Pretty soon our sufferings commenced, and they were bitter enough. The
sun, though constantly visible day and night, gave no heat. Our
sleeping-bags (Clark and Mew slept together in one, I in another) were
soaking wet all the night, being thawed by our warmth; and our fingers,
under wrappings of senne-grass and wolf-skin, were always bleeding.
Sometimes our frail bamboo-cane kayaks, lying across the sledges, would
crash perilously against an ice-ridge--and they were our one hope of
reaching land. But the dogs were the great difficulty: we lost six
mortal hours a day in harnessing and tending them. On the twelfth day
Clark took a single-altitude observation, and found that we were only in
latitude 86 deg. 45'; but the next day we passed beyond the furthest point
yet reached by man, viz. 86 deg. 53', attained by the _Nix_ explorers four
years previously.
* * * * *
Our one secret thought now was food, food--our day-long lust for the
eating-time. Mew suffered from 'Arctic thirst.
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