A HARD STRUGGLE i6i 



room floor, I know not. The host laughed in an amused 

 way, and — I woke up and found myself shivering in a 

 sleeping-bag on the drift-ice in the far north. (3h, how 

 miserable I felt! We got up, packed our things silently 

 together, and started off. Not until 4 o'clock that 

 afternoon did we stop, but everything was dull and 

 cheerless, and it was long before I got over my dis- 

 appointment. What would I not have given for that 

 dinner, or for one hour in the room, cold as it was! 



" The ridges and the lanes which had frozen together 

 again, with rubble on either side, became worse and 

 worse. Making one's way through these new ridges is 

 desperate work. One cannot use snow-shoes, as there is 

 too little snow between the piled-up blocks of ice, and one 

 must wade along without them. It is also impossible 

 to see anything in this thick weather — everything is 

 white — irregularities and holes ; and the spaces between 

 the blocks are covered with a thin, deceptive layer of 

 snow, which lets one crashinq; throuQ-h into cracks and 

 pitfalls, so that one is lucky to get off without a broken 

 leg. It is necessary to go long distances on ahead in 

 order to find a way ; sometimes one must search in one 

 direction, sometimes in another, and then back again 

 to fetch the sledges, with the result that the same ground 

 is gone over many times. Yesterday, when we stopped, 

 I really was done. The worst of it all, though, was that 

 when we finally came to a standstill we had been on 

 the move so long that it was too late to wind up our 



II.— ir 



