rcumstance, a really remarkable thing, was of course
attributed by my Eskimos to the interference of their arch enemy,
Tornarsuk--in plain English, the devil--with my plans.

After breakfast, with the first glimmer of daylight, we got outside the
igloo and looked about. The wind was whistling wildly around the eastern
end of Independence Bluff; and the ice-fields to the north, as well as
all the lower part of the land, were invisible in that gray haze which,
every experienced arctic traveler knows, means vicious wind. A party
less perfectly clothed than we were would have found conditions very
trying that morning. Some parties would have considered the weather
impossible for traveling, and would have gone back to their igloos.

But, taught by the experience of three years before, I had given the
members of my party instructions to wear their old winter clothing from
the ship to Cape Columbia and while there, and to put on the new outfit
made for the sledge journey when leaving Columbia. Therefore we were all
in our new and perfectly dry fur clothes and could bid defiance to the
wind.

One by one the divisions drew out from the main army of sledges and dog
teams, took up Bartlett's trail over the ice and disappeared to the
northward in the wind haze. This departure of the procession was a
noiseless one, for the freezing east wind carried all sounds away. It
was also invisible after the first few moments--men and dogs being
swallowed up almost immediately in the wind haze and the drifting snow.

I finally brought up the rear with my own division, after getting things
into some semblance of order, and giving the two disabled men left at
Cape Columbia their final instructions to remain quietly in the igloo
there, using certain supplies which were left with them until the first
supporting party returned to Cape Columbia, when they were to go back
with it to the ship.

An hour after I left camp my division had crossed the glacial fringe,
and the last man, sledge, and dog of the Northern party--comprising
altogether twenty-four men, nineteen sledges, and one hundred and
thirty-three dogs--was at last on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, about
latitude 83 deg..

[Illustration: WORKING THROUGH AN EXPANSE OF ROUGH ICE]

Our start from the land this last time was eight days earlier than the
start three years before, six days of calendar time and two days of
distance, our present latitude being about two marches farther north
th