110 THE NORTH POLE 



women were delighted at the opportunity to teach 

 Borup the Eskimo words for jacket, hood, boots, 

 sky, water, food, et cetera, as they seemed to be of 

 the opinion that he was a fine boy. 



The Roosevelt lay quietly in open water all night 

 on the 24th of August, but in the forenoon of the 25th 

 steamed northward nearly to Cape Union. Beyond 

 there the ice was densely packed. I climbed up into 

 the rigging to take a look but, finding no suitable 

 shelter, decided to turn back to Lincoln Bay, where 

 we made the ship fast between two grounded ice 

 floes. The day before had been calm and sunny, but 

 the 25th was snowy and disagreeable, with a raw 

 northerly wind. The snow was driving in horizontal 

 sheets across the decks, the water was black as ink, 

 the ice a spectral white, and the coast near us looked 

 like the shores of the land of ghosts. One of our berg 

 pieces was carried away by the flood tide, and we 

 were obliged to shift our position to the inner side of 

 the other one; but there were other grounded bergs 

 outside us to take the impact of the larger floes. 



On general principles, I landed a cache of sup- 

 plies at this point on the following day. The pos- 

 sibility of losing the ship was always present; but if 

 everything went well the cache could be made use of 

 in the hunting season. The supplies, in their wooden 

 boxes, were simply piled upon the shore. Wandering 

 arctic hares, reindeer, and musk-oxen never attempt 

 to regale themselves on tin cans or wooden boxes. 



I went ashore and walked over to Shelter River, 

 living over again the experiences there in 1906, when, 

 during my absence at Cape Thomas Hubbard, Captain 



