I was surprised at the change only five days had wrought in Captain Amundsen. He seemed to me to have aged ten years. We now joined with our companions in the work of freeing the N 25 from her precarious position. As stated before, when Captain Amundsen’s plane had started to come down into the lead, his rear motor back-fired, and he was forced to land with only one motor working, which accounted for the position which we now found N 25 in. She lay half on and half off an ice floe; her nose was up on the cake and her tail down in the sea. Coming down thus had reduced her speed and saved her from crashing into the cake of old blue ice, which was directly ahead. It seemed amazing that whereas five days ago the N 25 had found enough open water to land in, now there was not enough to be seen anywhere sufficient to launch a rowboat in. She was tightly locked in the grip of the shifting ice. [Illustration: N 25 ABOVE THE POLAR PACK JUST BEFORE LANDING AT 87° 44′] A most orderly routine was being enforced at Amundsen’s camp. Regular hours for everything--to work, sleep, eat, smoke and talk; no need to warn these men, as so many explorers had been compelled to do, not to give one another the story of their lives, lest boredom come. These Norwegians have their long periods of silence in which the glance of an eye or the movement of a hand takes the place of conversation. This, no doubt, accounts for the wonderful harmony that existed during the whole twenty-five days of our imprisonment in the ice. One might expect confusion and disorganization under the conditions confronting us. But it was just the reverse. We did everything as if we had oceans of time in which to do it. It was this calm, cool, and unhurried way of doing things which kept our spirits up and eventually got us out of a desperate situation. No one ever got depressed or blue. [Illustration: N 24 AND OUR ARCTIC HOME]