A RACE WITH DEATH 



returned in an aggravated form. In addition to great weariness 

 I felt eonsiderable dizziness, and a frequent blackness before 

 the eyes. 



" About three o'clock we gathered a panful of fungi and 

 boiled them ; that gave us new strength to continue. 



" Evening came and we had still seen no game. Suddenly 

 we spied a brood of long-tailed ducklings swimming on a lake. 

 The Eskimos shot six, which we cooked, and after that we 

 continued, reaching Cape Scott just before midnight. 



" Here Inukitsoq and Bosun shot six hares, and for the first 

 time we had an opportunity to consider whether we could 

 rescue Wulft". The position was this : We could start from 

 Cape Scott two days after we had left him and would then be 

 able to reach him at the earliest twenty-four hours later. Wulff 

 woidd then have been without food for four days, and we could 

 offer him only hare meat, which he had definitely said would 

 be useless. Furthermore, in order to rescue him we would 

 have to have enough of food for the journey there and back. 

 If before the start we ourselves were to have a meal which 

 woidd be of any help in our exhausted condition, we should 

 only have three hares left for the rescue, and as this was hope- 

 less we had to give up the idea. Only a reindeer to-day or at 

 the latest to-morrow woidd be able to save him. But, unfor- 

 tunately, this stroke of luck only arrived when every hope of 

 finding Wolff alive had vanished. 



"During the following three days we got so many hares 

 that we had sufficient daily provision, but we never had such a 

 surplus as to make rescue possible. 



" On the evening of the 2nd of September Inukitsoq and 

 Bosun shot two reindeer, but at the same time a thick fog 

 settled on the land. We then definitely abandoned any 

 thought of returning to Wulff, for not until ten days after his 

 last meal could we be with him again, and it was not probable 

 that in his exhausted condition he would have been able to resist 

 the night frost and hunger for so long. 



" There was now no other alternative but to go down to 

 Etah, and as quickly as possible report to the leader of the 



2G9 



