but then we should be in each other’s way all day long; nor would it be a good plan to give up the only room where we could sometimes find peace and comfort to be a workshop.  I know it is the usual custom to do so, but I have always found it a bad arrangement.  Now, indeed, we were at our wits’ end, but circumstances once more came to our aid.  For we may just as well confess it:  we had forgotten to bring out a tool which is a commonplace necessity on a Polar expedition —­ namely, a snow-shovel.  A well-equipped expedition, as ours was to a certain extent, ought to have at least twelve strong, thick iron spades.  We had none.  We had two remnants, but they did not help us very far.  Fortunately, however, we had a very good, solid iron plate with us, and now Bjaaland stepped into the breach, and made a whole dozen of the very best spades.  Stubberud managed the handles, and they might all have been turned out by a big factory.  This circumstance had very important results for our future well-being, as will be seen.  If we had had the shovels with us from the start, we should have cleared the snow away from our door every morning, like tidy people.  But as we had none, the snow had increased daily before our door, and, before Bjaaland was ready with the spades, had formed a drift extending from the entrance along the western side of the house.  This snow-drift, which was as big as the house itself, naturally caused some frowns, when one morning all hands turned out, armed with the new shovels, to make a clearance.  As we stood there, afraid to begin, one of us —­ it must have been Lindstrom, or Hanssen perhaps, or was it myself? well, it doesn’t matter —­ one of us had the bright idea of taking Nature in hand, and working with her instead of against her.  The proposal was that we should dig out a carpenter’s shop in the big snow-drift, and put it in direct communication with the hut.  This was no sooner suggested than adopted unanimously.  And now began a work of tunnelling which lasted a good while, for one excavation led to another, and we did not stop until we had a whole underground village —­ probably one of the most interesting works ever executed round a Polar station.  Let us begin with the morning when we thrust the first spade into the drift; it was Thursday, April 20.  While three men went to work to dig right into the drift from the hut door westward, three more were busy connecting it with the hut.  This was done by stretching boards —­ the same that we had used on the Fram as a false deck for the dogs —­ from the drift up to the roof of the pent-house.  The open part between the drift and the pent-house on the northern side was filled up entirely into a solid wall, which went up to join the roof that had just been put on.  The space between the pent-house and the drift on the south wall was left open as an exit.  But now we had the building fever on us, and one ambitious project succeeded another.  Thus we agreed to dig a passage the whole length of the drift, and terminate