yield keyword in it. Well, many of you raise hands So I won't go to deep so this is the most practical way to create a complex Iterators in Python. It was introduced in the same version of Python as iterators because yeah, author of spython Immediately understood that creating classes for iteration is not very convenient. It's you can read the discussion about it in pep 255 it grew into something way larger into coroutines, but this is outside of the scope so quick quick glance how works so if Function has a yield keyword in it. It's marked as a generator when you call it It doesn't actually execute a function. It just creates iterator object when you iterate over it The control flow will actually step into function and go to the first yield then return it to the Loop outside and then stop until next iteration. So let's quickly Run through it. So this how it will be executed will go will print yield It will return but on next iteration it will start from the next line and go until next yield or end of function So this will print The one zero two. So what's the difference between the regular function is that it remembers its states between the calls? So what can it be practically used for because many people? When they study the subjects, they don't really know. Well, okay, this seems cool But what can I do one of the very common usage of? Generators is basically to create a view over a collection do some filtering and mapping so this is the code from a project I worked on we had some list of fields some of them were considered dynamics started with the some prefix and Basically, we needed to get a list of the field name dynamic field names in different places So we wrote this a simple Generator what's good about it first? You don't need to copy paste this for and if everywhere you need the least second. It looks clean. It's easy to read. Well, it's Multiline least comprehension for generator expressions are well ugly. So This is the well this we want some filtering and then we want some mapping. So another very common way to Write generators is to flatten lists. So this code comes from Django framework so flattening lists if you have a list of lists and you want to iterate over all sub elements as if it was single stream of Values so they it's basically usually done with nested force and so they created this iterator So they don't need to copy paste this to force everywhere It's actually a good and bad example because it our tools module provides a much easier way to flatten lists with the iterables that's That's the how it can be done in one line. So it's very popular question on stack or flow. So I would assume that Well, yeah, people have difficulties with it, but There can be more complicated flattening list logic. This code comes from Django from ginger It's a templating engine used often used with plus frameworks So they have a list of items and item can't be a node or a list So if it's not we return it we yielded if it's the least we Go into sub-loop. So this is here. You can't use a really Eter tools. So this is an example of more complex flattening So what it can be also good for generators is to save memory So this code comes from requests library is a so-called HTTP library for humans Whatever it means, but it's very convenient for library to do HTTP requests. So somewhere in the depths of it They have a socket objects or I know some sort of wrapper self that role that can that well It's a network stream. It's a sequence of bytes but Responses from servers can be fairly large. We don't really want to load them in memory completely So they wrote the iterator that breaks it into chunks and you can iterate over those chunks without actually loading The whole content of the response into memory that's very convenient because it saves memory and it's convenient basically because users of this function may not really need a whole Whole response in memory that can be used to directly write those chunks into file So you can save it locally with and it's good for memory and performance. So It's a more a little bit more complicated. So this is their internal usage of this chunks Iterator, so what's they doing here? So it's iterator that takes Iterator of chunks and produces iterator of strings. So chunks have a fixed length, but Strings can be arbitrary length and they are divided by delimiter So what they do here? They break a chunk into strings, but it can happen that the remainder of chunk is in complete line and We need to another to get another chunk to complete it So here we they introduce a state a local variable pending with which carries over a leftover of chunk that is uncompleted string they keep it before between yields and They add it to chunk so that they can they remember it between calls so that They can connect it with the rest of the string and return it. So if if the Chunk there are no more chunks, then they assume that pending is complete string and return it It's a convenient example how also you can save memory and create a Iterator over iterator with the generators. So it raters generators are also convenient to traverse Complex data structures. So this is example of source code of standard OS module as a function walk I simplified it significantly. Well, it's like 200 lines of code, but this is the core of it. So it uses