644 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



to get out of one of these traps. Towards marning it rained and 

 there was sticky clay on the hillsides, so that the walking was 

 pretty bad. It was uphill and downhill, too, continually. 



I was carrying between fifteen and twenty pounds — the boiled 

 tongues, my rifle, a hundred rounds of ammunition (an excess of 

 caution), the field glasses, my diary, two extra pairs of boots and 

 several changes of socks. 



The morning of the 17th I had been walking steadily seventeen 

 and a half hours and my feet were beginning to chafe. There is 

 no such thing as getting tired on a long journey, or at least on 

 such long journeys as ours. I had been steadily walking every 

 day for months and could not have been in better form. It seems 

 to be the general experience of long-distance walkers — it certainly 

 is mine — that under such conditions the feet give out by becoming 

 sore rather than through the muscles becoming tired. 



When the feet are getting sore the best remedy next to a rest is 

 to change socks and boots, for new footgear presses on different 

 spots and rests the chafing parts. I sat down beside a little stream 

 of beautifully clear water, bathed my feet, put on new socks and 

 boots, and then ate one caribou tongue — perhaps half a pound. 

 So far as I recall, this is the only thing I have eaten in the Arctic 

 by myself, except some caribou marrow that I once tried, having 

 often eaten it cold but wanting to know what it was like fresh from 

 the animal. I don't know whether it was the idea of eating some- 

 thing that still retained the warmth of life or whether it was the 

 marrow itself, but that experiment made me ill. 



After about five more hours of walking, in the middle of a 

 beautiful sunshiny forenoon I came to some apparently familiar 

 hills. If my identification of these was right, my course during 

 the fog had been deflected and I was going to strike the coast 

 twelve or fifteen miles southeast of our base. At first I thought of 

 trending directly towards Kellett, but concluded that it would be 

 interesting to see the ice conditions, and that one of our ships 

 might even be lying in this vicinity, in case there were heavy 

 massed ice up around Kellett. Wilkins had found such conditions 

 in 1914. I accordingly kept on the same course to the coast. 



From the coast hills I had a clear view of the Kellett base across 

 a bight a dozen miles away. My glasses showed that there was 

 a single ship there. The ship puzzled me, for it had only one mast. 

 This could not be the Bear nor the Sachs either, unless they had 

 taken down a mast for repairs. Still there was a possibility of 

 error, for the ship was broadside to the land and her two masts 



I 



