This unusual circumstance, a really remarkable thing, was of course attributed by my Eskimos to the interference of their arch enemy, Tornarsuk--in plain English, the devil--with my plans.
After breakfast, with the first glimmer of daylight, we got outside the igloo and looked about.

The wind was whistling wildly around the eastern end of Independence Bluff; and the ice-fields to the north, as well as all the lower part of the land, were invisible in that gray haze which, every experienced arctic traveler knows, means vicious wind.

A party less perfectly clothed than we were would have found conditions very trying that morning.

Some parties would have considered the weather impossible for traveling, and would have gone back to their igloos.
But, taught by the experience of three years before, I had given the members of my party instructions to wear their old winter clothing from the ship to Cape Columbia and while there, and to put on the new outfit made for the sledge journey when leaving Columbia.

Therefore we were all in our new and perfectly dry fur clothes and could bid defiance to the wind.
One by one the divisions drew out from the main army of sledges and dog teams, took up Bartlett's trail over the ice and disappeared to the northward in the wind haze.