rable,
we could have seen the sun several days earlier. Every day following he
will get higher and higher, until he finally swings around the sky above
the horizon for the full twenty-four hours.

Early in the morning of the 5th, Peary sent a detachment of three
Esquimos, in charge of MacMillan, back to bring in Borup's cache, left
by him at the point where he turned back to return to the land for more
loads. This detachment was back in camp by four o'clock in the afternoon
of the same day. Nothing left to do but to rearrange the loads and wait
for the lead to close.

The land is still in sight. Professor Marvin has gone back with two boys
and is expected to keep on to the alcohol cache at Cape Columbia, turn
back and meet us here, or, if the ice freezes, to follow us until he
catches up with us. We are husbanding our fuel, and two meals a day is
our programme. We are still south of the Big Lead of 1906, but to all
intents and purposes this is it. I am able to recognize many of the
characteristics of it, and I feel sure it is the same old lead that gave
us many an anxious hour in our upward and downward journey three years
ago.

Fine weather, but we are still south of the 84th parallel and this open
water marks it. 8 deg. below zero and all comfortable. We should be doing
twenty or twenty-five miles a day good traveling, but we are halted by
this open water.

March 7: Professor MacMillan came into camp to-day with the cache he had
picked up. There was quite a hullabaloo among the boys, and a great deal
of argument as to who owned various articles of provender and equipment
that had been brought into camp by MacMillan, and even I was on the
point of jumping into the fracas in order to see fair play, until a wink
from MacMillan told me that it was simply a put-up job of his to
disconcert the Esquimos. Confidentially and on the side he has been
dressing his heel, which in spite of all keeps on freezing, and is in
very bad shape. His kamiks stick to the loose flesh and the skin will
not form. All of the frost has been taken out, but I think skin-grafting
is the only thing that will cure it. He wants to keep on going and asks
me how far we have gone and wants to know if he shall tell Commander
Peary about his injury. I have advised him to make a clean breast of it,
but he feels good for a week or so more, and it is up to him.

We eat, and sleep, and watch the lead, and wonder. Are we to be repulsed
again? Is the unseen