It was not till noon that we all assembled with our sledges.  The drivers of the runaways had had stiff work to catch them, and were wet through with their exertions.  I had some thoughts of turning back, as three young puppies had followed us; if we went on, we should have to shoot them.  But to turn back after all this work, and then probably have the same thing over again next morning, was not a pleasant prospect.  And, above all, to see Lindstrom standing at the door, shaking with laughter —­ no, we had better go on.  I think we were all agreed in this.  The dogs were now harnessed to the loaded sledges, and the empty ones were stacked one above another.  At 1.30 p.m. we were off.  The old tracks were soon lost sight of, but we immediately picked up the line of flags that had been set up at every second kilometre on the last depot journey.  The going was splendid, and we went at a rattling pace to the south.  We did not go very far the first day —­ eleven and three-quarter miles —­ and pitched our camp at 3.30 p.m.  The first night out is never very pleasant, but this time it was awful.  There was such a row going on among our ninety dogs that we could not close our eyes.  It was a blessed relief when four in the morning came round, and we could begin to get up.  We had to shoot the three puppies when we stopped for lunch that day.  The going was the same; nothing could be better.  The flags we were following stood just as we had left them; they showed no trace of there having been any snowfall in the interval.  That day we did fifteen and a half miles.  The dogs were not yet in training, but were picking up every hour.

By the 10th they seemed to have reached their full vigour; that day none of us could hold in his team.  They all wanted to get forward, with the result that one team ran into another, and confusion followed.  This was a tiresome business; the dogs wore themselves out to no purpose, and, of course, the time spent in extricating them from one another was lost.  They were perfectly wild that day.  When Lassesen, for instance, caught sight of his enemy Hans, who was in another team, he immediately encouraged his friend Fix to help him.  These two then put on all the speed they could, with the result that the others in the same team were excited by the sudden acceleration, and joined in the spurt.  It made no difference how the driver tried to stop them; they went on just as furiously, until they reached the team that included the object of Lassesen’s and Fix’s endeavours.  Then the two teams dashed into each other, and we had ninety-six dogs’ legs to sort out.  The only thing that could be done was to let those who could not hold in their teams unharness some of the dogs and tie them on the sledge.  In this way we got things to work satisfactorily at last.  We covered eighteen and a half miles that day.