We elected Omdal our cook. Although we felt better nourished and stronger after our noon cup of pemmican broth, it was always our morning and evening cup of chocolate that we looked forward to most. How warming and cheering that hot draught was! Captain Amundsen remarked that the only time we were happy up there was when either the hot chocolate was going down our throats, or else when we were rolled up in our reindeer sleeping bags. The rest of the time we were more or less miserable, but never do I remember a time when we ever lost faith! The after-compartment of our plane--a gaunt hole--served as kitchen, dining-room and sleeping-quarters, but it was draughty and uncomfortable, and it seemed always a relief to get out into the open again after our meals. The cold duralumin metal overhead was coated with hoarfrost which turned into a steady drip as the heat from our little Primus stove, together with that from our steaming chocolate, started to warm up the cabin. Feucht always sat opposite me--I say sat, but he squatted--we all squatted on the bottom of the plane with our chocolate on our knees. I remember how I used to covertly watch him eating his three oatmeal wafers and drinking his chocolate. I always tried to hold mine back so as not to finish before him. I had the strange illusion that if I finished first it was because he was getting more to eat than I. I particularly recall one occasion, two weeks later, after we had cut our rations in half, when I purposely hid my last biscuit in the folds of my parka, and the satisfaction it gave me to draw it out and eat it after Feucht had laid his cup aside. It was the stirring of those primitive instincts which, hidden beneath the veneer of our civilization, lie ever ready to assert themselves upon reversion to primitive conditions. We smoked a pipe apiece of tobacco after each meal, but unfortunately we had taken only a few days’ supply of smoking stuff. When that went, we had to resort to Riiser-Larsen’s private stock of rank, black chewing twist. It took a real hero to smoke that tobacco after moistening it so as to make it burn slower and thus hold out longer. It always gave us violent hiccoughs. We were compelled to give up our civilized habits of washing or changing our clothes. It was too cold to undress, and we could not spare the fuel to heat any water after our necessary cooking was done. During all our stay in the ice I never saw Captain Amundsen take a drink of water. I was always thirsty after the pemmican, and when I called for water, he said he could not understand how I could drink so much water.