a Recursive it really a recursive generators. So it's a very convenient in this case because File system is tree data structure so walk returns Couple of current path the list of dears in this path and the list of files Then it goes over the list of directories in current path and calls itself basically and yields the results So in the end if we iterate over walk Generator we will get a flat list of Curricle data. That's very convenient also It raters can be infinite. So some people may wondering what why would you need a Infinite iterator you can't even iterate over it. You can't do for over it because it will like eat all your memory and burn CPU This is example. This is Django templating language for those who aren't familiar. It just Basically copies the for for tag copies its contents. It's here. It generates a rows in a table So we would like to often in you know in web We have tables there the rows come in different colors one after another So Django has this cycle tag which actually will produce on every call row one row two row one row two Internally, it's implemented with a eternal cycle iterator, which is infinite iterator in the lower part In the lower part you can see well it basically takes it terrible and then repeats it one by items one by one forever So every time this tag is called it calls render method and it just calls next item on the iterator So it's not a problem that your iterator here is infinite. It will not never try to Interate over it completely. It will call it exactly as many times as For iterates. So this is very nice and clean code You don't need to maintain any state like which value was returned previously. You just call next on cycle So again, I advertise you a third tools module So those are the most common practical examples for using but I Recommend you to research deeper because iterators generators is very complex topic in python. It has way more advanced usages So I recommend you to Look more into your tools It or tools Module and master it because it can improve your productivity Then actually yield is not the statement. It is expression So it can be used as a mechanism to pass a values from color to Generator this can did later Led Python to even more advanced stuff So now then I recommend you to read about yield from its so-called generation delegations And they are those two features are used to implement coroutines in python Which is also very interesting and based on coroutines. There is a new well relatively new Module well the whole concept in python called async or X project to live It's for asynchronous input output and they are heavily based on coroutines generators and iterators You can actually don't need to photo the slides. I will put them online and So yeah, you can don't worry if you miss something you can check it out later So another advanced feature that's often not used in practice by well, maybe starter developers It's a decorators. So Again many fewer hands. So I would assume that many of you know how decorator works basically decorator Reps your function with some inner function What it basically all it does it assigns to your function the they decorated the wrapped version of your function What is it good for? practically With a decorator you can modify input arguments you can modify return value Well, you can do things before Functions called after functions called you can actually not call the function at all So your decorator may decide not to call function for some reason you can modify some global states some Outer variable some thread locals and stuff like this for this function and then set them back to their values that were before that and it can Use decrees can be useful to assign metadata to functions of all sorts. So This is example from flask Web framework they heavily use decorators. So we they demonstrate two things here it It is hello is a web view. It's basically a function that is called when when you call Your your web server slash hello or slash hello name. So what they do here they? use decorators to parse URL into a function arguments and another usage of decorator here is that it Basically makes it possible to discover the function. So the so the framework knows which functions are refuse So in this sense, it provides a metadata for your application This is the small snippet from from my current projects So we have this we want to make extensible list of extendable list of well some filters Whatever that means and we would like to associate We would like to show them on UI so users can select from a list So we needed some like sort of label for those fields. So I created this decorator that provides a human readable Description that is used on UI Also, I can query all the functions in the modules and check if they have this If they have this decorator, so it's also good for Discovery and for providing metadata that can be used in for example in UI later So Call or not so with a decorator you can make a decorator that decides Maybe actually we shouldn't call the underlying function at all. This is again simplified example from Django They have a decorator called permission required. So you can apply this decorator on a web view function and Check if the currently locked user has certain permission To call this web view. So what we can see here They check