OUR WESTWARD DRIFT BEGINS 
31 
water as they came along a few ducks that I had 
shot from my blind. 
The wind had changed; the ice began to close up 
and thin ice began to form in the smaller leads, so 
we had to paddle pretty fast to get out into the 
open lead without being caught. It was a beauti¬ 
ful sunshiny day and the surface of the water was 
so clear and smooth that, although the ship was 
fully two miles away from us in the ice, her rigging 
was reflected in our lead. We were getting sun¬ 
sets now, with the gradual shortening of the day¬ 
light; the sunset was red and brilliant on this par¬ 
ticular day, giving the white ice the lovely appear¬ 
ance of rose-colored quartz. We hauled out the 
canoe, lashed it to the sledge and left it there for 
another day’s shooting. Returning to the ship we 
found that other members of the party, too, had 
brought in some ducks so that among us we had 
about fifty birds, a good day’s work. 
It was on such journeys as this that I first 
learned the use of the ski. Mamen was from Nor¬ 
way and had been a famous ski-jumper in that land 
of winter sports; he had won many prizes for his 
skill. I knew that Nansen, on his journey from 
the Fram to his farthest north and back to Franz 
Josef Land, had used ski and so had Amundsen on 
his journey to the South Pole, but with Peary we 
