It was impossible to wave so heavy a flag as mine all the time, and yet I dared not sit down, for that might be the exact moment someone would be in a position to see me from the hills. The only thing in my mind was how long I could stand up, and how long go on waving that pole at the cliffs. Once or twice I thought I saw men against their snowy faces, which I judged were about five or six miles from me. In reality, however, all the time I knew in my heart of hearts that the black specks were only trees. Once, also, I thought I saw a boat approaching. A glittering object kept appearing and disappearing on the water, but it was merely a small piece of ice sparkling in the sun as it rose on the surface.

Physically I felt as well as ever I did in my life, and with the hope of a long sunny day I felt sure I was good to last another twenty-four hours if my ice-raft would only hold out. I determined to kill a big Eskimo dog I had at midday and drink his blood (only a few days before I had been reading an account of the sustaining properties of dogs’ blood in Dr. Nansen’s book) if I survived the battle with him.

I could not help feeling, even then, my ludicrous position, and I thought if I ever got ashore again I would have to laugh at myself standing hour after hour waving my shirt at those lofty cliffs, which seemed to assume a kind of sardonic grin, so that I could almost imagine they were laughing at me. I thought of the good breakfast my colleagues were enjoying just at the back of those same cliffs, and of the snug fire and comfortable room which we call our study.

I can honestly say that from first to last not a single sensation of fear entered my mind, even when struggling in the “slob” ice. It all seemed so natural; I had been through the ice half-a-dozen times before. Now I merely felt sleepy, and the idea was very strong in my mind that I should soon reach the solution of the mysteries that I had been preaching about for so many years.

It was a perfect morning, a cobalt sky and an ultramarine sea, a golden sun, and an almost wasteful extravagance of crimson pouring over hills of purest snow, which caught and reflected its glories from every peak and crag. Between me and their feet lay miles of rough ice, bordered with the black “slob” formed during the night. Lastly, there was my poor little pan in the fore-ground, bobbing up and down on the edge of the open sea, stained with blood, and littered with carcasses and débris. It was smaller than last night; the edges, beating against the new ice around, had heaped themselves up in fragments that, owing to its diminutive size, it could ill spare. I also noticed that the new ice from the water melted under the dogs’ bodies had also been formed at the expense of its thickness. Five dogs and myself in a coloured football costume and a blood-smeared dog-skin cloak, with a grey flannel shirt on a pole of frozen dogs’ legs, completed the picture.

The sun was almost hot by now, and I was conscious of a surplus of heat in my skin cloak. I began to look longingly at one of my remaining dogs, for an appetite will rise even on an ice pan. The idea of eating made me think of fire, so once again I inspected my matches. Alas! the heads had entirely soaked off them all, except three or four blue-top wax matches which were in a paste. These I now laid out to dry, and I searched around on my snow pan to see if I could get a bit of transparent ice with which to make a burning-glass, for I was pretty sure that, with all the unravelled tow stuffed into my nether garments and the fat of the dead dogs, I could make smoke enough to be seen if I could only get a light.

I had found a piece which it seemed might answer the purpose, and had gone back to wave my flag, which I did every two minutes, when suddenly, for the second time, I thought I saw the glitter of an oar. It did not seem possible, however, for it must be remembered that it was not water that lay between me and the land, but “slob” ice, which, a mile or two inshore of me, was very heavy. Even if people had seen me, I did not think they could get through, though I knew all of them would be trying. Moreover, there was no smoke rising on the land to give me hope that I had been seen. There had been no gun flashes in the night, and I felt sure that, had anyone seen me, there would have been a bonfire on every hill to encourage me to keep going. So I gave it up and went on with my work. But the next time I went back to my flag it seemed very distinct, and though it kept disappearing as we rose and fell on the surface, my readers can well imagine I kept my eyes in that direction. Through my dark spectacles having been lost, however, I was already partly snow-blind.

I waved the flag as high as I could raise it in a direction to be broadside towards those places where I thought people might have gone out around the ice after ducks, which is their main occupation a little later in the year. I hoped that they might then see my flag and come straight on for me. At last, beside the glitter of a white oar, I made out the black speck of a hull. I knew then if the pan held out for another hour that I should be all right.

With that strange perversity of the human intellect, the first thing I thought of when I realized that a rescue boat was under way was what trophies I could carry with my luggage from the pan! I pictured the dog-bone flagstaff adorning my study—the dogs intervened, however, and ate it later on—and I thought of preserving my ragged puttees in my museum.

I could see that my rescuers were frantically waving, and when they came within shouting distance I heard someone shout, “Don’t get excited; keep on the pan, where you are.” As a matter of fact, they were infinitely more excited than I. Already it seemed just as natural to me now to be saved as half an hour before it seemed inevitable that I should be lost. Had my rescuers only known, as I did, the sensations of a bath in the ice when you cannot dry yourself afterwards, they need not have expected me to throw myself into the water.