SLEDGE-JOURNEYS ASHORE AND AFLOAT. 195 



us such a dance as I had hardly experienced before. At one 

 moment it would be far ahead of us, and we would pull as if the 

 Evil One himself were in our wake, but when we reached the spot, 

 where, according to our reckoning, it ought to come up, we saw 

 it far, far away in a quite different direction. We rowed in a 

 circle, in a triangle, in a square there is hardly a mathematical 

 figure we did not describe out in Hayes Sound, but not a point 

 did we gain, and the seal well, we didn't get it ! 



At first on our boating trips we never took with us a tent, 

 sleeping-bags, or blankets, but just hauled the sail ashore and did 



ADAM IN" HIS SHIRT. 



the best we could with it. We followed the old rule of the real 

 seal-catcher lay down in our clothes on any ledge of rock, or on a 

 seal-skin in the boat, and dragged our boots half off ; but we grew 

 tired of this on trips of any length, though we always continued to 

 do it when we were out for only one night. 



We landed in the evening on Skrsellingoen,* in Alexandra Fjord, 

 and lay down on the bare rock, without anything more on us than 

 the clothes we stood in. It was not particularly warm work, and we 

 turned out early, and were not long in lighting up the ' Primus.' 



While Simmons was botanizing, we went up to the highest point 



* Skraslinf/, i.e. ' weakling,' the name of the old Norsemen for the Eskimo. ^ 



