THE FOURTH WINTER AND SPRING. 367 



directions. The place was teeming with them. They ran about 

 as if they had taken leave of their senses. It was in the midst 

 of the pairing season, and we supposed they had lost their heads 

 from love. It is a thing which may happen to others besides 

 hares. 



When the camp was in order, Schei went a short trip ashore, 

 and shot a couple of brace of hares on the way. 



We began at once on repairs of divers kinds. The sledges had 

 been much knocked about out in the old, coarse, polar ice, and 

 many a time I had expected to hear them smash to pieces when 

 they ran away over the steep rugged ice-slopes. The odometer 

 plate, too, had come rather to grief, and had to be unscrewed from 

 the wheel and warmed at the ' Primus,' before \ve could get it 

 to rights. 



Up the fjord the following day the going was pretty good, as 

 long as we were able to follow the ice-foot. Some old ox-tracks 

 in the clay told us that it was not only hares that were in the 

 habit of visiting these parts. As we were rounding a spit of land, 

 a high cliff came into view which we supposed closed the fjord. 

 We therefore thought it was time to turn back, and made our way 

 across to the opposite side, but now things became really bad : 

 bottomless drifted snow, into which the dogs fell, and then had 

 to take to swimming. In the worst places we had to march on 

 ahead and trample a path. All we could do was to take a line 

 across to the opposite shore in the confiding hope that the going 

 would be better close under land, and this it proved to be. We 

 camped in the evening under the headland on the west side of 

 the fjord. The dogs were quite done up, but had a little extra 

 food again to-day, as Schei shot them a few hares. 



Next day, April 30, we set off west, on fairly hard snow, but 

 through bad ice, which lay pressed right up to the steep cliffs 

 towards the north. We could not keep clear of the polar ice 

 here, as the ice inshore was covered with grit and pebbles. 

 Many times w r e hardly knew where to go; save ever onwards. 

 We had done regularly our seventeen or eighteen miles a day of 

 late ; but here we had to be content with thirteen or fourteen. 



