Through all that first day the wind was blowing from the north and we could see quite a few patches of open water. On the second day the wind shifted to the south and the ice began to close in on us. It was as though we were in the grasp of a gigantic claw that was slowly but surely contracting. We had a feeling that soon we would be crushed. On the third day, May 24th, the temperature was -11.5 c., and we had trouble with our pump freezing. The two planes were now slowly drifting together, and we established a line of communication, so that we knew each other’s positions pretty well. It is tedious work, semaphoring, for it requires two men: one with the flag, and the other with a pair of field-glasses to read the signals. It took us a whole hour merely to signal our positions, after which we must wait for their return signals and then reply to them. On this day, after an exchange of signals, we decided to try to reach Amundsen. We packed our canvas canoe, put it on our sledge, and started across what looked to us like mountainous hummocks. After only going a few hundred yards we had to give up. The labor was too exhausting. With no sleep for three days, and only liquid food, our strength was not what it should have been. Leaving our canvas canoe, we now made up our packs of fifty pounds each, and pushed on. We may or we may not return to our plane again. According to my diary we traveled the first two miles in two hours and fifteen minutes, when we came upon a large lead that separated us from the N 25 and which we could see no way to cross. We talked to them by signal and they advised our returning. So, after a seven-hour trip, we returned to our sinking plane, having covered perhaps five and one half miles in about the same length of time it had taken us to fly from Spitzbergen to Lat. 87.44. Arriving at our plane, we pitched camp again and cooked a heavy pemmican soup over our Primus stove. Dietrichson gave us a surprise by producing a small tin of George Washington coffee. We took some of the pure alcohol carried for the Primus stove and put it into the coffee, and with pipes lighted felt more or less happy. As we smoked in silence, each with his own thoughts, Dietrichson suddenly clasped his hands to his eyes, exclaiming: “Something is the matter with my eyes!” He was snow-blind, but never having experienced this before, did not know what had happened to him. We had been careful to wear our snow-glasses during most of the journey, but perhaps not quite careful enough. After bandaging Dietrichson’s eyes, Omdal and I put him to bed and then continued with our smoking and thoughts. It seems strange, when I think back now, that during those days nothing that happened greatly surprised us. Everything that happened was accepted as part of the day’s work. This is an interesting sidelight on man’s adaptability to his environment.