[Illustration: CAMP MORRIS K. JESUP AT THE NORTH POLE

(From Henson's own Photograph)]

[Illustration: MATTHEW A. HENSON IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SLEDGE JOURNEY TO
THE POLE AND BACK

(Showing the effect of the excessive strain. Compare with frontispiece
and with portrait facing page 139)]

When we woke up it was the morning of another day, March 30, and we
found open water all about us. We could not go on until either the lead
had frozen or until it had raftered shut. Temperature 35 deg. below zero,
and the weather clear and calm with no visible motion of the ice. We
spent the day industriously in camp, mending foot-gear, harness,
clothing, and looking after the dogs and their traces. This was work
enough, especially untangling the traces of the bewildered dogs. The
traces, snarled and entangled, besides being frozen to the consistency
of wire, gave us the hardest work; and, owing to the activity of the
dogs in leaping and bounding over each other, we had the most _unideal_
conditions possible to contend with, and we were handicapped by having
to use mitted instead of ungloved fingers to untangle the snarls of
knots. Unlike Alexander the Great, we dared not cut the "Gordian
Knots," but we did get them untangled.

About five o'clock in the afternoon, the temperature had fallen to 43 deg.
below zero, and at the same time the ice began to move again. Owing to
the attraction of the moon, the mighty flanks of the earth were being
drawn by her invisible force, and were commencing again to crack and be
rent asunder.

We loaded up hurriedly and all three parties left the camp and crossed
over the place where recently had been the open lead, and beyond for
more than five miles, until we reached the heavier and solid ice of the
large floes. Northward our way led, and we kept on in that direction
accordingly, at times crossing young ice so thin that the motion of the
sledges would cause the ice to undulate. Over old floes of the blue,
hummocky kind, on which the snow had fallen and become packed solid, the
rest of this day's journey was completed. We staggered into camp like
drunken men, and built our igloos by force of habit rather than with the
intelligence of human beings.

It was continuously daylight, but such a light as never was on land or
sea.

The next day was April 1, and the Farthest North of Bartlett. I knew at
this time that he was to go back, and that I was to continue, so I had
no misgivings and neither had h