426 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
great cold and tempestuous wind which for six months 
practically confined the party to their house, fortunately 
a comfortable timber structure built in Sweden. Sum- 
mer returned but not the ship, and a second winter, that 
of 1903, had to be passed in the ice. When spring drew 
near in October, 1903, Nordenskjold started with a sledge 
party to explore the land to the westward round the base 
of Mount Haddington. He found that the mountain 
was situated on an island which he named after Ross, 
and while pursuing his way along the ice of the channel 
separating it from Louis Philippe Land, he suddenly 
encountered two beings from whom the dogs fled howl- 
ing, and the leader with difficulty recognised them as 
human. They were black from head to foot, with long 
black hair hanging down over their shoulders and black 
bushy beards. They were Dr. J. Gunnar Andersson and 
Lieutenant Duse, who had left the ship Antarctic during 
the previous summer when it was clear that she could 
not reach the winter camp, and endeavoured to make their 
way to it on foot. They had been obliged to build a 
hut to winter in, and to eke out their scanty provisions 
with seal blubber which was also their only fuel. The 
united party returned to Snow Hill and resumed the dili- 
gent geological and natural history survey of the locality 
while waiting anxiously for the ship. 
On November 8th, strangers were seen approaching. 
They proved to be Captain Irizar and one of the officers 
of the Argentine naval vessel Uruguay who had come to 
offer the party a passage home as no news of the Ant- 
arctic had been received. That very night, by one of 
those coincidences so improbable that fiction would 
hardly dare to copy them from fact, Larsen, the captain 
of the Antarctic, appeared at the camp with five of his 
