Thus equipped, and with thirty biscuits as an extra ration, the three men started off in the directions laid down.  Their march was by no means free from danger, and does great honour to those who undertook it, not merely without raising the smallest objection, but with the greatest keenness.  Let us consider for a moment the risk they ran.  Our tent on the boundless plain, without marks of any kind, may very well be compared with a needle in a haystack.  From this the three men were to steer out for a distance of twelve and a half miles.  Compasses would have been good things to take on such a walk, but our sledge-compasses were too heavy and unsuitable for carrying.  They therefore had to go without.  They had the sun to go by, certainly, when they started, but who could say how long it would last?  The weather was then fine enough, but it was impossible to guarantee that no sudden change would take place.  If by bad luck the sun should be hidden, then their own tracks might help them.  But to trust to tracks in these regions is a dangerous thing.  Before you know where you are the whole plain may be one mass of driving snow, obliterating all tracks as soon as they are made.  With the rapid changes of weather we had so often experienced, such a thing was not impossible.  That these three risked their lives that morning, when they left the tent at 2.30, there can be no doubt at all, and they all three knew it very well.  But if anyone thinks that on this account they took a solemn farewell of us who stayed behind, he is much mistaken.  Not a bit; they all vanished in their different directions amid laughter and chaff.

The first thing we did —­ Hanssen and I —­ was to set about arranging a lot of trifling matters; there was something to be done here, something there, and above all we had to be ready for the series of observations we were to carry out together, so as to get as accurate a determination of our position as possible.  The first observation told us at once how necessary this was.  For it turned out that this, instead of giving us a greater altitude than the midnight observation, gave us a smaller one, and it was then clear that we had gone out of the meridian we thought we were following.  Now the first thing to be done was to get our north and south line and latitude determined, so that we could find our position once more.  Luckily for us, the weather looked as if it would hold.  We measured the sun’s altitude at every hour from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and from these observations found, with some degree of certainty, our latitude and the direction of the meridian.