102 THENORTHPOLE 



with a knife, so that the iron blubber tanks in the hold 

 dropped out of her. The ship became nothing but 

 the sides and ends of a box. She remained some twenty- 

 four hours, gripped between the floes, and then went 

 down. 



On the 22d of August, the fifth day, our lucky 

 stars must have been working overtime; for we made 

 a phenomenal run — more than a hundred miles, 

 right up the middle of Kennedy Channel, uninter- 

 rupted by ice or fog! At midnight the sun burst 

 gloriously through the clouds, just over Cape Lieber. 

 It seemed a happy omen. 



Could such good fortune continue? Though my 

 hopes were high, the experience of former journeys 

 reminded me that the brightest coin has always a 

 reverse side. In a day we had run the whole length 

 of Kennedy Channel, and immediately before us there 

 was only scattered ice. But beyond lay Robeson 

 Channel, only some thirty miles away, and the navi- 

 gator who knows Robeson Channel will never be 

 sanguine that it has anything good in store for 

 him. 



Soon we encountered both ice and fog, and, while 

 working slowly along in search of an opening, we 

 were forced clear across to the Greenland coast at 

 Thank God Harbor, the winter quarters of the Po- 

 laris in 1871-72. I have mentioned the lane of 

 water which often lies at ebb tide between the land 

 and the moving central pack; but the reader must not 

 fancy that this is an unobstructed lane. On the 

 contrary, its passage means constant butting of the 

 smaller ice, and constant dodging of larger pieces. 



