On the 15th, as we sat in the tent cooking and chatting, Hanssen suddenly said:  “Why, I believe my heel’s gone!” Off came his stockings, and there was a big, dead heel, like a lump of tallow.  It did not look well.  He rubbed it until he thought he “could feel something again,” and then put his feet back in his stockings and got into his bag.  Now it was Stubberud’s turn.  “Blest if I don’t think there’s something wrong with mine, too.”  Same proceeding —­ same result.  This was pleasant —­ two doubtful heels, and forty-six miles from Framheim!  When we started next morning it was fortunately milder —­ “almost summer”:  -40deg.  F. It felt quite pleasant.  The difference between -40deg. and -60deg. is, in my opinion, very perceptible.  It may perhaps be thought that when one gets so far down, a few degrees one way or the other do not make any difference, but they do.

While driving that day we were obliged to let loose several of the dogs, who could not keep up; we supposed that they would follow our tracks.  Adam and Lazarus were never seen again.  Sara fell dead on the way without any previous symptom.  Camilla was also among those let loose.

On the way home we kept the same order as on the previous days.  Hanssen and Wisting, as a rule, were a long way ahead, unless they stopped and waited.  We went at a tearing pace.  We had thought of halting at the sixteen-mile flag, as we called it —­ the mark at thirty kilometres from Framheim —­ and waiting for the others to come up, but as the weather was of the best, calm and clear, and with our tracks on the way south perfectly plain, I decided to go on.  The sooner we got the bad heels into the house, the better.  The two first sledges arrived at 4 p.m.; the next at 6, and the two following ones at 6.30.  The last did not come in till 12.30 a.m.  Heaven knows what they had been doing on the way!

With the low temperatures we experienced on this trip, we noticed a curious snow-formation that I had never seen before.  Fine —­ extremely fine —­ drift-snow collected, and formed small cylindrical bodies of an average diameter of 1 1/4 inches, and about the same height; they were, however, of various sizes.  They generally rolled over the surface like a wheel, and now and then collected into large heaps, from which again, one by one, or several together, they continued their rolling.  If you took one of these bodies in the hand, there was no increase of weight to be felt —­ not the very slightest.  If you took one of the largest and crushed it, there was, so to speak, nothing left.  With the temperature in the -40’s, we did not see them.

As soon as we came home, we attended to the heels.  Prestrud had both his heels frozen, one slightly, the other more severely, though, so far as I could determine, not so badly as the other two.  The first thing we did was to lance the big blisters that had formed and let out the fluid they contained; afterwards we put on boracic compresses, night and morning.  We kept up this treatment for a long time; at last the old skin could be removed, and the new lay there fresh and healthy.  The heel was cured.