if the current user has this permission If user has this permission, they call they call the actual function if user doesn't have permission They don't even call the function. So that's that that's how you can Check whether you should actually call functional not or raise error or whatever does something else This is a decorator rate limit. We created in one of my projects Basically, it's also for web views. It counts in a cache how often the page is called by Certain AP address and for example, if it's called more than 10 times in a minute We will not generate the response will show an error with very simple mechanism from prevent of Abusing of a service Yeah, so if the user calls it too often we can prevent call completely Caching is very big feature that can be done with decorators So this is in our project.  It's a jungle or M. So basically just counts related objects So this function is called this properties called a lot in the reports So we have reports that call this function. I don't like 20 times, right? And we can just drop this decorator cash result here and it can very conveniently Prevent too many of the calls So How we implemented it it's also very straightforward so you can see Here we get the funk name that will be non persons in this case so if The far the object has this attribute We do get Attribute if it's not if it's not in the object We actually call the property calculated and then set corresponding attribute and the subsequent calls to this property will return the Cached value. So what's bad about it? It's basically that Yeah, it's a underlying object or data changes Well, you there is no way to enforce recalculation, but this is good for simple cases Like for example, yeah, if you're sure that your object won't change So the proper way to cash with the decorators. There is this awesome. I really like this Library called dog pile. It's actually creates proper and very sophisticated way to cash Just cash functions and Method everything so the key Decorated there is cash in arguments. You can provide different back ends and memcash local memory anything and they will Actually cash the functions for corresponding arguments as well. So it's a The cash key will include the function arguments. It's very smart. You can refresh you can refresh values and everything I recommend I suggest everyone to look into this because that's probably the most sophisticated caching Library with the decorators. I've seen so far my my personal award for most creative use of decorators goes to Ansible ansible is very powerful tool for it Automation you can use it for deploying your code and servers and manage your infrastructure I also recommend you to look into it It's very powerful, but inside of it. They have a very interesting decorator called time out So you can just apply to function what it does if the function takes longer than well by default 10 seconds to execute they stop a function execution and raise an error How they implemented it so they implemented it using a unique signals so Before the functions called this set seek alarm with a Callback so and then they set the alarm to seconds. So what happens? How does it work? it's a Kernel feature of Linux well any other post-excompatible OS It will it will set this alarm internally and when this alarm goes off It will call it will call the handler method. So and handler method will arise Timeout error and this timeout error will appear within a function and it will Exit the function immediately. So it takes longer. It just stops the function and exits. So this is a pretty nice way to Do a function by timeout? Without using threads. Well, obviously this will not work on windows. Sorry This is mostly for unix operating systems Digging deeper so Decorators are can be way more complex than examples that I showed as there was a previous talk Today unfortunately, I missed it But I they cover they covered I hope maybe someone of you were there in the program They wrote that they will cover advanced cases of decorators so in decorate in decorators you can decorate classes and Decorators self can be class that maintains a state so you can create way more complex things But I would say in for more most practical cases the Simple decorators are enough, but I recommend you to research more into this so context managers context manager This is how well how we call with this with statement It's just very simple thing is basically it calls enter on the on the Context manager object and returns a Value and science to variable then it calls the actual code that is within the with the statement and finally it calls exit So what it what it can be good for it's good for if you want deterministic release of Unmanage resources for example files Everyone must use with with files on Python Because it will close the file immediately after you stopped using it it's also good to modify some global states for example you can Select the piece of code that will be executed within transactions or you can set some setting just for this Piece of code and then restore the settings and it can be used a lot of interesting tricks for logging for more advanced logging and debugging So Couple of examples in Django, so they have session transaction So on exit on exit basically they check if the current scope was within a