As it turned out, this did not make much difference.

The going was not so rough in the beginning as I had anticipated, and most of the pickax work that was required could be done by the drivers of the sledges as they reached the difficult places.
When I awoke before light on the morning of March 1st, the wind was whistling about the igloo.

This phenomenon, appearing on the very day of our start, after so many days of calm, seemed the perversity of hard luck.

I looked through the peep-hole of the igloo and saw that the weather was still clear, and that the stars were scintillating like diamonds.

The wind was from the east--a direction from which I had never known it to blow in all my years of experience in that region.