Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/164

150 As soon as he was satisfied with his position he stepped overboard on to the ice and led half his company for a sight of the shore. The temperatures now were below freezing for the twenty-four hours; the sun scarcely showed above the horizon at noon. Every one in the party had tried on his skin clothing bought from the Greenland Eskimos; but the weather so far permitted their wearing the woolen clothes of civilisation.

Margaret still wore a woolen blouse and trousers and her wool-lined leather shoes and cap and ulster. Geoff and Latham likewise still were clothed as for a winter tramp through the Maine woods. McNeal and Koehler had changed only partly to Arctic costume; but this day, as they stood on the shore in the drifting snow and looked over the long, endless reaches of barren, drift-streaked rock and the freezing sea edging it, most of them shivered.

"I make this the northeast coast of Victoria Land," McNeal announced as they stood on the shore. "The whole of Victoria Land is a good deal bigger than Britain; and it's all Arctic, with the bulk of it lying below us. I