transaction if yes, then we need to Commit the transaction or well on error rollback. So that's That will put the it's in a transaction The important here is that finally it's called Always so whatever there is error in transactions or not it will Call this the exit method always so for example in requests library They have a session context manager when you exit it it closes the session It's also good because you should close it as fast as you stopped using it and not when garbage collector picks it and calls it This is a small Context manager that I wrote for debugging Basically when it enters it stores internally the time when you entered into a function Oh not function of the piece of code and when you exit it just brings the amount of milliseconds it took It took to execute your piece of code This is very simple and very easy to do micro profiling a small chunks of codes without you know Doing too much calling profiler and all this stuff So digging deeper again, I of course didn't cover all the users of Context managers so Django does a lot of stuff with the context managers, especially when cancer transactions They also have a it's both Decorator and context manager because it wraps some piece of code So also you can implement with the decorators and context managers. You can implement Database locality so you can select for example Let's say that this function or this piece of code depending if it's decorator or context manager all the queries will be Executed against slave database. It's for example useful for reporting. You have a function generating report You can create a context manager saying okay use slave database for all queries in this also more sophisticated log and debug not just Stupid milliseconds, which is actually very has very low precision and yeah You can do some more sophisticated profiling So that's it. Thank you very much This is my email. You can send me suggestions questions, whatever I registered that stupid domain of for my personal blog I will I'm gonna put The slides and there and I will I started a series of posts Which basically I cover the same stuff but in more details with better explanation So if you miss something you can come there and yeah all the all the content from the slides will be there within the blog So, thank you very much Do we have a time for questions? Okay One question did you already see this LRU cache module in the standard library? That's kind of doing the same thing as one of your examples. It just caches The result code the result value for specific parameter sets So maybe you can also use that one question. Did you already discover a good pattern to? To handle open files Sorry, we covered what? to handle open files if The context is not as local as in sometimes with so you basically need to give a round Open file handle and still you need to make sure that it is closed at some time. Is there a good pattern for that? Well Yeah, well with the context well answering the first question. Yes, there is there is a lot of this caching There are a lot of caching done with the decors and very different libraries But I recommend to check out dog pile because it's as I sold it the most advanced ones It has the the richest functionality Coming to the next one Well, if you want to use file in different place Well, then it's a little bit get some a little bit more complicated than yeah You will you you can't use a well context managers are good for small chunks of code So if you have few lines, but yeah, you can write your own class that will store a file handler and Once this and you can call close on your own class when you finish doing with this I wouldn't as far as I know there is no like straightforward thing To do it with the context managers Yeah, this is this is you're right. This is a tricky part Yes decorators the order of decorators affect affects it So some decorators for some decorates. It's important. The order is important in which you do it but For some it's not so Yeah order matters In general case in a more specific so you can write the decorators that for example, I will kind of give you where is small example Wonderful cash so here it's important a property should come before a cash result Otherwise if you do it the other way it won't work. It just won't work proper properly But because the property is a special it's a building decorator Yeah, but you can for simple decorator you can write the logic in the way that it wouldn't matter So it really depends on them. Yeah particular decorators I Think it actually in no it actually first it will call cash result decorator and only then it will call property So that's why it's important that property will be like outermost. Yeah. Yeah, this is a tricky. This is tricky part. Yeah Yeah, the questions Comments Hello, thank you for the talk Just one observation about the rap decorator that the standard library offers So I saw that in one example that's present and in the others when you are writing a wrapper function You are not using that so I think it's Worth mentioning that it is better to use because it copies the doc string and functions name and those things Yeah, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right Practically you should use yeah reps from Funcutils module. That's absolutely right because it will keep the function name and Doc string and all this stuff. Yeah, but this was just like too much for the talk, but you're right. Thanks for note You can push for more Questions comments Or if not, let's thanks the speakers again


