58 NEAREST THE POLE 



broad lane of water reaching from behind Rawson 

 past us and on toward Cape Henry. During the 

 1 2th and the 13th every effort was made with pick- 

 axes and dynamite to effect a passage to this water, 

 but without success. On the 14th, I sent a party 

 of four Eskimo hunters off to Lake Hazen. Since our 

 arrival, the Eskimos, when not otherwise engaged, 

 were getting the supplies from the main and after holds 

 up on deck, in readiness for landing as soon as it was 

 settled where our winter quarters would be. 



About 10 p. M. of the i6th, as I was on the bridge 

 taking a look about before turning in, a large floe 

 moving on the flood-tide pivoted around the point 

 of Sheridan and crashed into the smaller ice about 

 the ship, driving it bodily before it. At the first shock 

 the Roosevelt reeled and shook a bit, then heeled slightly 

 toward the crowding ice and turned it under her star- 

 board bilge. Standing on the starboard end of the 

 bridge and looking down upon the ice the sensation 

 was much like that of being on a large sledge moving 

 over the ice, so rapidly did the rounding side of the 

 Roosevelt turn the ice under her. Once or twice she 

 hung for an instant and quivered with the strain, then 

 heeled and turned the ice under again. This con- 

 tinued until a comer of the floe itself, some portions 

 of which were higher than the rail, came full against 

 the Roosevelfs starboard side amidships, with no inter- 

 vening cushion of smaller ice and held the ship 

 mercilessly between its own blue side and the unyield- 

 ing face of the ice-foot. Its slow resistless motion 

 was frightful yet fascinating; thousands of tons of 

 smaller ice which the big floe drove before it, the 



