to study to obtain the
maximum effectiveness with the minimum weight and bulk. For relaxation,
I devoted many hours to a new form of taxidermy.

About the middle of November I had a large snow igloo built on the top
of the hatch on the main deck of the _Roosevelt_, which we called "the
studio," and Borup and I began to experiment with flashlight pictures of
the Eskimos. They had become accustomed to seeing counterfeit
presentments of themselves on paper, and were very patient models. We
also got some good moonlight pictures--time exposures varying from ten
minutes to two or three hours.

On this last expedition I did not permit myself to dream about the
future, to hope, or to fear. On the 1905-06 expedition I had done too
much dreaming; this time I knew better. Too often in the past had I
found myself face to face with impassable barriers. Whenever I caught
myself building air castles, I would either attack some work requiring
intense application of the mind, or would go to sleep--it was hard
sometimes to fight back the dreams, especially in my solitary walks on
the ice-foot under the arctic moon.

On the evening of November 11, there was a brilliant paraselene, two
distinct halos and eight false moons being visible in the southern sky.
This phenomenon is not unusual in the Arctic, and is caused by the frost
crystals in the air. On this particular occasion the inner halo had a
false moon at its zenith, another at its nadir, and one each at the
right and left. Outside was another halo, with four other moons.

Sometimes during the summer we see the parhelion, a similar phenomenon
of the sun. I have seen the appearance of the false suns--or sun-dogs as
the sailors call them--so near that the lowest one would seem to fall
between me and a snow-bank twenty feet away, so near that by moving my
head backward and forward I could shut it out or bring it into view.
This was the nearest I ever came to finding the pot of gold at the foot
of the rainbow.

On the night of November 12, the ice of the channel pack, which for more
than two months had seemed unmindful of our intrusive presence, arose in
wrath and tried to hurl us upon the equally inhospitable shore.

All that evening the wind had been gradually increasing in violence, and
about half-past eleven the ship began to complain, creaking, groaning
and muttering to herself. I lay in my bunk and listened to the wind in
the humming rigging, while the moonlight, shining thro