GOOD-BYE-A SURPRISE. 
181 
“When I overtook them, I said nothing to dis¬ 
courage them, and gave no new orders for the morn¬ 
ing; but after laughing at good Ohlsen’s rueful face, 
and listening to all Petersen’s assurances that the cold 
and nothing but the cold retarded his Greenland sledge, 
and that no sledge of any other construction could 
have been moved at all through minus 40° snow, I 
quietly bade them good-niglit, leaving all hands 
under their buffaloes. 
“ Once returned to the brig, all my tired remainder¬ 
men were summoned: a large sled with broad runners, 
which I had built somewhat after the neat Admiralty 
model sent me by Sir Francis Beaufort, was taken 
down, scraped, polished, lashed, and fitted with track- 
ropes and ruc-raddles; the lines arranged to draw as 
near as possible in a line with the centre of gravity. 
We made an entire cover of canvas, with snugly- 
adjusted fastenings; and by one in the morning we 
had our discarded excess of pemmican and the boat 
once more in stowage. 
“ Off we went for the camp of the sleepers. It was 
very cold, but a thoroughly Arctic night; the snow 
just tinged with the crimson stratus above the sun, 
which, equinoctial as it was, glared beneath the north¬ 
ern horizon like a smelting-furnace. We found the 
tent of the party by the bearings of the stranded bergs. 
Quietly and stealthily we hauled away their Esqui¬ 
maux sledge, and placed her cargo upon ‘the Faith.’ 
Five men were then rue-raddied to the track-lines; 
and with the whispered word, ‘Now, boys, when 
