ACROSS MELTING ICE TO SUMMER VALLEY 



knife-edged fragments. The eold water takes it out of those 

 of the dogs which have not yet quite recovered from their period 

 of starvation ; to our great sorrow, we have had to leave one 

 dog which was so exhausted that it fell down unable to get 

 up again. 



When neither we nor the dogs could move a step further, 

 we select an ice-island and pitch our tent on it. A place like 

 this can never be an ideal spot for a tent, but there is the 

 comfort that one need not trouble to go far to fetch the water 

 one needs for cooking. One merely opens the tent-flap slightly 

 and fills kettle and pan. 



Under these somewhat cheerless conditions, Koch celebrated 

 his twenty-fifth birthday. We hoisted the flags, both the 

 Danish and the Swedish, and made an extra cup of strong 

 coffee. Each of us then presented the hero of the day with a 

 few lumps of icing sugar — a much appreciated and, at present, 

 exceedingly valuable article. The last of the store of this sugar 

 put aside for the homeward journey across the inland-ice has 

 been distributed in rations and everybody watches as a beast of 

 prey over his modest share. We might have had a feast, but I 

 sheered off from the festive feelings of the moment for rational 

 reasons. We are the possessors of delicious pemmican, oats 

 and biscuits ; but these delicacies must only be touched when 

 the journey on the inland-ice commences. In that desert we 

 shall require all dietetic stimulants. In spite of temptation, I 

 therefore hardened my heart and contented myself by cooking 

 double rations of seal meat, and, at the same time, I promised 

 faithfully to celebrate the day when, on the return journey, we 

 had reached to a height of 2,000 metres on the inland-ice. 



The short and slow daily journeys benefited the carto- 

 grapher, who took latitudes and longitudes, sighting all the 

 more conspicuous points as often as occasion permitted. 



During a halt, approximately 13 kilometres from McMillan 

 Valley, the coast was carefully surveyed with the glasses. We 

 looked for hares, which were now visible far away as tiny white 

 dots. Our store of meat was finished and we found no seals on 

 this bad water-filled ice. Bosun and I were somewhat behind, 



167 



