DRIVEN BY THE STORM 
45 
cooked it every night in the galley stove. Mr. 
Hadley looked after feeding the dogs ? and no bet¬ 
ter man could have been found, for he understood 
not only how to feed them but also how important 
it was to have them well cared for. Whenever 
possible we kept the dogs on the ice, for the free¬ 
dom was good for them. Even then, to prevent 
their fighting, we often had to chain them up to 
raftered ice. 
It is a mistake to think that Arctic weather is 
characterized by unvarying cold; on the contrary it 
offers radical differences in temperature from day 
to day, and the seasons differ greatly from year to 
year. We were experiencing an extraordinarily 
early and severe winter and yet for the next few 
days now the weather was frequently mild and 
springlike, with temperatures above the freezing- 
point. This does not mean that there was any sud¬ 
den thaw; the snow fell at intervals and the sky was 
overcast but the wind was not bitterly cold as it 
became later on in our drifting. 
We busied ourselves, as we had from the begin¬ 
ning of the drift, in making preparations to leave 
the ship, an event which under the circumstances 
was probable at any moment. The Eskimo 
woman, Keruk, began making fur clothing for us. 
We put all the Jaeger underwear in large canvas 
bags placed where they could be reached con- 
