Strong south winds with dull, overcast skies and occasional high
temperatures were now our lot till April 7, when the mist lifted and we
could make out what appeared to be land to the north.
Although the general drift of our ice-floe had indicated to us that we
must eventually drift north, our progress in that direction was not by
any means uninterrupted. We were at the mercy of the wind, and could
no more control our drift than we could control the weather.
A long spell of calm, still weather at the beginning of January caused
us some anxiety by keeping us at about the latitude that we were in at
the beginning of December. Towards the end of January, however, a long
drift of eighty-four miles in a blizzard cheered us all up. This soon
stopped and we began a slight drift to the east. Our general drift now
slowed up considerably, and by February 22 we were still eighty miles
from Paulet Island, which now was our objective. There was a hut there
and some stores which had been taken down by the ship which went to the
rescue of Nordenskjold's Expedition in 1904, and whose fitting out and
equipment I had charge of. We remarked amongst ourselves what a
strange turn of fate it would be if the very cases of provisions which
I had ordered and sent out so many years before were now to support us
during the coming winter.
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