Suspense and the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrills the master of mystery and adventure William and Robeson Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. What is the rest of it? Well, no matter Childish Prattle can be dangerous in its pristine innocence So if you are about to do something you shouldn't we advise you not to do it around your mopets They can be such blabbermouths as the upcoming story demonstrates Listen listen then as miss Mercedes mccainbridge stars in America's boyfriend Which begins in exactly one minute folklore isn't always something out of the past Each day a new legend anecdote joke or colorful character is added to our collection of Americana Like the story about the man who was nailing shingles on his house Somebody noticed that he was throwing half the nails away and asked him why Because he said the heads are on the wrong ends on those Well, you dope said the other man those are for the other side of the house Folklore belongs to every nation's legendary past and I guess we Americans have our share of some tall ones Like the one about ha ha, but we'll have to save that one for the next time we travel your way see you then and now Miss Mercedes mccainbridge in America's boyfriend a Tale well calculated to keep you in Suspense They used to call him America's boyfriend His face was known everywhere from South Dakota to Saudi Arabia Those mischievous eyes that lovable teenage grin the lock of blonde hair over his forehead Remember first love his most popular movie his freckled face was on billboards everywhere in four colors Dickie Keith that bad boy who steals your heart that bouncing laughing wisecracking all American boy It's funny every picture of Dickie that could be found was like that one The police are looking for a murderer's face That doesn't exist When he came into the kitchen that morning, I didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for him I was too busy to do either. I had to fix breakfast get the kids washed and dressed and fed and be at work by nine Between putting the coffee on the perk and getting the bobby pins out of my hair I kept glancing at his calypso pants and monogram t-shirt and the tennis racket under his arm Maybe I said the wrong things. I guess I've been seeing the wrong things for a long time Coffee ready yet. What are you dressed up as juvenile delinquent? I got a call from the studio yesterday I told you Harry Landon wants to see me. What's he got amnesia? Did he forget the last picture?  Oh, well, I see Harry today He just bought the sidewalk to know where terrific book about a teenage murderer. I'll convince him I'm not too old for the lead How old does he think I am anyway? Oh, please dickie. He's got your social security card. All right. All right, so I'm 31 33 Time certainly flies doesn't it Married to me four years already parents of a bright two-year-old boy And if you'd like any more vital statistics, you've been out of work for more than three years This coffee tastes like formaldehyde. Well, that's the best we can afford What times your appointment? Don't worry. I'll leave lumpy with Mrs. Vogel for a few hours I'll be sure you wait for the laundry man first. Okay Okay, you support me you pay the bills if you like I'll do the laundry myself. I'm sorry, dickie I'm well tied up in knots That last check that I gave the supermarket bounced our credit is Down the drain is that all No, when lumpy, I know he's a lot of trouble for you to take care of no trouble Now the park's peppered with kids his age What do you do there? Just sit around with sandpile. Hmm.  Why oh just that lumpy's almost two years old You noticed he's learning to talk. No, he's been talking since he was 11 months that one Well, those were just sounds just separate words. I mean, he's just put together his first sentence and hide His first real sentence Funny the way he keeps repeating it. No, maybe you're right at that. Maybe I ought to wear something more dignified Get lumpy ready while I change Come on lumpy you can't dawdle over your breakfast this morning if you want to go with daddy Who is she lumpy Pretty the first time he said it was a week ago It hit me right between the eyes His first sentence Something to cherish to put in his scrapbook with his first tooth and a curl from his first haircut his first sentence Go see pretty lady It burned in my mind all day long, but it burned deeper that night when mrs. Vogel delivered lumpy herself Dickie hadn't picked him up as he was supposed to After I got lumpy to bed I canvassed the neighborhood bars by phone nothing Then I just sat and waited my insides gnawed by fear and anxiety and plain old-fashioned jealousy Then about 10 o'clock the front door opened and there he was He swayed in the doorway. There was blood drying on his face.  Oh Harry what happened came to my house a couple hours ago Lucky I wasn't alone should have heard of the things he called me I wouldn't let my own mother-in-law talk to me that way, but he didn't mean it Harry He must have been drinking that's what I thought till he grabbed the poker from the fireplace and tried to kill me Me he feels like a father to the boy He tried to kill me and my house man had to beat him right down into his shoes before he quit trying Oh, he must have been drunk.  