128 AT THE POLE 



and they all three knew it very well. But if anyone 

 thinks that on this account they took a solemn farewell 

 of us who stayed behind, he is much mistaken. Not a 

 bit; they all vanished in their different directions amid 

 laughter and chaff. 



The first thing- we did — Hanssen and I — was to set 

 about arranging a lot of trifling matters; there was 

 something to be done here, something there, and above 

 all we had to be ready for the series of observations we 

 were to carry out together, so as to get as accurate a 

 determination of our position as possible. The first 

 observation told us at once how necessary this was. For 

 it turned out that this, instead of giving us a greater 

 altitude than the midnight observation, gave us a smaller 

 one, and it was then clear that we had gone out of the 

 meridian we thought we were following. Now the first 

 thing to be done was to get our north and south line 

 and latitude determined, so that we could find our posi- 

 tion once more. Luckily for us, the weather looked as 

 if it would hold. We measured the sun's altitude at 

 every hour from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and from these obser- 

 vations found, with some degree of certainty, our latitude 

 and the direction of the meridian. 



By nine in the morning we began to expect the return 

 of our comrades; according to our calculation they 

 should then have covered the distance — twenty-five 

 miles. It was not till ten o'clock that Hanssen made 

 out the first black dot on the horizon, and not long after 



