The ice was indescribably rugged and broken, necessitating the lifting of the sledges at almost every yard; the temperature averaged 40° below zero; their clothes were frozen into hard suits of mail, and their sleeping-bags were also frozen stiff. They had to sleep in the frozen bags out in the open, the temperature once being as low as 49° below zero. They had reached the "farthest North," and had learned enough to satisfy them that up to the Pole there was nothing but a continuation of the broken, rugged ice, straining and breaking under the pressure of the drift, and they decided to turn back, making towards the nearest land for winter quarters. This was Franz Josef Land, lying to the south-west of where they were, and if they reached it in time to pass the winter on shore, they would be able, they believed, to resume their journey to Spitzbergen in the following summer. Arrived there, they did not anticipate any difficulty in getting home on board a Norwegian whaler, if the _Fram_ had not meantime arrived. They were now travelling in continual daylight, with a task before them every hour of surmounting the steep sides of hummocks. For hours they toiled on, making as much progress as they could between the camps. The work they were performing was scarcely, one would think, likely to make them forget when it was time to sleep. And yet there was an occasion when for thirty-six hours they struggled on without a sleep. The food for the dogs was daily growing scarcer, and they were anxious to get on as far as possible before it was finished. When, therefore, they came upon a stretch of fairly smooth ice, they made the most of it, and only when they and their dogs were dead tired did they stop. It was their custom to always wind up their watches when they crept into their sleeping-bag; on this occasion when they took them from under their heavy clothing they discovered that both had stopped. In their anxiety to push forward they had forgotten to wind them up, and the springs had run down during the thirty-six hours. There was nothing to do but guess at what the time ought to be, and so they overcame this difficulty as they overcame all others, by making the best of it. Their next trouble was the failure of the dog food. When the first dog died they kept him, for unless they fell in with a bear and killed it, the bodies of the weaker dogs was all that they could give the stronger ones to keep them alive. At first the dogs turned away from the remains of their comrade, but soon their hunger overcame their scruples, and the ravenous creatures fought over the carcase as soon as it was offered to them. Then came the necessity of killing one of them every now and again to feed the others; much as it went against their natures to do it, the explorers had to choose between it and death to themselves.