Traveling on the polar ice, one takes all kinds of chances.

Often a man has the choice between the possibility of drowning by going on or starving to death by standing still, and challenges fate with the briefer and less painful chance.
That night we were all pretty tired, but satisfied with our progress so far.

We were almost inside of the 89th parallel, and I wrote in my diary: "Give me three more days of this weather!" The temperature at the beginning of the march had been minus 40 deg..

That night I put all the poorest dogs in one team and began to eliminate and feed them to the others, as it became necessary.
We stopped for only a short sleep, and early in the evening of the same day, the 4th, we struck on again.

The temperature was then minus 35 deg., the going was the same, but the sledges always haul more easily when the temperature rises, and the dogs were on the trot much of the time.
Toward the end of the march we came upon a lead running north and south, and as the young ice was thick enough to support the teams, we traveled on it for two hours, the dogs galloping along and reeling off the miles in a way that delighted my heart.