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We all collected in a mass below the ridge sledges and dogs mixed up together. The last part of the way was rather hard work. We now found the tracks that we had lost early in the day; one dried fish after another stuck up out of the snow and led us straight on. We reached Framheim at seven in the evening, half an hour earlier than we had thought.

"Then, in a few words, she gave him some idea of the day's events, and taking the measure of oats provided, Mr. C. passed on through his enemies to the shed, where, beside a number of rude country sledges, stood his own fleet horse and light cutter. Taking the bells off his horse, he backed him out of the shed, and was ready for flight.

This day we began to build our hut, and transported to it, on sledges, sufficient drift wood to be used for fires during the winter, which we piled up in convenient places. Whilst part of the men were occupied in this arduous task, the rest remained on board the vessel to prepare the meals, and keep a watch for the safety of those on shore.

The new arrangement was not a success, owing to differences in hauling capacity and inequalities in the loading of the sledges; and on the morning of the 12th, Mackintosh, after consultation, decided to push forward with Wild and Spencer- Smith, hauling one sledge and a relatively light load, and leave Joyce and the remaining five men to bring two sledges and the rest of the stores at their best pace.

"Oh, he has a trained nurse, and she can read to him," said Mrs. Reffold hurriedly. She seemed ruffled. "I had a trained nurse once," replied Bernardine; "and she could read; but she would not. She said it hurt her throat." "Dear me, how very unfortunate for you," said Mrs. Reffold. "Ah, there is Captain Graham calling. I must not keep the sledges waiting."

For each of our ten sledges, Bjaaland made during the voyage a pair of loose runners, which it was intended to use in the same way as the Eskimo use theirs. These primitive people have or, at all events, had no material that was suited for shoeing sledge-runners. They get over the difficulty by covering the runners with a coating of ice.

Not until the job was done and I was back on the poop did I have time to work out the drift of that last figure in its terms of the sea. Mulligan Jacobs might have been an artist, a philosophic poet, had he not been born crooked with a crooked back. And we smashed the boats. With axes and sledges it was an easier task than I had imagined.

Arrived at the Tongue, Bowers and I clambered up a ten-foot cliff face by standing on Wright's and Crean's shoulders. We then reached down and hauled up the sledges and the others, harnessed up again, and proceeded to cross the Glacier, which was full of small crevasses. We reached the northern side of it and went down an easy snow slope to the sea ice beyond.

In the shadow of one of the dilapidated hovels, four humped oxen stood, their heavy harness still hanging upon them, though the sledges they drew, covered with stone dust and broken pieces, were some distance away from them. A company of half a score of children were ascending in single file, along a slanting plane of planks, into the hollow in the cliff upon which work had been renewed.

It was as though before they broke they pierced the wall, the Monster's side, bled fire. With the crashing of broadsides of massed batteries the sledges smashed down upon the bristling attackers. Under the awful impact globes and pyramids were shattered into hundreds of fragments, rocket bursts of blue and azure and violet flame, flames rainbowed and irised.