The state of their field outfit for the crossing of the inland ice betrayed their desperate condition. In general, their equipment had practically disappeared under stress of travel and of hunting. To the very last they had carried their scientific outfit and instruments. It was a sad day when they recognized that the only way of repairing the great rents in their skin boots was through the use of the sole-leather case of the theodolite. Even that had quite gone, and without needle, thread, or leather, they could only fold wraps around their boots, now in shreds, and tie them on with such seal-skin thongs as had not been eaten. The tent was badly torn, and, with the sleeping-gear--on which had been made sad inroads for dog-food and patches for clothing--afforded wretched shelter against storm and cold. For transportation there were four gaunt dogs--the last that ravenous hunger had spared--to haul the remnants of a disabled sledge. The winter cold had set in, with almost unendurable bitterness to the enfeebled, shivering men. The weak arctic sun, now skirting the southern sky at mid-day, was leaving them for the winter, so that the dangers of crevasses and the difficulties of glacier-travel must be met either in total darkness, or, at the best, in feeble, uncertain twilight. Discarding everything that could be spared, they reached the inland ice on October 19, the day the sun went for the winter, and barefooted they travelled across this glacial ice-cap one hundred and sixty miles in twenty-six days. Their shipmate, Lieutenant A. Trolle says: "When I think of the northerly wind and the darkness, when I consider that every morning they must have crawled out of their dilapidated sleeping-bags, though they could have had one desire, one craving--that of sleeping the eternal sleep--then my mind is full of sorrow that I shall never be able to tell them how much I admire them. They _would_ go on, they _would_ reach a place where their comrades could find them and the _results of their work_. Then at last came the end, the death of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen a few miles from the depot, and the last walk of Broenlund, crawling along on frozen feet in the moonshine. With the sure instinct of the child of nature, he found the depot, ate some of the food, wrapped himself up in his fur, and died." By Broenlund's body was found Hagen's chart of their discoveries, and his own field-journal in which the final entry runs: "I perished in 79 deg. N. latitude, under the hardships of the return journey over the inland ice in November. I reached this place under a waning moon, and cannot go on because of my frozen feet and the darkness. The bodies of the others are in the middle of the fiord. Hagen died on November 15, Mylius-Erichsen some ten days later."