Now I took my proper place in the lead.

Though I held myself in check, I felt the keenest exhilaration, and even exultation, as I climbed over the pressure ridge and breasted the keen air sweeping over the mighty ice, pure and straight from the Pole itself.
These feelings were not in any way dampened when I plunged off the pressure ridge into water mid-thigh deep, where the pressure had forced down the edge of the floe north of us and had allowed the water to flow in under the surface snow.

My boots and trousers were tight, so that no water could get inside, and as the water froze on the fur of my trousers I scraped it off with the blade of the ice lance which I carried, and was no worse for my involuntary morning plunge.

I thought of my unused bath tub on the _Roosevelt_, three hundred and thirty nautical miles to the south, and smiled.
It was a fine marching morning, clear and sunlit, with a temperature of minus 25 deg., and the wind of the past few days had subsided to a gentle breeze.

The going was the best we had had since leaving the land.