“It is about eight or nine o’clock: the small rations of boiled beef, soup, and vegetables are no longer enough to allay the daily increasing hunger; but sleep buries that, as well as our burning thirst, in oblivion. Only occasionally did our sparing supply of spirits allow us to prepare an extra quantity of water.
“During the march each one carried an india-rubber or tin bottle full of snow, on his bare body, turned as much as possible to the sun, and often after many hours only a few spare spoonfuls (and sometimes nothing) could be obtained from it.
“Last of all, the cook, after cleaning out the kettle, also fights his way into the sleeping-sack, which thus attains its proper complement. A side position is the only one possible—to-night all lie to the left, to-morrow all to the right. Comfortable positions, such as stretching on one’s back for example, meet with a miserable protest, as well as any other after-movement; and when at length silence falls upon all, the eight men form one single lump.
“The nose acts no longer merely as a condenser, as on the spring journey; it now becomes a cold-pole, and leaving it outside the rimy and icy covering is preferable to burying it in the questionable atmosphere of the sack. The mouth, as the only outlet of exhalation, must remain open, but the teeth get so cold that they feel like icicles, and the mask, which it is necessary to wear in the night, freezes to the long beard.
“Happy were those who, during the lowest temperature within the first fourteen days of our journey, could really lose themselves during the hours of rest, if only for a short time, for they were generally passed in a painful waiting for a happy release, by—dragging!
“This general wakefulness made it unnecessary to set a special watch for bears and foxes, which occasionally made a bold raid upon the stores in the sledge, for they had never yet succeeded in approaching us quite noiselessly.
“In spite of all efforts to the contrary, the cutting cold too soon penetrated the sleeping-sack; within the tent the temperature sinks from 60° or 65° to below zero, and the body has to be again refreshed with artificial warmth, by motion and hot food.
“The natural consequences of this state of temperature is a continually increasing sensation of freezing until the morning. During the day the sack has got thoroughly cold on the sledge, and must again be warmed by bodily heat, being frozen into thick folds as hard as iron. Whoever lies upon these seems to be lying on laths, which towards morning begin to lose their sharpness. One or the other, we keep a bottle of snow about us. All are shivering, scarcely any sleep. For hours together we are in a state of suffocation, the pressure on either side causing a feeling as though the collar-bone was being forced into the chest and the shoulders crushed. Each lies upon his arm (which of course goes to sleep), and is often prevented from breathing by the smell of train-oil proceeding from his neighbour’s seal-skin. The breath condenses over the face and upon the sloping tent-side, in long snow-webs, which fall at the slightest movement.
“The misery of tent-life reaches its maximum during an uninterrupted snowstorm of sometimes three days’ duration. So long as this assumes the form of a hurricane, no one can leave the tent without danger of either being suffocated or blown away. These Greenland snowstorms, which carry small stones with them, greatly resemble West Indian hurricanes, only that the sun is completely darkened by the rush of snow.
“Of course our tents would soon have been blown over, if some precautions had not been taken. Great distress reigned within. The wind greatly lessened the already small space by pressing in the walls. Through the canvas, through every stitch or smallest opening, spurts a small flood of the finest snow, like flour out of a flour-mill, or collects itself on the inner surface, where its ever-increasing weight at length brings it down like small avalanches. As long as the storm rages the cold is alleviated from the equalisation of warm air over the sea, though it seldom allows any heat to remain in the tent, so that we were still in a cold of from 14° to 5° F.