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So silent was its sweep, one might imagine oneself to be upon land; yet, as she crept quickly out of her sleeping-bag, she saw at once that the motion of the floe was arrested and off to the right she read the reason. A narrow stretch of rocky shore there cast back the first rays of the morning sun. "Marian! Marian!" she called excitedly. "Land! Land! An island!"
Outside our bags we had a cover of very thin canvas; this was extremely useful, and I would not be without it for anything. In the daytime the sleeping-bag was always well protected by this cover; no snow could get in. At night it was perhaps even more useful, as it protected the bag from the moisture of the breath.
Long Ede crouched on the frozen ridge of the hut, with his feet in the sleeping-bag, his knees drawn up, and the two guns laid across them. The creature, whatever its name, that had tried the door, was nowhere to be seen; but he decided to wait a few minutes on the chance of a shot; that is, until the cold should drive him below. For the moment the clear tingling air was doing him good.
Impressions The seductive folds of the sleeping-bag. The hiss of the primus and the fragrant steam of the cooker issuing from the tent ventilator. The small green tent and the great white road. The whine of a dog and the neigh of our steeds. The driving cloud of powdered snow. The crunch of footsteps which break the surface crust. The wind blown furrows. The blue arch beneath the smoky cloud.
I have even crept shivering from the thawed sleeping-bag to flog a dog, so that I might hear a sound. I had started from the Pole with a well-filled sledge, and the sixteen dogs left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This was on the evening of the 13th April.
The wind blows with such violence that a tent cannot possibly be made to stand; the fire is half extinguished by drifting snow, and fills the eyes with smoke and cinders when it burns at all; conversation is impossible on account of the roaring of the wind and the beating of the snow in one's face; bearskins, pillows, and furs become stiff and icy with half-melted sleet, sledges are buried up, and there remains nothing for the unhappy traveller to do but crawl into his sleeping-bag, cover up his head, and shiver away the long, dismal hours.
These trips netted nothing of use save armfuls of wood which helped to add a cheery tone to their camp. Though the fog held on, the nights grew bitterly cold. They were glad enough to creep into their sleeping-bag as soon as it grew dark.
He was thoroughly cramped, and we had to drag him beneath the decking and massage him before he could unbend himself and get into a sleeping-bag. The sky was overcast and occasional snow-squalls added to the discomfort produced by a tremendous cross-sea the worst, I thought, that we had experienced.
We have been improvising shoes to replace the finneskoe, of which we are badly short. Wild has made an excellent shoe out of an old horse-rug he found here, and this is being copied by other men. I have made myself a pair of mitts out of an old sleeping-bag. To-morrow we start for Hut Point.
"We've about got down to the wolf basis." He said it half in defiance of the trail's fierce lessoning; but it was truer than he knew. They built up the fire to frighten off the wolves, but the Colonel had his rifle along when they went over and crawled into their sleeping-bag. Half in, half out, he laid the gun carefully along the right on his snow-shoes.
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