But where were we? And how great was the distance we had to travel? Over and over again I reckoned out our observations of the autumn and summer and spring, but the whole matter was a perpetual puzzle. It seemed clear, indeed, that we must be lying somewhere far to the west, perhaps off the west coast of Franz Josef Land, a little north of Cape Lofley, as I had conjectured in the autumn. But, if that were so, what could the lands be which we had seen to the northward? And what was the land to which we had first come? From the first group of islands, which I had called White Land (Hvidtenland), to where we now lie, we had passed about 7° of longitude--that our observations proved conclusively. But if we were now in the longitude of Cape Fligely these islands must lie on a meridian so far east that it would fall between King Oscar's Land and Crown Prince Rudolf Land; and yet we had been much farther east and had seen nothing of these lands. How was this to be explained? And, furthermore, the land we saw had disappeared to the southward; and we saw no indication of islands farther east. No, we could not have been near any known land; we must be upon some island lying farther west, in the strait between Franz Josef Land and Spitzbergen; and we could not but think of the hitherto so enigmatic Gillies Land. But this, too, seemed difficult to explain; for it was hard to understand how, in this comparatively narrow strait, such an extensive mass of land as this could find room without coming so near the Northeast Land of Spitzbergen that it could easily be seen from it. No other conclusion, however seemed at all plausible. We had long ago given up the idea that our watches could be even approximately right; for in that case, as already mentioned, we must have come right across Payer's Wilczek Land and Dove Glacier without having noticed them. This theory was consequently excluded. There were other things, too, that greatly puzzled me. If we were on a new land, near Spitzbergen, why were the rosy gulls never seen there, while we had found them in flocks here to the north? And then there was the great variation of the compass. Unfortunately, I had no chart of the variations with me, and I could not remember where the zero meridian of variation lay--the boundary-line between easterly and westerly variation. I thought, however, that it lay somewhere near the Northeast Land; and here we had still a variation of about 20°. The whole thing was, and remained, an insoluble riddle.