ere, perhaps not. One thing was in our favor:
our sledges were much lighter than on the upward journey, and we could
now "rush" them across thin ice that would not have held them a moment
then. In any event we got no thrill or irregularity of the pulse from
the incident. It came as a matter of course, a part of the day's work.

As we left the camp where we had stopped for lunch, a dense, black,
threatening bank of clouds came up from the south and we looked for a
gale, but the wind fell and we arrived at the next camp, where Marvin
had made a 700-fathom sounding and lost wire and pickaxes, in calm and
brilliant sunlight after a march of eighteen hours. We were now
approximately one hundred and forty-six miles from land.

We were coming down the North Pole hill in fine shape now and another
double march, April 16-17, brought us to our eleventh upward camp at 85 deg.
8', one hundred and twenty-one miles from Cape Columbia. On this march
we crossed seven leads, which, with the repeated faulting of the trail,
lengthened our march once more to eighteen hours. Sunday, April 18,
found us still hurrying along over the trail made by Marvin and
Bartlett. They had lost the main trail, but this made little difference
to us except as to time. We were able to make longer marches when on the
main trail because there we camped in the igloos already built on the
upward journey instead of having to build fresh ones for ourselves. This
was another eighteen-hour march. It had a calm and warm beginning, but,
so far as I was concerned, an extremely uncomfortable finish. During the
day my clothes had become damp with perspiration. Moreover, as our long
marches and short sleeps had brought us round to the calendar day, we
were facing the sun, and this, with the southwest wind, burned my face
so badly that it was little short of agonizing. But I consoled myself
with the reflection that we were now less than a hundred miles from
land. I tried to forget my stinging flesh in looking at the land clouds
which we could see from this camp. There is no mistaking these clouds,
which are permanent and formed of the condensation of the moisture from
the land in the upper strata of the atmosphere. To-morrow, we knew, we
might even be able to see the land itself. Meantime the dogs had again
become utterly lifeless. Three of them had played out entirely. Extra
rations were fed to them and we made a longer stop in this camp, partly
on their account and partly