104 THE NORTH POLE 



Morpheus himself sit up and rub his eyes every few 

 minutes. 



Owing to the stupendous and resistless character 

 of the heavier ice, a ship would be utterly helpless 

 if she were ever caught fairly and squarely between 

 two giant floes. In such a case there would be no 

 escape for any structure which man could design or 

 build. More than once a brief nip between two big 

 blue floes has set the whole one hundred and eighty- 

 four-foot length of the Roosevelt vibrating like a violin 

 string. At other times, under the pressure on the cylin- 

 ders of the by-pass before described, the vessel would 

 rear herself upon the ice like a steeplechaser taking a 

 fence. It was a glorious battle — this charging of 

 the ship against man's coldest enemy and possibly 

 his oldest, for there is no calculating the age of this 

 glacial ice. Sometimes, as the steel-shod stem of 

 the Roosevelt split a floe squarely in two, the riven 

 ice would emit a savage snarl that seemed to have 

 behind it all the rage of the invaded immemorial Arctic 

 struggling with the self-willed intruder, man. Some- 

 times, when the ship was in special peril, the Eskimos 

 on board would set up their strange barbaric chant 

 — calling on the souls of their ancestors to come from 

 the invisible realm and help us. 



Often on this last expedition of the Roosevelt, as on 

 the former one, have I seen a fireman come up from the 

 bowels of the ship, panting for a breath of air, take 

 one look at the sheet of ice before us, and mutter 

 savagely : 



"By God, she's got to go through!" 



Then he would drop again into the stoke hole, and 



