Behind us, in the brightest, clearest weather, lay the glacier, as we had seen it for the first time on our way to the south:  break after break, crevasse after crevasse.  But in among all this nastiness there ran a white, unbroken line, the very path we had stood and looked at a few weeks back.  And directly below that white stripe we knew, as sure as anything could be, that our depot lay.  We stood there expressing our annoyance rather forcibly at the depot having escaped us so easily, and talking of how jolly it would have been to have picked up all our depots from the plain we had strewed them over.  Dead tired as I felt that evening, I had not the least desire to go back the fifteen miles that separated us from it.  “If anybody would like to make the trip, he shall have many thanks.”  They all wanted to make it —­ all as one man.  There was no lack of volunteers in that company.  I chose Hanssen and Bjaaland.  They took nearly everything off the sledge, and went away with it empty.

It was then five in the morning.  At three in the afternoon they came back to the tent, Bjaaland running in front, Hanssen driving the sedge.  That was a notable feat, both for men and dogs.  Hanssen, Bjaaland, and that team had covered about fifty miles that day, at an average rate of three to three and a half miles an hour.  They had found the depot without much search.  Their greatest difficulty had been in the undulating surface; for long stretches at a time they were in the hollows between the waves, which shut in their view entirely.  Ridge succeeded ridge, endlessly.  We had taken care that everything was ready for their return —­ above all great quantities of water.  Water, water was the first thing, and generally the last, that was in request.  When their thirst was a little quenched, great interest was shown in the pemmican.  While these two were being well looked after, the depot they had brought in was divided between the two sledges, and in a short time all was ready for our departure.  Meanwhile, the weather had been getting finer and finer, and before us lay the mountains, sharp and clear.  We thought we recognized Fridtjof Nansen and Don Pedro Christophersen, and took good bearings of them in case the fog should return.  With most of us the ideas of day and night began to get rather mixed.  “Six o’clock,” someone would answer, when asked the time.  “Yes, in the morning,” remarks the other.  “No; what are you talking about?” answers the first one again; “it’s evening, of course.”  The date was hopeless; it was a good thing if we remembered the year.  Only when writing in our diaries and observation books did we come across such things as dates; while at work we had not the remotest idea of them.