THE SUN APPEARS 377 



be seen. When they arrived at the place where the 

 sledges stood, there lay all ten curled up asleep. They 

 were lying by their own sledges, and did not seem to 

 take the slightest notice of the men's arrival. One or 

 two of them may have opened an eye, but that was all. 

 When they were roused and given to understand by 

 unmistakable signs that their presence was desired at 

 home, they seemed astonished beyond all bounds. Some 

 of them simply declined to believe it; they merely 

 turned round a few times and lay down again on the 

 same spot. They had to be flogged home. Can any- 

 thing more inexplicable be imagined? There they lay, 

 three miles from their comfortable home, where they 

 knew that abundance of food awaited them in a tem- 

 perature of - 40 F. Although they had now been out 

 for twenty-four hours, none of them gave a sign of 

 wanting to leave the spot. If it had been summer, with 

 warm sunshine, one might have understood it; but as 

 it was no! 



That day August 24 the sun appeared above the 

 Barrier again for the first time in four months. He 

 looked very smiling, with a friendly nod for the old 

 pressure-ridges he had seen for so many years; but 

 when his first beams reached the starting-point, his face 

 might well show surprise. " Well, if they're not first, 

 after all! And I've been doing all I could to get here!" 

 It could not be denied; we had won the race, and 

 reached the Barrier a day before him. 



