ACROSS THE FROZEN SEA 215 



Goodsell, ahead of the main party, improving the road, 

 but found that two Eskimos would be unfit to go on the 

 ice — one having a frosted heel, and the other a swollen 

 knee. This depletion in the ranks of sledge drivers 

 meant that Marvin and MacMillan would each have to 

 drive a dog team, and that the pickax squad would be 

 reduced to one man — Dr. Goodsell. As it turned out, 

 this did not make much difference. The going was 

 not so rough in the beginning as I had anticipated, and 

 most of the pickax work that was required could be 

 done by the drivers of the sledges as they reached 

 the difficult places. 



When I awoke before light on the morning of March 

 1st, the wind was whistling about the igloo. This 

 phenomenon, appearing on the very day of our start, 

 after so many days of calm, seemed the perversity of 

 hard luck. I looked through the peep-hole of the igloo 

 and saw that the weather was still clear, and that the 

 stars were scintillating like diamonds. The wind was 

 from the east — a direction from which I had never 

 known it to blow in all my years of experience in that 

 region. This unusual circumstance, a really remark- 

 able thing, was of course attributed by my Eskimos 

 to the interference of their arch enemy, Tornarsuk — 

 in plain English, the devil — with my plans. 



After breakfast, with the first glimmer of daylight, 

 we got outside the igloo and looked about. The wind 

 was whistling wildly around the eastern end of Inde- 

 pendence Bluff; and the ice-fields to the north, as well 

 as all the lower part of the land, were invisible in that 

 gray haze which, every experienced arctic traveler 

 knows, means vicious wind. A party less perfectly 



