"Meantime all preparations are proceeding, and I am now getting everything in order connected with copying of diaries, observation-books, photographs, etc., that we are to take with us. Mogstad is working in the hold making maple guard-runners to put under the sledges. Jacobsen has commenced to put a new sledge together. Pettersen is in the engine-room, making nails for the sledge-fittings, which Mogstad is to put on. In the meantime some of the others have built a large forge out on the ice with blocks of ice and snow, and to-morrow Sverdrup and I will heat and bend the runners in tar and stearine at such a heat as we can produce in the forge. We trust we shall be able to get a sufficient temperature to do this important work thoroughly, in spite of the 40° of frost. Amundsen is now repairing the mill, as there is something wrong with it again, the cog-wheels being worn. He thinks he will be able to get it all right again. Rather chilly work to be lying up there in the wind on the top of the mill, boring in the hard steel and cast-iron by lantern-light, and at such a temperature as we are having now. I stood and watched the lantern-light up there to-day, and I soon heard the drill working; one could tell the steel was hard; then I could hear clapping of hands. 'Ah,' thought I, 'you may well clap your hands together; it is not a particularly warm job to be lying up there in the wind.' The worst of it is one cannot wear mittens for such work, but has to use the bare hands if one is to make any progress, and it would not take long to freeze them off; but it has to be done, he says, and he will not give in. He is a splendid fellow in all he undertakes, and I console him by saying that there are not many before him who have worked on the top of a mill in such frost north of 83°. On many expeditions they have avoided out-of-door work when the temperature got so low. 'Indeed,' he says, 'I thought that other expeditions were in advance of us in that respect. I imagined we had kept indoors too much.' I had no hesitation in enlightening him on this point; I know he will do his best in any case.