144 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



bags, where we tried to sleep and thus forget the furious flapping 

 of the slack canvas and the roaring of the wind. But we 

 could not sleep, and the snow soon began to penetrate into the 

 tent, through holes which had been made by the broken tent 

 poles. When morning came our stove-pipe had blown away 

 and we could get no fire, while our food box was buried under 

 a heap of snow. Every now and then we had to shift in order 

 to shake the loose snow from our sleeping bags, and each time 

 we moved we were pressed higher up and closer together. 

 When night came the wind was still blowing with unabated 

 force, and so little room was there now in the tent that Fiedler 

 and I had to lie on one side. Towards morning so much snow 

 had drifted into the tent that we had to cut a hole in the lee- 

 ward side and put our feet through that, and at 7 A.M. we were 

 crowded out entirely. 



We had had nothing to eat since the first night, and as there 

 was no sign of the wind going down, we started for Ned's cabin, 

 carrying our sleeping bags and followed by our faithful dogs. 

 The sledge had disappeared in a snowdrift and was nowhere 

 to be found. The wind carried us along, and we tried to follow 

 the shore, which we could only now and then see through the 

 snowdrift. 



In crossing Sadlerochil River the wind gave us much trouble, 

 as we could not get a footing on the glare ice and were time 

 after time blown over. One by one our dogs had disappeared 

 to seek shelter in their own way, and we had only two left when 

 we stood on the east bank of the river. In crossing it we had 

 lost our way and were wandering about for an hour and a half 

 before we again found our whereabouts, and I had the misfor- 

 tune to break through the ice and get wet almost to my waist. 

 The temperature was low enough ( 35 C.) now, and our 

 clothes were frozen stiff, as the snow which had penetrated our 

 sleeping bags while in the tent had melted and soaked our 

 wearing apparel. In addition to that I had fallen into the 

 water, and shortly afterwards I cut my kamicks on a sharp piece 

 of ice. 



W T e staggered along, hungry and weak, and only too soon 

 it became evident that we could not reach Ned's cabin that 

 night, but would have to spend it outside, half frozen, starved, 

 and in a howling blizzard. At 4 P.M. we stretched out our 



