It was no warm and comfortable workshop that they had for doing this.  The Clothing Store was always the coldest place, probably because there was always a draught through it.  There was a door out on to the Barrier, and an open passage leading to the house.  Fresh air was constantly passing through, though not in any very great quantity; but it does not take much to make itself felt when the air is at a temperature of about -75deg.F., and when one is working with bare fingers.  There were always some degrees of frost here.  In order to keep the lashings pliable while they were being put on, they used a Primus lamp on a stone close to where they were working.  I often admired their patience when I stood watching them; I have seen them more than once working barehanded by the hour together in a temperature of about -22deg.F.  This may pass for a short time; but through the coldest and darkest part of the winter, working day after day, as they did, it is pretty severe, and a great trial of patience.  Nor were their feet very well off either; it makes hardly any difference what one puts on them if one has to stay still.  Here, as elsewhere in the cold, it was found that boots with wooden soles were the best for sedentary work; but for some reason or other the occupants of the Clothing Store would not give their adherence to the wooden-sole principle, and continued to work all through the winter in their reindeer-skin and sealskin boots.  They preferred stamping their feet to acknowledging the incontestable superiority of wooden soles in such conditions.

As the sledges were finished, they were numbered from one to seven, and stored in the clothing department.  The three old sledges we should have to use were made for the Fram’s second expedition.  They were extremely strong, and, of course, heavier than the new ones.  They were all carefully overhauled; all the bindings and lashings were examined, and replaced wherever necessary.  The steel shoes were taken off one, but retained on the other two, in case we should meet with conditions where they would be required.

In addition to this work of lashing, these two had plenty of other occupation.  Whenever Wisting was not taken up by the work on the sledges, one could hear the hum of his sewing-machine.  He had a thousand different things to do in his sewing-room, and was in there nearly every day till late in the evening.  It was only when the target and darts came out at half-past eight that he showed himself, and if it had not been that he had undertaken the position of marker at these competitions, we should hardly have seen him even then.  His first important piece of work was making four three-man tents into two.  It was not easy to manage these rather large tents in the little hole that went by the name of the sewing-room; of course, he used the table in the Clothing Store for cutting out, but, all the same, it is a mystery how he contrived to get hold of the right seams when he sat in his hole.  I was prepared