74 NEAREST THE POLE 



light showed clearly from the top of the lookout hill 

 which some of us climbed every practicable day, and 

 was visible to every returning party from Hecla or 

 the hunting fields of the interior as soon as it rounded 

 Cape Sheridan. 



To anyone given to a belief in such things there were 

 several encouraging omens about the ship's position. 

 The Roosevelt's nose pointed persistently almost 

 true north, the bright yellow eye looked incessantly 

 to the northward and the beaten sledge road from the 

 ship to all points of communication led north along 

 the ice-foot. 



The southerly gales continued to occur with fre- 

 quency, and increased in violence as we neared the 

 depth of winter. The movement of the ice was nearly 

 continuous, becoming very pronounced on each spring 

 tide, and the roaring of the pack at these times grew 

 louder and more vicious as the newly forming ice grew 

 in thickness and hardness. 



This movement of the ice culminated on Christmas 

 night in the breaking away of the ice from the ice-foot 

 and the starboard side of the Roosevelt and, so far 

 as could be determined in the darkness, the complete 

 disruption of the pack adjacent to the shore and in 

 the mouth of Robeson Channel. This disruption 

 probably covered the entire segment of Lincoln 

 Sea from Cape Joseph Henry to Cape Br3''ant and 

 probably beyond. 



Open water in the shape sometimes of leads, some- 

 times of lakes, was also of almost continuous occurrence. 



Repeated pressures were experienced by the Roose- 

 velt, none of them very serious, but sufficient to keep 



