When the depot was finished and had been photographed, we threw ourselves on the sledges and began the homeward journey.  It was quite a treat to sit and be drawn along, a thing that otherwise never happened.  Prestrud sat with me.  Hanssen drove first, but as he now had the old track to follow, he wanted no one in front.  On the last sledge we had the marking pegs.  Prestrud kept an eye on the sledge-meter, and sang out at every half-kilometre, while at the same time I stuck a dried fish into the snow.  This method of marking the route proved a brilliant one.  Not only did the dried fish show us the right way on several occasions, but they also came in very useful on the next journey, when we returned with starving dogs.  That day we covered forty-three miles.  We did not get to bed till one o’clock at night, but this did not prevent our being up again at four and off at half-past seven.  At half-past nine in the evening we drove into Framheim, after covering sixty-two miles that day.  Our reason for driving that distance was not to set up any record for the Barrier, but to get home, if possible, before the Fram sailed, and thus have an opportunity of once more shaking hands with our comrades and wishing them a good voyage.  But as we came over the edge of the Barrier we saw that, in spite of all our pains, we had come too late.  The Fram was not there.  It gave us a strange and melancholy feeling, not easy to understand.  But the next moment common sense returned, and our joy at her having got away from the Barrier undamaged after the long stay was soon uppermost.  We heard that she had left the bay at noon the same day —­ just as we were spurting our hardest to reach her.

This depot journey was quite sufficient to tell us what the future had in store.  After this we were justified in seeing it in a rosy light.  We now had experience of the three important factors —­ the lie of the ground, the going, and the means of traction —­ and the result was that nothing could be better.  Everything was in the most perfect order.  I had always had a high opinion of the dog as a draught animal, but after this last performance my admiration for these splendid animals rose to the pitch of enthusiasm.  Let us look at what my dogs accomplished on this occasion:  On February 14 they went eleven miles southward with a load of 770 pounds, and on the same day thirty-two miles northward —­ only four of them, the “Three Musketeers” and Lassesen, as Fix and Snuppesen refused to do any work.  The weight they started with from 80deg.S. was that of the sledge, 165 pounds; Prestrud, 176 pounds; and myself, 182 pounds.  Add to this 154 pounds for sleeping-bags, ski, and dried fish, and we have a total weight of 677 pounds, or about 170 pounds per dog.  The last day they did sixty-two miles.  I think the dogs showed on this occasion that they were well suited for sledging on the Barrier.