I could put him away for ten years for this Harry, what did you tell him at the studio this morning? The truth once and for all that he's washed up Now if you're smart you'll get him out of this town take him back east for he can be himself himself Where he can grow up where he could get a job without his pride getting all mixed up in it here in Hollywood He can't stop being America's boyfriend. He he's turning into a full-fledged Schizophrenic a homicidal maniac. You're afraid of him of Dickie. I'm telling you. He's dangerous.  Oh, he lived the part. All right It was cute how irresponsible. He was look Jean.   I'm only his wife. I don't have much influence with him 24 hours, he's got other attachments in Hollywood besides his family Another woman Yeah, oh, I don't know I Heard about it from Somebody Somebody who won't talk Well That's the problem. I can't help you with Jean. That's strictly your problem. Just remember 24 hours Or I'll charge him with attempted murder. I tried to help Dickie up, but he pushed me off He made his way to the bedroom like a bulldozer knocking over a lamp a chair anything in his way He sprawled face down on the bed and for a long time. I could hear his heavy breathing. I Don't know what time it was when I fell asleep on the sofa, but in the morning a little before 7 I looked in He was gone. I left lumpy with Mrs. Vogel, but I didn't go to work. I Tried a dozen bars three Turkish baths every alleged friend he had I Knew when there was still no trace of him. So I went back to Charlie's and sat down at the end of the bar Charlie shuffled toward me his eyes refusing to meet mine. Mrs. Keith. I'm sorry. Are you wasting your time here? Listen, I've got to find Dickie It's terribly important Charlie. He couldn't just disappear into thin air. The air in this town I understand as you think well if you try maybe you can remember something Somebody he's been in here with Charlie, please tell me tell me who that woman is You mean that the day me was with last night last night He came back here last night. Yeah, I rocked two in the morning. It was just sitting together right here. That's all they know What did she look like Charlie? Could could could you describe her to me? Mrs. Keith the dames are coming here to all look as much alike as a row of bar stools Was she taller short kind in between well was she a blonde or redhead or brunette what I don't remember She had hair didn't she? Oh, yeah Yeah, she had dark hair Thanks, Charlie. That's something anyhow. At least I know she has hair She isn't a midget At five o'clock I gave up There was only one thing to do see Harry Landman and explain that Dickie disappeared and that there was really nothing to worry about Harry lived up above the strip I climbed a steep incline made a sharp turn that almost broke my steering gear and there it was a Low pink house sitting back against the hillside There was an ugly iron dog beside the front door. I Went to the door and I pushed the bell And somehow I knew that the man who answered the door didn't belong in that house Yes, I'm Mrs. Keith. I Must see mr. Landman right away. You want to see I didn't wait. I brushed right past him into a dim hall And I stopped it Whatever it was that had been holding me together all day snapped. I Closed my eyes to shut myself in darkness But the thing I saw was still there is it painted on the inside of my eyelids. It was Harry Landman Faced on on the floor With a knife sticking out of his back In just a moment we continue with Suspense Do you know the social security benefits to which you will be entitled when you separate from the service and take a civilian job? Here's a tip from Social Security 1940 an important year in the security of American families It was in 1940 that the first Social Security checks began to find their way into the mailboxes of the nation That was the year that retired people and their families and the families of working people who had died Began to get payments from the government insurance program to partly take the place of earnings that were no longer coming into their homes Social security has done much through the years to relieve the grinding worry of old people To keep widows and their children together living as families beneath the family roof Just recently within the last five years Social security has helped to relieve the financial plight of the disabled find out about Social Security What you can expect from it for your security and the security of your loved ones right to Social Security Department 15 Hollywood 28, California and ask how it will work in your case They'll be glad to give you the information and to send you a free booklet a booklet that tells the Social Security story and now We continue with the second act of America's boyfriend starring Miss Mercedes McCambridge a tail well calculated to keep you in Suspense It was a beautiful knife It had a carved pearl handle about four inches long It seemed to grow bigger as I stared at it until it crowded everything else out of my mind until it floated there huge In my nightmare Then a small gray haired man touched my elbow And the knife got smaller like a punctured balloon and I knew it wasn't a nightmare. It was a knife sticking out of Harry Landman's back I'd never seen a corpse before not even a dead grandmother. I thought I was gonna be sick. I Was helped gently into a chair The room was hot and stuffy with cigarette smoke Three other men were busy there Working as calmly and thoroughly over details as bookkeepers in an office We've been looking for you. Mrs. Keith for me. My name is Carlson homicide Actually, we're looking for your husband thought you might be able to tell us something. Oh, he didn't do it Any idea where he is where he couldn't commit murder. He couldn't he's not the kind who could do a terrible thing like that After 20 years experience, Mrs. Keith.  