There was no one in our party who was not delighted to have passed the treacherous lead and those wide expanses of young thin ice where a gale would have put an open sea between us and the land and rendered our safe return hazardous, to say the least.
In all probability no member of that little party will ever forget our sleep at Cape Columbia.

We slept gloriously for practically two days, our brief waking intervals being occupied exclusively with eating and with drying our clothes.
Then for the ship.

Our dogs, like ourselves, had not been hungry when we arrived, but simply lifeless with fatigue.

They were different animals now, and the better ones among them stepped out with tightly curled tails and uplifted heads, their iron legs treading the snow with piston-like regularity and their black muzzles every now and then sniffing the welcome scent of the land.
[Illustration: EGINGWAH BEFORE STARTING ON THE SLEDGE TRIP] [Illustration: EGINGWAH AFTER THE RETURN FROM THE TRIP] [Illustration: OOTAH BEFORE STARTING ON THE SLEDGE TRIP] [Illustration: OOTAH AFTER THE RETURN FROM THE SLEDGE TRIP] (The Portraits at the Left Were Made by Flashlight on the _Roosevelt_ Before the Journey.
Those on the Right Were Taken Immediately After the Return) We reached Cape Hecla in one march of forty-five miles and the _Roosevelt_ in another of equal length.

My heart thrilled as, rounding the point of the cape, I saw the little black ship lying there in its icy berth with sturdy nose pointing straight to the Pole.
And I thought of that other time three years before when, dragging our gaunt bodies round Cape Rawson on our way from the Greenland coast, I thought the _Roosevelt's_ slender spars piercing the brilliant arctic sunlight as fair a sight as ever I had seen.