KNOCKING AT THE GATEWAY 95 



were inevitable; but the horrors of Cape Sabine were 

 not inevitable. They are a blot upon the record of 

 American arctic exploration. 



From Cape Sabine north there was so much open 

 water that we thought of setting the lug sail before 

 the southerly wind; but a little later the appearance 

 of ice to the north caused us to change our minds. 

 About sixty miles north of Etah, we came to a dead 

 stop in the ice pack off Victoria Head. There we lay 

 for hours; but the time was not altogether wasted, for 

 we filled our tanks with ice from a floe. 



In the afternoon of the second day out, the wind 

 came on strong from the south, and we slowly drifted 

 northward with the ice. After some hours, the wind 

 began to form pools of open water through the pack, 

 and we steamed westward toward the land, with the 

 spray flying clear across the decks. An Eskimo de- 

 clared that this was the devil spitting at us. After a 

 few miles, we ran into denser ice and stopped again. 



Dr. Goodsell, MacMillan and Borup were busy 

 storing food and medical supplies in the boats, to be 

 ready for an emergency. Had the Roosevelt been 

 crushed by the ice or sunk, we could have lowered the 

 boats at a moment's notice, fitted and equipped for 

 a voyage, and retreated to the Eskimo country — 

 thence back to civilization on some whaler, or in a 

 ship which would have been sent up with coal the 

 following year by the Peary Arctic Club, though that, 

 of course, would have meant the failure of the expe- 

 dition. 



In each of the six whale-boats were placed a case 

 containing twelve six-pound tins of pemmican, the 



