Those who have pictured us sitting comfortably on our sledges, riding over hundreds of miles of ice smooth as a skating pond, should have seen us lifting and tugging at our five-hundred-pound sledges, adding our own strength to that of our dogs.
The day was hazy, and the air was full of frost, which, clinging to our eyelashes, almost cemented them together.

Sometimes, in opening my mouth to shout an order to the Eskimos, a sudden twinge would cut short my words--my mustache having frozen to my stubble beard.
This fifteen mile march put us beyond the Norwegian record (86 deg.

13' 6''; see Nansen's "Farthest North," Vol.

2, page 170) and fifteen days ahead of that record.

My leading sledge found both Bartlett and Henson in camp; but they were off again, pioneering the trail, before I, bringing up the rear as usual, came in.