ONE DAY FROM POLE 281 



hundred yards wide, on young ice so thin that, as I 

 ran ahead to guide the dogs, I was obliged to slide my 

 feet and travel wide, bear style, in order to distribute 

 my weight, while the men let the sledges and dogs 

 come over by themselves, gliding across where they 

 could. The last two men came over on all fours. 



I watched them from the other side with my heart in 

 my mouth — watched the ice bending under the weight 

 of the sledges and the men. As one of the sledges 

 neared the north side, a runner cut clear through 

 the ice, and I expected every moment that the whole 

 thing, dogs and all, would go through the ice and down 

 to the bottom. But it did not. 



This dash reminded me of that day, nearly three 

 years before, when in order to save our lives we had 

 taken desperate chances in recrossing the "Big Lead" 

 on ice similar to this — ice that buckled under us and 

 through which my toe cut several times as I slid my 

 long snowshoes over it. A man who should wait for 

 the ice to be really safe would stand small chance of 

 getting far in these latitudes. Traveling on the polar 

 ice, one takes all kinds of chances. Often a man has 

 the choice between the possibility of drowning by 

 going on or starving to death by standing still, and 

 challenges fate with the briefer and less painful 

 chance. 



That night we were all pretty tired, but satisfied 

 with our progress so far. We were almost inside of 

 the 89th parallel, and I wrote in my diary: "Give me 

 three more days of this weather!" The temperature 

 at the beginning of the march had been minus 40°. 

 That night I put all the poorest dogs in one team and 



