In pursuance of this plan, the two weeks intervening between the departure of the November moon and the appearance of the December one were busily occupied in repairing and strengthening sledges, and making and overhauling clothing and equipment, to enable us to meet this long and arduous journey in the very midnight of the “Great Night.” During this interval the temperature much of the time was at –51° F. and lower. December 20th, in the first light of the returning moon, I left the _Windward_ with my doctor, Henson, four Eskimos, and thirty dogs, all that were left of the sixty-odd of four months previous. Thick weather, strong winds rushing out of Kennedy Channel, heavy snow and an abominable ice-foot in Rawlings Bay delayed us, and it was not until the 28th that I had all my supplies assembled at Cape Lawrence, on the north side of Rawlings Bay. Cape Lawrence presented the advantage of two possible routes by which these latter supplies could be reached from Conger, one through Kennedy Channel, which I was about to follow, and the other _via_ Archer Fiord and overland. In spite of the delays I felt, on the whole, well satisfied with the work up to the end of the year. I had all my supplies half way to Fort Conger, and had comfortable snow igloos erected at Cape Hawkes, Cape Louis Napoleon, Cape Fraser, Cape Norton Shaw, Cape Wilkes, and Cape Lawrence. December 29th, I started from Cape Lawrence with light sledges for Fort Conger, hoping to make the distance in five days. The first march from Cape Lawrence the ice-foot was fairly good, though an inch or two of efflorescence made the sledges drag as if on sand. The ice-foot grew steadily worse as we advanced, until, after rounding Cape Defosse, it was almost impassable, even for light sledges. The light of the moon lasted only for a few hours out of the twenty-four, and at its best was not sufficient to permit us to select a route on the sea ice. Just south of Cape Defosse we ate the last of our biscuit, just north of it the last of our beans. On the next march a biting wind swept down the Channel and numbed the Eskimo who had spent the previous winter in the United States, to such an extent, that, to save him, we were obliged to halt just above Cape Cracroft and dig a burrow in a snowdrift. When the storm ceased, I left him with another Eskimo and nine of the poorer dogs, and pushed on to reach Fort Conger. The moon had left us entirely now, and the ice-foot was utterly impracticable, and we groped and stumbled through the rugged sea ice as far as Cape Baird. Here we slept a few hours in a burrow in the snow, then started across Lady Franklin Bay. In complete darkness and over a chaos of broken and heaved-up ice, we stumbled and fell and groped for eighteen hours, till we climbed upon the ice-foot of the north side. Here a dog was killed for food.