paid a pound for every yard of film showing the back view of the forerunner.  By making threatening gestures with a ski-pole I stopped the too persistent cinematograph, and then went on to join Stubberud, who was only a few yards ahead.  Johansen had disappeared like a meteor.  The last I saw of him was the soles of his boots, as he quite unexpectedly made an elegant backward somersault off the sledge when it was passing over a little unevenness by the provision store.  The dogs, of course, made off at full speed, and Johansen after them like the wind.  We all met again safe and sound at the ascent to the Barrier.  Here a proper order of march was formed, and we proceeded southward.

The Barrier greeted us with a fresh south wind, that now and then made an attempt to freeze the tip of one’s nose; it did not succeed in this, but it delayed us a little.  It does not take a great deal of wind on this level plain to diminish the rate of one’s progress.  But the sun shone too gaily that day to allow a trifle of wind to interfere very much with our enjoyment of life.  The surface was so firm that there was hardly a sign of drift-snow.  As it was perfectly clear, the mark-flags could be followed the whole time, thus assuring us that, at any rate, the first day’s march would be accomplished without any deviation from the right track.

At five o’clock we camped, and when we had fed the dogs and come into the tent we could feel how much easier and pleasanter everything was at this season than on the former journeys in autumn and spring.  We could move freely in a convenient costume; if we wished, there was nothing to prevent our performing all the work of the camp with bare hands and still preserving our finger-tips unharmed.  As I had no dog-team to look after, I undertook the duty of attending to our own needs; that is to say, I acted as cook.  This occupation also was considerably easier now than it had been when the temperature was below -60deg.  F. At that time it took half an hour to turn the snow in the cooker into water; now it was done in ten minutes, and the cook ran no risk whatever of getting his fingers frozen in the process.

Ever since we landed on the Barrier in January, 1911, we had been expecting to hear a violent cannonade as the result of the movement of the mass of ice.  We had now lived a whole winter at Framheim without having observed, as far as I know, the slightest sign of a sound.  This was one of many indications that the ice round our winter-quarters was not in motion at all.

No one, I believe, had noticed anything of the expected noise on the sledge journeys either, but at the place where we camped on the night of November 8 we did hear it.  There was a report about once in two minutes, not exactly loud, but still, there it was.  It sounded just as if there was a whole battery of small guns in action down in the depths below us.  A few hundred yards to the west of the camp there were a number of small hummocks, which might indicate