The meat itself, as it lay there cut up, looked well enough, in all conscience; no butcher’s shop could have exhibited a finer sight than we showed after flaying and cutting up ten dogs.  Great masses of beautiful fresh, red meat, with quantities of the most tempting fat, lay spread over the snow.  The dogs went round and sniffed at it.  Some helped themselves to a piece; others were digesting.  We men had picked out what we thought was the youngest and tenderest one for ourselves.  The whole arrangement was left to Wisting, both the selection and the preparation of the cutlets.  His choice fell upon Rex, a beautiful little animal —­ one of his own dogs, by the way.  With the skill of an expert, he hacked and cut away what he considered would be sufficient for a meal.  I could not take my eyes off his work; the delicate little cutlets had an absolutely hypnotizing effect as they were spread out one by one over the snow.  They recalled memories of old days, when no doubt a dog cutlet would have been less tempting than now —­ memories of dishes on which the cutlets were elegantly arranged side by side, with paper frills on the bones, and a neat pile of petits pois in the middle.  Ah, my thoughts wandered still farther afield —­ but that does not concern us now, nor has it anything to do with the South Pole.

I was aroused from my musings by Wisting digging his axe into the snow as a sign that his work was done, after which he picked up the cutlets, and went into the tent.  The clouds had dispersed somewhat, and from time to time the sun appeared, though not in its most genial aspect.  We succeeded in catching it just in time to get our latitude determined —­ 85deg. 36’ S. We were lucky, as not long after the wind got up from the east-south-east, and, before we knew what was happening, everything was in a cloud of snow.  But now we snapped our fingers at the weather; what difference did it make to us if the wind howled in the guy-ropes and the snow drifted?  We had, in any case, made up our minds to stay here for a while, and we had food in abundance.  We knew the dogs thought much the same so long as we have enough to eat, let the weather go hang.  Inside the tent Wisting was getting on well when we came in after making these observations.  The pot was on, and, to judge by the savoury smell, the preparations were already far advanced.  The cutlets were not fried; we had neither frying-pan nor butter.  We could, no doubt, have got some lard out of the pemmican, and we might have contrived some sort of a pan, so that we could have fried them if it had been necessary; but we found it far easier and quicker to boil them, and in this way we got excellent soup into the bargain.  Wisting knew his business surprisingly well; he had put into the soup all those parts of the pemmican that contained most vegetables, and now he served us the finest fresh meat soup with vegetables in it.  The clou of the repast was the dish of cutlets.  If we had entertained the slightest doubt of the quality