The last part of the way was rather hard work.  We now found the tracks that we had lost early in the day; one dried fish after another stuck up out of the snow and led us straight on.  We reached Framheim at seven in the evening, half an hour earlier than we had thought.  It was a day’s march of thirty-seven miles —­ not so bad for exhausted dogs.  Lassesen was the only one I brought home out of my team.  Odin, whom I had sent home from 81deg.  S., died after arriving there.  We lost altogether eight dogs on this trip; two of Stubberud’s died immediately after coming home from 81deg.  S. Probably the cold was chiefly responsible; I feel sure that with a reasonable temperature they would have come through.  The three men who came home from 81deg.  S. were safe and sound.  It is true that they had run short of food and matches the last day, but if the worst came to the worst, they had the dogs.  Since their return they had shot, brought in, cut up, and stowed away, fifty seals —­ a very good piece of work.

Lindstrom had been untiring during our absence; he had put everything in splendid order.  In the covered passage round the hut he had cut out shelves in the snow and filled them with slices of seal meat.  Here alone there were steaks enough for the whole time we should spend here.  On the outer walls of the hut, which formed the other side of the passage, he had put up shelves, and there all kinds of tinned foods were stored.  All was in such perfect order that one could put one’s hand on what one wanted in the dark.  There stood salt meat and bacon by themselves, and there were fish-cakes.  There you read the label on a tin of caramel pudding, and you could be sure that the rest of the caramel puddings were in the vicinity.  Quite right; there they stood in a row, like a company of soldiers.  Oh, Lindstrom, how long will this order last?

Well, that was, of course, a question I put to myself in the strictest secrecy.  Let me turn over my diary.  On Thursday, July 27, I find the following entry:  “The provision passage turns our days into chaotic confusion.  How my mind goes back to the time when one could find what one wanted without a light of any kind!  If you put out your hand to get a plum-pudding and shut it again, you could be sure it was a plum-pudding you had hold of.  And so it was throughout Lindstrom’s department.  But now —­ good Heavens!  I am ashamed to put down what happened to me yesterday.  I went out there in the most blissful ignorance of the state of things now prevailing, and, of course, I had no light with me, for everything had its place.  I put out my hand and grasped.  According to my expectation I ought to have been in possession of a packet of candles, but the experiment had failed.  That which I held in my hand could not possibly be a packet of candles.  It was evident from the feel that it was something of a woollen nature.  I laid the object down, and had recourse to the familiar expedient of striking a match.  Do you know what