mp on the 5th of April I gave the party a little more sleep
than at the previous ones, as we were all pretty well played out and in
need of rest. I took a latitude sight, and this indicated our position
to be 89 deg. 25', or thirty-five miles from the Pole; but I determined to
make the next camp in time for a noon observation, if the sun should be
visible.

[Illustration: CUTTING BLOCKS OF SNOW FOR IGLOOS AT NEXT TO LAST CAMP,
89 deg. 25' NORTH

(At This Camp It Was Difficult to Find Enough Snow for the Igloos)]

Before midnight on the 5th we were again on the trail. The weather was
overcast, and there was the same gray and shadowless light as on the
march after Marvin had turned back. The sky was a colorless pall
gradually deepening to almost black at the horizon, and the ice was a
ghastly and chalky white, like that of the Greenland ice-cap--just the
colors which an imaginative artist would paint as a polar ice-scape. How
different it seemed from the glittering fields, canopied with blue and
lit by the sun and full moon, over which we had been traveling for the
last four days.

The going was even better than before. There was hardly any snow on the
hard granular surface of the old floes, and the sapphire blue lakes were
larger than ever. The temperature had risen to minus 15 deg., which,
reducing the friction of the sledges, gave the dogs the appearance of
having caught the high spirits of the party. Some of them even tossed
their heads and barked and yelped as they traveled.

Notwithstanding the grayness of the day, and the melancholy aspect of
the surrounding world, by some strange shift of feeling the fear of the
leads had fallen from me completely. I now felt that success was
certain, and, notwithstanding the physical exhaustion of the forced
marches of the last five days, I went tirelessly on and on, the Eskimos
following almost automatically, though I knew that they must feel the
weariness which my excited brain made me incapable of feeling.

When we had covered, as I estimated, a good fifteen miles, we halted,
made tea, ate lunch, and rested the dogs. Then we went on for another
estimated fifteen miles. In twelve hours' actual traveling time we made
thirty miles. Many laymen have wondered why we were able to travel
faster after the sending back of each of the supporting parties,
especially after the last one. To any man experienced in the handling of
troops this will need no explanation. The larger the pa