66 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
ently saw her heading in towards shore, and they 
launched a boat and went out to meet her. When 
they reached the spot where she was supposed to 
be she was not there and did not turn up until some 
ten hours later. Her apparent presence was sim¬ 
ply a peculiarity of the sea-horizon, a refraction or 
distortion. 
The Eskimo reported fox tracks a few miles 
from the ship and I gave them a dozen fox traps. 
The Arctic fox is of a clear white color, his pelt 
often whiter than that of the polar bear, which 
sometimes verges on the yellow. The Eskimo set 
the traps at various points on the ice, fastened 
securely so that the foxes would not carry them 
away, and on the seventeenth they caught one very 
small fox. Mr. Hadley finished the second Peary 
sledge. We lost the dredge again on the seven¬ 
teenth and had to replace it with another one, which 
brought up some more specimens new to Murray. 
The temperature was only nine below zero but it 
was as cold as it is along the Atlantic seaboard in 
winter because just now there was much open water 
about us, though it was a good many miles away. 
On our North Pole trips we had much lower 
temperatures than we were now having but felt 
the cold less because it remained at the same level 
for weeks and was free from dampness because 
there were not so many open leads. 
