LOST ON THE ICE-CAP 



so that I could be ready to start on to the ice-cap early 

 Tuesday morning. This plan was carried out, and as I 

 left the lodge that night the lieutenant handed me a knap- 

 sack, saying: 



" Here is a present from Mrs. Peary. You can leave 

 the knapsack at the moraine." 



Reaching the remodeled snow-house without incident, I 

 opened the knapsack and found that it contained a cherry 

 pie. This pie formed my lunch on the following day, when 

 it was frozen so hard that in order to eat it I had to chop 

 it into small mouthfuls with a hachet. Tuesday was a fine 

 cold day, the temperature being about forty-five degrees 

 below zero. During the short day I covered about twenty 

 miles, taking a northeast course from the moraine. The 

 variation of the compass at that point was ninety-six de- 

 grees west, so that in order to travel northeast, the course 

 was southeast half south. 



All day we journeyed without seeing any of the frequent 

 guide-posts which had marked the course during the fall 

 campaign, and the natives seemed to doubt that the com- 

 pass would guide us to our destination. During the aft- 

 ernoon there were frequent appearances of the peculiar 

 mirage effect so often noticed on the ice-cap, and this had 

 given the Eskimo the idea that the devil was following us. 

 As night came on, and there was nothing except the com- 

 pass to show that we were on the right track, the natives 

 began to grumble and wanted to turn back. I knew that 

 we had come at least twenty miles, and we ought to be 

 pretty close to the tent which we had left standing nearly 

 ten miles this side of the cache. Chilled through with the 

 biting wind, having traveled but slowly, as the dogs were 

 unable to go fast with the heavy sledge, and threatened with 

 a strike, as my Eskimo were liable to leave me at any 

 moment, I decided to camp for the night. 



I told the natives that if it were only light enough, we 

 could see the tetit from our present position. They did 

 not believe me, but by promising them I would let them go 

 home in the morning, should my statement prove untrue, 

 I persuaded them to stay with me over night. We made 

 a snow house in which we slept comfortably. My calcula- 

 tions proved correct, and in the morning we saw the top 



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