catch up, and
pass the column before you have reached your station.

Of course, in catching up and overtaking the party, you have the
advantage of the well-marked trail they have made. Once again in the
lead; and my boy, Ootah, had to up and break his sledge, and there was
some more tall talking when the Commander caught up with us and left us
there mending it. A little farther on, and the amiable Kudlooktoo, who
was in my party at the time, busted his sledge. You would have thought
that Kudlooktoo was the last person in Commander Peary's estimation,
when he got through talking to him and telling him what he thought of
him. The sledge was so badly broken it had to be abandoned. The load was
left on the spot where the accident happened, and Kudlooktoo, much
chastened and crestfallen, drove his team of dogs back to the land for a
new sledge.

We did not wait for him, but kept on for about two hours longer, when we
reached the Captain's first igloo, twelve miles out; a small day's
traveling, but we were almost dead-beat, from having battled all day
with the wind, which had blown a full-sized gale. No other but a Peary
party would have attempted to travel in such weather. Our breath was
frozen to our hoods of fur and our cheeks and noses frozen. Spreading
our furs upon the snow, we dropped down and endeavored to sleep, but
sound sleep was impossible. It was a night of Plutonian Purgatory. All
through the night I would wake from the cold and beat my arms or feet to
keep the circulation going, and I would hear one or both of my boys
doing the same. I did not make any entries in the diary that day, and
there was many a day like it after that.

It was cold and dark when we left camp number one on the morning of
March 2, at half past six o'clock. Breakfast had warmed us up a bit, but
the hard pemmican had torn and cut the roofs and sides of our mouths so
that we did not eat a full meal, and we decided that at our next camp we
would boil the pemmican in the tea and have a combination stew. I will
say now that this experiment was tried, but it made such an unwholesome
mess that it was never repeated.

The Captain's and Borup's trail was still evident, in spite of the low
drifts of the snow, but progress was slow. We were still in the heavy
rubble-ice and had to continuously hew our way with pickaxes to make a
path for the sledges. While we were at work making a pathway, the dogs
would curl up and lie down with their noses in t