146 THE RETURN TO FRAMHEIM 



was once more the atmosphere that deceived us, as we 

 found out on the following day, for instead of being 

 nearer the range we had come farther out from it, and 

 this was the reason of our only getting a little strip of 

 this undesirable glacier. 



We had our camp that evening in the middle of a 

 big, filled-up crevasse. We were a trifle anxious as to 

 what kind of surface we should find farther on; that 

 these few hummocks and old crevasses were all the 

 glacier had to offer us this time, was more than we 

 dared to hope. But the 2nd came, and brought — 

 thank God! — no disappointment. With incredible luck 

 we had slipped past all those ugly and dangerous places, 

 and now, before we knew where we were, we found 

 ourselves safe and sound on the plain below the glacier. 

 The weather was not first-rate when we started at seven 

 in the evening. It was fairly thick, and we could only 

 just distinguish the top of Mount Bjaaland. This was 

 bad, as we were now in the neighbourhood of our depot, 

 and would have liked clear weather to find out where 

 it lay; but instead of clearing, as we hoped, it grew 

 thicker and thicker, and when we had gone about six 

 and three-quarter miles, it was so bad that we thought 

 it best to stop and wait for a while. We had all the 

 time been going on the erroneous assumption that we had 

 come too far to the east — that is, too near the mountains 

 — and under the circumstances — in the short gleams that 

 had come from time to time — we had not been able to 



