364 FARTHEST NORTH 



' And your feet are not cold now ? ' ' No, I can't say that 

 they are, but one's fingers get a Httle cold sometimes.' 

 Two of his had just been frost-bitten ; but he refused to 

 wear one of the wolf-skin suits which I had given out for 

 the meteorologists. ' It is too niild for that yet ; and it 

 does not do to pamper one's self,' he says. 



" I believe it was when the thermometer stood at 40° 

 below zero that Hansen rushed up on deck one morning 

 in shirt and drawers to take an observation. He said he 

 had not time to get on his clothes. 



" At certain intervals they also take magnetic observa- 

 tions on the ice, these two. I watch them standing there 

 with lanterns, bending over their instruments; and pres- 

 ently I see them tearing away over the floe, their arms 

 swinging like the sails of the windmill when there is a 

 wind pressure of 32 to 39 feet — but ' it is not at all cold.' 

 I cannot help thinking of what I have read in the ac- 

 counts of some of the earlier expeditions — namely, that 

 at such temperatures it was impossible to take observa- 

 tions. It would take worse than this to make these fel- 

 lows give in. In the intervals between their observations 

 and calculations I hear a murmuring in Hansen's cabin, 

 which means that the principal is at present occupied in 

 inflicting a dose of astronomy or navigation upon his 

 assistant. 



" It is something dreadful the amount of card-playing 

 that goes on in the saloon in the evenings now ; the 

 o^aminor demon is abroad far into the niirht ; even our 



