as though at a word of command, and stared at each other.  The most undisguised astonishment could be read in their faces.  When at last we had succeeded, with another dose of the whip, in making them understand that we really asked them to work, instead of doing as they were told they flew at each other in a furious scrimmage.  Heaven help me! what work we had with those eight dogs that day!  If it was going to be like this on the way to the Pole, I calculated in the midst of the tumult that it would take exactly a year to get there, without counting the return journey.  During all this confusion I stole another glance at the ship, but the sight that met me made me quickly withdraw my eyes again.  They were simply shrieking with laughter, and loud shouts of the most infamous encouragement reached us.  “If you go on like that, you’ll get there by Christmas,” or, “Well done! stick to it.  Now you’re off.”  We were stuck faster than ever.  Things looked desperate.  At last, with the combined strength of all the animals and men, we got the sledge to move again.

So our first sledge trip could not be called a triumph.  We then set up our first tent on the Barrier, between Mounts Nelson and Ronniken —­ a large, strong tent for sixteen men, with the sheet for the floor sewed on.  Round the tent wire ropes were stretched in a triangle, fifty yards on each side.  To these the dogs were to be tethered.  The tent was furnished with five sleeping-bags and a quantity of provisions.  The distance we had come was 1.2 geographical miles, or 2.2 kilometres, measured by sledge-meter.  After finishing this work, we went on up to the site selected for the station.  Here we set up the tent —­ a similar tent to the other, for sixteen men —­ for the use of the carpenters, and marked out the hut site.  According to the lie of the ground we elected to make the house face east and west, and not north and south, as one might have been tempted to do, since it was usually supposed that the most frequent and violent winds came from the south.  We chose rightly.  The prevailing wind was from the east, and thus caught our house on its most protected short wall.  The door faced west.  When this work was done, we marked out the way from here to the encampment below and thence to the vessel with dark flags at every fifteen paces.  In this way we should be able to drive with certainty from one place to another without losing time if a storm should set in.  The distance from the hut site to the vessel was 2.2 geographical miles, or 4 kilometres.  On Monday, January 16, work began in earnest.  About eighty dogs —­ six teams —­ drove up to the first encampment with all the provisions and equipment that could be loaded on the sledges, and twenty dogs —­ Stubberud’s and Bjaaland’s teams —­ went with a full load up to the other camp.  We had some work indeed, those first days, to get the dogs to obey us.  Time after time they tried to take the command from their masters and steer their