Hanssen, as usual, was driving first.  Strictly speaking, I should now have been going in advance, but the uneven surface at the start and the rapid pace afterwards had made it impossible to walk as fast the dogs could pull.  I was therefore following by the side of Wisting’s sledge, and chatting with him.  Suddenly I saw Hanssen’s dogs shoot ahead, and downhill they went at the wildest pace, Wisting after them.  I shouted to Hanssen to stop, and he succeeded in doing so by twisting his sledge.  The others, who were following, stopped when they came up to him.  We were in the middle of a fairly steep descent; what there might be below was not easy to decide, nor would we try to find out in that weather.  Was it possible that we were on our way down through the mountains again?  It seemed more probable that we lay on one of the numerous ridges; but we could be sure of nothing before the weather cleared.  We trampled down a place for the tent in the loose snow, and soon got it up.  It was not a long day’s march that we had done —­ eleven and three-quarter miles —­ but we had put an end to our stay at the Butcher’s Shop, and that was a great thing.  The boiling-point test that evening showed that we were 10,300 feet above the sea, and that we had thus gone down 620 feet from the Butcher’s.  We turned in and went to sleep.  As soon as it brightened, we should have to be ready to jump out and look at the weather; one has to seize every opportunity in these regions.  If one neglects to do so, it may mean a long wait and much may be lost.  We therefore all slept with one eye open, and we knew well that nothing could happen without our noticing it.

At three in the morning the sun cut through the clouds and we through the tent-door.  To take in the situation was more than the work of a moment.  The sun showed as yet like a pat of butter, and had not succeeded in dispersing the thick mists; the wind had dropped somewhat, but was still fairly strong.  This is, after all, the worst part of one’s job —­ turning out of one’s good, warm sleeping-bag, and standing outside for some time in thin clothes, watching the weather.  We knew by experience that a gleam like this, a clearing in the weather, might come suddenly, and then one had to be on the spot.  The gleam came; it did not last long, but long enough.  We lay on the side of a ridge that fell away pretty steeply.  The descent on the south was too abrupt, but on the south-east it was better and more gradual, and ended in a wide, level tract.  We could see no crevasses or unpleasantness of any kind.  It was not very far that we could see, though; only our nearest surroundings.  Of the mountains we saw nothing, neither Fridtjof Nansen nor Don Pedro Christophersen.  Well content with our morning’s work, we turned in again and slept till 6 a.m., when we began our morning preparations.  The weather, which had somewhat improved during the night, had now broken loose again, and the north-easter was doing all it could.  However, it would take more than storm and snow to stop us now, since we had discovered the nature of our immediate surroundings; if we once got down to the plain, we knew that we could always feel our way on.