That day —­ December 20 —­ Per —­ good, faithful, conscientious Per —­ broke down utterly and had to be taken on the sledge the last part of the way.  On arrival at the camping-ground he had his reward.  A little blow of the back of the axe was enough for him; without making a sound the worn-out animal collapsed.  In him Wisting lost one of his best dogs.  He was a curious animal —­ always went about quietly and peaceably, and never took part in the others’ battles; from his looks and behaviour one would have judged him, quite mistakenly, to be a queer sort of beast who was good for nothing.  But when he was in harness he showed what he could do.  Without needing any shouts or cuts of the whip, he put himself into it from morning to night, and was priceless as a draught dog.  But, like others of the same character, he could not keep it going any longer; he collapsed, was killed and eaten.

Christmas Eve was rapidly approaching.  For us it could not be particularly festive, but we should have to try to make as much of it as circumstances would permit.  We ought, therefore, to reach our depot that evening, so as to keep Christmas with a dish of porridge.  The night before Christmas Eve we slaughtered Svartflekken.  There was no mourning on this occasion Svartflekken was one of Hassel’s dogs, and had always been a reprobate.  I find the following in my diary, written the same evening:  “Slaughtered Svartflekken this evening.  He would not do any more, although there was not much wrong with his looks.  Bad character.  If a man, he would have ended in penal servitude.”  He was comparatively fat, and was consumed with evident satisfaction.

Christmas Eve came; the weather was rather changeable —­ now overcast, now clear —­ when we set out at 8 p.m. the night before.  We had not far to go before reaching our depot.  At 12 midnight we arrived there in the most glorious weather, calm and warm.  Now we had the whole of Christmas Eve before us, and could enjoy it at our ease.  Our depot was at once taken down and divided between the two sledges.  All crumbs of biscuit were carefully collected by Wisting, the cook for the day, and put into a bag.  This was taken into the tent and vigorously beaten and kneaded; the result was pulverized biscuit.  With this product and a sausage of dried milk, Wisting succeeded in making a capital dish of Christmas porridge.  I doubt whether anyone at home enjoyed his Christmas dinner so much as we did that morning in the tent.  One of Bjaaland’s cigars to follow brought a festival spirit over the whole camp.

Another thing we had to rejoice about that day was that we had again reached the summit of the plateau, and after two or three more days’ march would begin to go downhill, finally reaching the Barrier and our old haunts.  Our daily march had hitherto been interrupted by one or two halts; we stopped to rest both the dogs and ourselves.  On Christmas Eve we instituted a new order of things, and did the whole distance —­ fifteen geographical miles —­ without a stop.  We liked this arrangement best, after all, and it seemed as if the dogs did the same.  As a rule it was hard to begin the march again after the rest; one got rather stiff lazy, too, perhaps —­ and had to become supple again.