ng over the traces. Clark had had the excellent
idea of attaching a gold-beater's-skin balloon, with a lifting power of
35 pounds, to each sledge, and we had with us a supply of zinc and
sulphuric-acid to repair the hydrogen-waste from the bags; but on the
third day Mew over-filled and burst his balloon, and I and Clark had to
cut ours loose in order to equalise weights, for we could neither leave
him behind, turn back to the ship, nor mend the bag. So it happened that
at the end of the fourth day out, we had made only nineteen miles, and
could still from a hummock discern afar the leaning masts of the old
Boreal. Clark led on ski, captaining a sledge with 400 lbs. of
instruments, ammunition, pemmican, aleuronate bread; Mew followed, his
sledge containing provisions only; and last came I, with a mixed
freight. But on the third day Clark had an attack of snow-blindness, and
Mew took his place.

Pretty soon our sufferings commenced, and they were bitter enough. The
sun, though constantly visible day and night, gave no heat. Our
sleeping-bags (Clark and Mew slept together in one, I in another) were
soaking wet all the night, being thawed by our warmth; and our fingers,
under wrappings of senne-grass and wolf-skin, were always bleeding.
Sometimes our frail bamboo-cane kayaks, lying across the sledges, would
crash perilously against an ice-ridge--and they were our one hope of
reaching land. But the dogs were the great difficulty: we lost six
mortal hours a day in harnessing and tending them. On the twelfth day
Clark took a single-altitude observation, and found that we were only in
latitude 86 deg. 45'; but the next day we passed beyond the furthest point
yet reached by man, viz. 86 deg. 53', attained by the _Nix_ explorers four
years previously.

* * * * *

Our one secret thought now was food, food--our day-long lust for the
eating-time. Mew suffered from 'Arctic thirst.

* * * * *

Under these conditions, man becomes in a few days, not a savage only,
but a mere beast, hardly a grade above the bear and walrus. Ah, the ice!
A long and sordid nightmare was that, God knows.

On we pressed, crawling our little way across the Vast, upon whose hoar
silence, from Eternity until then, Bootes only, and that Great Bear, had
watched.

* * * * *

After the eleventh day our rate of march improved: all lanes
disappeared, and ridges beca