270 GREENLAND 



to build, provisions for two months were carried, 

 besides wood and fuel. The boats were put out, a 

 flagstaff was set up, and quite a little settlement was 

 started on the ice ; and no sooner was it completed than 

 a violent snowstorm, lasting for five days, buried both 

 the ship and the house. The ice increased around, and, 

 the pressure of the accumulation lifting the Hansa 

 seventeen feet above her original level, everything of 

 value was removed from her on to the ice and into the 

 house. On the 22nd of October she sank, having 

 drifted below the seventy-first parallel ; and all through 

 the winter the floe, which was about two miles across, 

 leisurely made its way to the south. 



Off Knighton Bay Christmas was kept with all 

 possible honour. The briquette house was decorated 

 with coloured-paper festoons, and, by the light of the 

 sole remaining wax candle, the genial Germans made 

 themselves merry around a stubby Christmas tree 

 devised out of an old birch broom. Three weeks after- 

 wards the floe cracked beneath the dwelling. There 

 was barely time to take refuge, but all hands were 

 saved in the boats. For two days they remained in them, 

 poorly sheltered from the storm and unable to clear out 

 the snow. Then a smaller house was built of the ruins 

 of the old one, but it was only large enough for half 

 the party ; and as the spring advanced the floe de- 

 creased, breaking away at the edges as did that on 

 which the Polaris people drifted to Labrador. 



At the end of March it entered Nukarbik Bay and 

 there it stayed four weeks, caught in an eddy, slowly 

 moving round and round just far enough from the 

 shore to render an attempt at escape impossible ; twice 



