278 THENORTHPOLE 



driver would be likely to get everything into the water 

 in the attempt. It is sometimes necessary to go ahead 

 of the dogs, holding the hand low and shaking it as 

 though it contained some dainty morsel of food, thus 

 inspiring them with courage for the leap. 



Perhaps a mile beyond this, the breaking of the 

 ice at the edge of a narrow lead as I landed from a 

 jump sent me into the water nearly to my hips; but 

 as the water did not come above the waistband of my 

 trousers, which were water-tight, it was soon scraped 

 and beaten off before it had time to freeze. 



This lead was not wide enough to bother the 

 sledges. 



As we stopped to make our camp near a huge pres- 

 sure ridge, the sun, which was gradually getting higher, 

 seemed almost to have some warmth. While we were 

 building our igloos, we could see, by the water clouds 

 lying to the east and southeast of us some miles distant, 

 that a wide lead was opening in that direction. The 

 approaching full moon was evidently getting in its 

 work. 



As we had traveled on, the moon had circled round 

 and round the heavens opposite the sun, a disk of 

 silver opposite a disk of gold. Looking at its pallid 

 and spectral face, from which the brighter light of the 

 sun had stolen the color, it seemed hard to realize 

 that its presence there had power to stir the great ice- 

 fields around us with restlessness — power even now, 

 when we were so near our goal, to interrupt our 

 pathway with an impassable lead. 



The moon had been our friend during the long 

 winter, giving us light to hunt by for a week or two each 