What kind? Murderers what you're wrong about dickie You don't know dickie Keith the way I do. I know quite a few things already I know that he threatened to kill mr. Landman. I know he even attempted to but he didn't mean it Looks like he did. Oh, you don't understand He was out of work. He was trying to cope with all the responsibilities of a family He was always trying to cover up for a feeling of insecurity if you don't mind. Let's leave Freud out of this, huh? I'm no psychiatrist. I'm a cop my job is to put together the fact there's more than facts There's the truth the truth is he's disappeared now. Why well, maybe Maybe to look for a job. He wasn't looking for a job early this morning early this morning When Harry Landman was killed well, there's a There is somebody who knows where dickie was then who's that? It's a woman and you've got to find her. What's her name? I don't know can you give us any information about her description? She has dark hair and she's meeting him height Well go on that's all I know Mrs. Keith that description fits about half the women in this town is but there that there must be some way that you could trace her Don't count on a Mrs. Keith that knife's been identified by mr. Landman's secretary Will you recognize it? Don't you lamb and brought it back from Hawaii a few years ago gave it to your husband for his birthday? Listen, I know how she can be traced. I know how she can be traced that woman who can prove the dickies in this is no There's somebody who has seen her who knows her and if lumpy sees her again, he'll recognize Okay, okay, just tell me who lumpy is and I'll go have a talk with him. No, you can't why not? Because he can't talk. I mean he's a Two-year-old. It's my child. Oh now look no you've got to listen to me Since I got a job dickie's been taking care of him Well, don't you see he was meeting her somewhere, but he had lumpy along and she made quite an impression The pretty lady. That's what lumpy calls her His first sentence. He's just learning to talk. That's the first time he put a kind of sentence together Go see pretty lady. That's what he says whenever he knows that dickie's taking him out Well if he sees the pretty lady again, he can identify her Don't you see we could take lumpy to the park where dickie took him every single morning and we could start from there It's a chance Maybe one in the thousand but it's worth trying Mrs. Keith this beats anything I ever heard in 20 years on homicide every case we get crazy information We get tips from psychopaths confession from cranks, but this All right, I'll find her myself. I will I'll find her myself know where we're going lumpy To see the pretty lady No, no, no just us Now which way lumpy Which way do we go? For a moment feeling the warm early morning sun and hearing the same normal voices of children in the park I decided I was out of my mind. It was crazy to think I could find it that way Dragging lumpy into it using a two-year-old to track her down And he seemed to forget all about it Attracted by the more immediate joys of the sandpile a Couple of hours went by and then lumpy came trotting over to me with his one sentence That was it The pretty lady didn't come to the park Lumpy and his father visited her But where? Maybe in the neighborhood It was worth a try anything was worth a try Dickie might be a crazy mixed-up kid in a faithless husband, but one thing I knew for sure. He was not a murderer How about this street lumpy?  I circled blocks. I drove on until lumpy began to get restless and lose interest How about this street lumpy? Darling when we get to the pretty lady. Do you know what we're gonna have? chocolate ice cream and marshmallow cookies and toys I slammed my foot down on the break The way lumpy bounced off the seat the way his eyes got wide with expectation I knew that I was in luck. He pulled me like a puppy on a leash He pointed to a house across the street an old house the downstairs was used as an interior decorator studio We were just getting out of the car when I swung lumpy around and slammed the door the woman coming out of the house Was a pretty lady. All right It's a very pretty lady of medium height with dark hair As soon as I left lumpy with mrs. Vogel.  I'm uh looking for the woman who lives upstairs. I don't remember her name upstairs Yes, there are three apartments upstairs Three one is occupied by Joe Courtney an electrician. He threw his wife out a few months ago I don't think she's back yet. Well, what about the other two? Well, there's Farley McClain and his wife. Is she? An attractive woman at the last time I saw mrs.  