196 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



eighty days' food, and are consequently cutting it down to sixty- 

 five days'. Our sledges, as mentioned above, are badly damaged. 

 The runners are split, and two of them to such an extent as to 

 make the sledges useless, which sets us wishing more than ever 

 for shod runners. The bows, the most difficult part of the 

 sledge, are broken on three of our four, the lashings are slack 

 on almost all of them, and generally speaking the whole thing 

 is a wreck. We even think that one more day's travelling with 

 the heavy loads would have reduced the sledges to a pile 

 of kindling wood, which would have been left on the pack ice, to 

 drift about as a silent reproach to us for venturing out with 

 such heavy loads. But frail as our sledges are, we have no 

 others, nor time to make them, so we must just do the best we 

 can. 



Saturday, March 9 Sunday, March 17. During the first 

 days after our return we were hard at work getting things into 

 shape again, and by Wednesday, March 13, we were ready to 

 start. The weather has been very bad ever since our return, a 

 gale has been blowing from the south-west, and it is very warm, 

 so warm, in fact, that the ice and snow inside the awnings over 

 the deck are melting, while water has come dripping down into 

 the cabin from the condensation in the companion way ; it has 

 been as if spring had really come. For two days the tem- 

 perature has been above 2 C., and once it reached as high 

 as 0*8 C. It certainly is lucky that we are on board a ship 

 instead of being out on the ice. In weather like this travelling 

 would have been out of the question, our gear would have been 

 wet, and we should have spent food and fuel without getting 

 any work in return. 



On Wednesday the I3th the weather was fine, but in the south- 

 west horizon we could see a storm brewing. We started, but 

 had only reached a distance of about four miles from the ship 

 when the gale overtook us, and in a moment everything was 

 wiped out. A few yards ahead the ice loomed high and dark 

 through the drifting snow, the sand-spits we were following 

 disappeared from view, the dogs refused to pull with the sharp 

 snow particles hurting their eyes, and in less than a quarter of 

 an hour after the gale broke we were hurriedly unhitching the 

 dogs and starting for home. For three days we now stayed on 

 board, confined to our cabins. Above us the wind was making 



