106 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEYV 
1 may mention here another discovery worth remember- 
ing. When vou can find no shelter of any kind, and are 
not well clothed, the discomforts of sleeping in the open 
air are much mitigated if you sleep with your head to 
the wind. For it is the back which sutiers most. 
It was just tour o'clock that morning when, atter having 
eaten a fig and a lunch biscuit, we were onee more on 
the move. The fog had cleared. and the sun shone most 
brilliantly. 
TL have somehow forgotten to tell you about the tlowers ; 
but as | mean to give them a separate chapter later on, 
perhaps T need say but little here. The most beautitul 
of them all, 1 think, was the Arctic Forget-me-not. Of 
an intense blue, it flourished but on the sandy places. 
Commonly it grew on the pure sand, unsupported by any 
other green thing, Here it looked strangely unnatural, 
T used to think, like the Hower in a lady's bonnet. 
Ato7 Aah we reached a little half-frozen stream. | 
got out my sponge-bag and made a toilette with some 
dithculty. Then we had breakfast, finishing our first tin 
of potted grouse. And so we went to sleep. 
Just after we had started again at ro.30, Tall but trod 
on a lony-tailed duck. Bang off her nest she went, 
scattering her ceys in her flurry, She had six eges, 
and they were slightly ‘set. The nest was remarkably 
neat and, for a duck’s nest, very deep. [t was all of 
down with a litthe dead grass and dead birch-leaves. 
We walked very slowly, To understand how this 
