32 THE START FOR THE POLE 



active every day. Now they, too, had sighted the land, 

 and the black mass of JNIount Fridtjof Nansen seemed 

 specially to appeal to them; Hanssen often had hard 

 work to keep them in the right course. Without any 

 longer stay, then, we left 84° S.the next day, and steered 

 for the bay ahead. 



That day we went twenty-three miles in thick fog, 

 and saw nothing of the land. It was hard to have to 

 travel thus blindly off an unknown coast, but we could 

 only hope for better weather. During the previous 

 night we had heard, for a change, a noise in the ice. It 

 was nothing very great, and sounded like scattered 

 infantry fire — a few rifle-shots here and there underneath 

 our tent; the artillery had not come up yet. We took 

 no notice of it, though I heard one man say in the 

 morning : " Blest if I didn't think I got a whack on the 

 ear last night." I could witness that it had not cost 

 him his sleep, as that night he had very nearly snored us 

 all out of the tent. During the forenoon we crossed 

 a number of apparently newly-formed crevasses; most 

 of them only about an inch wide. There had thus 

 been a small local disturbance occasioned by one of the 

 numerous small glaciers on land. On the following 

 night all was quiet again, and we never afterwai'ds heard 

 the slightest sound. 



On November 14 we reached 84° 40' S. We were 

 now rapidly approaching land; the mountain range on 

 the east appeared to turn north-eastward. Our line of 