No, no the woman. I'm looking for her She has dark hair. Oh a beautiful woman with an expensive look You know her and not yet She's new here. She still ignores me which should give you an idea of how discriminating she is Well, I wonder if you could tell me her name and where I could get in touch with her right now. I'm afraid not How do I know you're not serving the summons or maybe a bill collector? No, no, no, it's nothing like that This is something very personal, but it's terribly important Really, I must find her for her own good as well as for somebody else is somebody that she can help And if I don't find her the police will Her name is Alice Evans. She's a model at Maison chic the exclusive dressmaker The sales women were a little startled when I walked past them toward the dressing room The way my hair was blown. I looked like a neglected sheepdog She glanced up at me from a long mirrored table where she was putting the finishing touches on her street makeup. Yes I'm I'm Dickie's wife Congratulations, who is he please? Please?  I know you don't want to get mixed up in this But Dickie's facing a murder charge and you've got to tell the police that he was with you when Harry Landman was killed What is this a gag?  I don't know your husband. I never laid eyes on him if you care anything about him me Why did you pick on me of all the women in this town? Why me if you don't go to the police? I will and I'll tell them everything. I tell you I don't know your husband. I never saw him I never spoke a word to him. I understand how you feel, but you do then be a good girl and go away Listen if you don't want to get involved your name might be kept out of it. I'm sure that the police would cooperate Just tell me where were you and Dickie that night? You're raving mad if I could find somebody else who saw him there. You won't be dragged into this at all I'm getting out of here. No, not till you tell me what happened I remembered the lovely crystal bottle in her hand and then a couple of sales women were helping me to my feet I was reeking of cologne and spattered with broken glass And Alice Evans was gone She was obviously panic struck and I had to press this advantage So I hurried back to her house the hall was dark and I struck a match to look at the names on the mailboxes And then I felt The gun in my back. Why don't you leave me alone? You were with Dickie that night and you can't help him. I don't know your husband But you know plenty about me.  I live in a pink house in the hills with an iron dog at the front door, but that's That's Harry Landman's Hugh The door seemed closer as if it moved the door from the hall to Maurice Byrne find interiors It was crazy and desperate and clumsy the way I knocked the gun aside and got through the door Hurry get the police. She killed him. Don't be silly. Mrs. Keith. She's the first one the police checked and double checked They know she was in Las Vegas that night lock the door Alice You said there was nothing to worry about There isn't why did she come here looking for me? I'm not sure I can't figure out what she knows You said there wouldn't be any suspicion. You had a maid to order fall guy a perfect dupe fall guy Dickie you're a clever woman, Mrs. Keith I don't know how you managed to trace Alice here, but it was clever in a suicidal way You I've seen you somewhere long ago, of course in one of Dickie's early pictures He came walking by here with lumpy a few months ago the first time I saw him in years And I know why he kept coming back. He was lonely He needed somebody sympathetic to talk to about how he hated Landman how Landman had given him a dirty deal And one day he brought in that beautiful pearl handled knife Here wanted to know if it was worth fifty dollars if I could use it in some decorating scheme You killed Landman it was you Fifty dollars Such in gratitude a knife that Harry Landman gave him as a birthday present You know how much that knife was worth to Alice and me? 200 grand left by her late unlimited husband and who would believe dickie of course it wasn't as decorative as Say this silver candlestick. Oh, no, I'm sorry you traced her here. No sometimes the less people know the smarter Saw the blood trickled on this end and under the candlestick and the next thing I knew the police were looking down at me over the edge of a dark deep well Only it wasn't a well. It was an elegant sofa that Maurice burn fine interiors I'll take it easy, Mrs. Keith When you feel better, I guess you and your husband can go home together. Dickie everything's okay, Jean I even picked up lumpy on the way here. Oh, how did you I? Mean what I was running away from everything When I heard the police were looking for me I came back No funny thing.  Sadie's McCambridge starred in America's boyfriend written by Sydney Randall listen Listen again next week When we return with the twist is murder starring Raymond Burr Another tale well calculated to keep you in Suspense Supporting Miss McCambridge in America's boyfriend were Norma Jean Nielsen Joan Banks Dick Crenna Jack Krushen Byron Kane and Alan Reed Suspense Has been brought to you through the worldwide facilities of the United States armed forces radio and television service