us, one has to go blindly.  Most of us, I suppose, would swerve now to one side, now to the other, and possibly end, after all this groping, by keeping pretty well to the line.  Not so with Bjaaland; he was a right-hand man.  I can see him now; Hanssen has given him the direction by compass, and Bjaaland turns round, points his ski in the line indicated and sets of with decision.  His movements clearly show that he has made up his mind, cost what it may, to keep in the right direction.  He sends his ski firmly along, so that the snow spurts from them, and looks straight before him.  But the result is the same; if Hanssen had let Bjaaland go on without any correction, in the course of an hour or so the latter would probably have described a beautiful circle and brought himself back to the spot from which he had started.  Perhaps. after all, this was not a fault to complain of, since we always knew with absolute certainty that, when we had got out of the line of beacons, we were to the right of it and had to search for the beacons to the west.  This conclusion proved very useful to us more than once, and we gradually became so familiar with Bjaaland’s right-handed tendencies that we actually counted on them.

On January 13, according to our reckoning, we ought to reach the depot in 83deg.  S. This was the last of our depots that was not marked at right angles to the route, and therefore the last critical point.  The day was not altogether suited for finding the needle in the haystack.  It was calm with a thick fog, so thick that we could only see a few yards in front of us.  We did not see a single beacon on the whole march.  At 4 p.m. we had completed the distance, according to the sledge-meters, and reckoned that we ought to be in 83deg.  S., by the depot; but there was nothing to be seen.  We decided, therefore, to set our tent and wait till it cleared.  While we were at work with this, there was a rift in the thick mass of fog, and there, not many yards away —­ to the west, of course —­ lay our depot.  We quickly took the tent down again, packed it on the sledge, and drove up to our food mound, which proved to be quite in order.  There was no sign of the birds having paid it a visit.  But what was that?  Fresh, well-marked dog-tracks in the newly-fallen snow.  We soon saw that they must be the tracks of the runaways that we had lost here on the way south.  Judging by appearances, they must have lain under the lee of the depot for a considerable time; two deep hollows in the snow told us that plainly.  And evidently they must have had enough food, but where on earth had they got it from?  The depot was absolutely untouched, in spite of the fact that the lumps of pemmican lay exposed to the light of day and were very easy to get at; besides which, the snow on the depot was not so hard as to prevent the dogs pulling it down and eating up all the food.  Meanwhile the dogs had left the place again, as shown by the fresh trail, which pointed