could possibly be. We had thought that a day's rest would be needed by
the dogs for every degree of latitude, but this proved superfluous;
it looked as if they could no longer be tired. One or two had shown
signs of bad feet, but were now perfectly well; instead of losing
strength, the dogs seemed to become stronger and more active every
day. Now they, too, had sighted the land, and the black mass of Mount
Fridtjof Nansen seemed specially to appeal to them; Hanssen often had
hard work to keep them in the right course. Without any longer stay,
then, we left 84deg. S. the next day, and steered for the bay ahead.

That day we went twenty-three miles in thick fog, and saw nothing
of the land. It was hard to have to travel thus blindly off an
unknown coast, but we could only hope for better weather. During the
previous night we had heard, for a change, a noise in the ice. It was
nothing very great, and sounded like scattered infantry fire -- a few
rifle-shots here and there underneath our tent; the artillery had not
come up yet. We took no notice of it, though I heard one man say in
the morning: "Blest if I didn't think I got a whack on the ear last
night." I could witness that it had not cost him his sleep, as that
night he had very nearly snored us all out of the tent. During the
forenoon we crossed a number of apparently newly-formed crevasses;
most of them only about an inch wide. There had thus been a small
local disturbance occasioned by one of the numerous small glaciers
on land. On the following night all was quiet again, and we never
afterwards heard the slightest sound.

On November 14 we reached 84deg. 40' S. We were now rapidly
approaching land; the mountain range on the east appeared to turn
north-eastward. Our line of ascent, which we had chosen long ago
and now had our eyes fixed upon as we went, would take us a trifle