540 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



it took us two more days to get back to just about where we 

 started from. 



Now came an umisually cold spell and we had to break through 

 a quarter of an inch of young ice on top of the water. The dogs 

 could not advance at all, wading or swimming, until a way had 

 been broken through this ice. August 1st it was warmer but there 

 were heavy showers with periods of drizzling rain between, and this 

 was one of the few days on the ice when we were soaking wet from 

 top to toe. Before going to bed we partly dried our coats by 

 wringing the water out of them, but our sleeping bags were dry 

 and getting into them was something between a pleasure and a 

 delight. It seems to be a law of human nature that when you are 

 in good health the relief from discomfort becomes so keen a pleasure 

 that it compensates for whatever has gone before. Here was the 

 most uncomfortable trip that any of us ever made in the Arctic 

 and still I feel sure that my companions would be no more reluctant 

 than I to do it over again. There is not a single complaint in my 

 diary, nor is there one, I feel sure, in the diaries of either of the 

 others. This was not heroic restraint, for the discomforts of each 

 day w^ere actually forgotten in the comfort of the following camp. 

 We did feel reluctant occasionally to start in the morning. There 

 are few things less inviting than dressing in wet clothes. Some- 

 how it seems to help to have dry things to put on even if you 

 know they are going to be soaking wet in ten minutes. 



If there were any intimate connection between such ills as 

 rheumatism and being continually soaked with cold water, even 

 though you get warm and dry between times, then surely we should 

 have suffered. None of us has felt a twinge as yet, but of course 

 it is possible that a dozen years from now one or another of us 

 may come down with sciatica. 



We had to zigzag so much that it was hard to keep careful 

 reckoning, and the continually cloudy weather made observations 

 difficult. We were thirty or forty miles south and King Christian 

 Island had long since sunk beneath the horizon when the day 

 after the rainstorm, August 2nd, we sighted an island to the south- 

 west. After a few miles of advance two other islands a little to 

 the left appeared. We did not at first know whether they were 

 lower or more distant. They proved lower. It took us the rest 

 of that day, all of the third, and seven miles of travel on the fourth 

 to get within half a mile of the largest island. We camped on the 

 ice for we could not at once find a crossing and were not, in fact, 

 sure whether we cared to land. On foot I was able to make a land- 



