96 NEW LAND. 



' Lasse ' there was not a sign. At last we found him with eight 

 inches of snow on his back, lying exactly as he had settled down 

 in the evening, curled tight round, as dogs do in stormy weather. 

 He was dead. 



To this day I cannot make out what was the matter with the 

 dog that he allowed himself to be suffocated by such a thin layer 

 of snow. Strong as ' Lasse ' was it would have been a very easy 

 matter for him to shake it off. Most remarkable of all was that 

 he had not made the slightest attempt to rise from the place where 

 we found him lying. 



Olsen's dogs were all right ; then came the sledges' turn. We 

 provided ourselves with a pole apiece, and began to poke for them, 

 but this performance went on long before we came across anything. 

 In the end, of course, we found them, but digging them out was a 

 bad business, and took us nearly the whole day. When, after 

 much labour we succeeded in recovering them, we dragged them 

 up on to a mound to prevent a repetition of the episode, and tied 

 up the dogs under their lee. 



The storm did not rage quite so violently that day as on the 

 previous one, though there was no question of our going out of the 

 tent for any distance. 



This was a bad state of affairs for Olsen, who was, of course, the 

 chief sufferer. His almost intolerable pain left him no peace either 

 day or night, and he hardly knew what to do with himself. The 

 greater part of the time he spent kneeling with his head on the 

 sleeping-bag, but he had plenty of self-command, and not a word 

 of complaint escaped his lips. 



Later in the evening the wind dropped, and after midnight it 

 almost ceased to blow. At four o'clock Eaanes and I turned out 

 and made breakfast, fixed the over-runners to the sledges, and got 

 ready to start. I had decided that the mate should come with us 

 across the neck, and that we would drive with almost empty 

 sledges. While we were getting ready we observed that the ice 

 on the bay had broken up, and that there was open water from 

 the sound to a long way north ; judging by the sky even north 

 of the islands. 



When everything was in readiness for the start, we dressed 



