“Now you must make yourself small and follow me; we are going to visit Hanssen and Wisting.”  And my companion disappeared like a snake into the hole.  I threw myself down, quick as lightning, and followed.  I would not have cared to be left alone there in pitch-darkness.  I managed to get hold of one of his calves, and did not let go until I saw light on the other side.  The passage we crept through was equally narrow all the way, and forced one to crawl on hands and knees; fortunately, it was not long.  It ended in a fairly large, square room.  A low table stood in the middle of the floor, and on it Helmer Hanssen was engaged in lashing sledges.  The room gave one the impression of being badly lighted, though it had a lamp and candles.  On a closer examination, I found that this was due to the number of dark objects the place contained.  Against one of the walls there was clothing —­ immense piles of skin —­ clothing.  Over this were spread blankets to protect it from the rime that was formed on the roof and fell down.  Against the opposite wall was a stack of sledges, and at the end, opposite the door, were piles of woollen underclothing.  Any outfitter in Christiania might have envied this stock; here one saw Iceland jackets, sweaters, underclothes of immense thickness and dimensions, stockings, mits, etc.  In the corner formed by this wall and the one where the sledges stood was the little hole by which we had entered.  Beyond the sledges, in the same wall, there was a door with a curtain in front of it, and from within it came a strange humming.  I was much interested to know what this might be, but had to hear first what these two had to say.

“What do you think of the lashings now, Hanssen?”

“Oh, they’ll hold right enough; at any rate, they’ll be better than they were before.  Look here, how they’ve pointed the ends!”

I leaned forward to see what was wrong with the sledge-lashings, and, I must say, what I saw surprised me.  Is such a thing possible?  The pointing of a lashing is a thing a sailor is very careful about.  He knows that if the end is badly pointed, it does not matter how well the lashing is put on; therefore it is an invariable rule that lashings must be pointed as carefully as possible.  When I looked at this one, what do you think I saw?  Why, the end of the lashing was nailed down with a little tack, such as one would use to fasten labels.  “That would be a nice thing to take to the Pole!” This final observation of Hanssen’s was doubtless the mildest expression of what he thought of the work.  I saw how the new lashings were being put on, and I was quite ready to agree with Hanssen that they would do the work.  It was, by the way, no easy job, this lashing at -15deg.F., as the thermometer showed, but Hanssen did not seem to mind it.