34 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



suggested that Bartlett be present. I now went to him and asked 

 him about his experience with getting fresh water off sea ice. He 

 replied that it was well known among the Newfoundland sealers 

 that you could always get it and that they never carried large 

 fresh water tanks on that account. In fact, there had never been 

 a time when Bartlett did not know that salt water ice became 

 fresh. 



At the time Bartlett thought he would have no trouble in con- 

 vincing the scientific staff, but he told me later that he had had "a 

 hell of a time to get some of that crowd to see reason." He did 

 succeed in a measure, at least to the extent that I heard nothing 

 further about the size of the tanks, and I had nearly forgotten the 

 incident when his remark about "showing our bunch of scientist 

 tenderfeet that ocean ice is fresh" recalled the whole train of 

 events. 



After the ship had been tied to a floe, the first officer, John 

 Anderson, went "ashore" on the ice, dragging the end of a long 

 rubber hose to a small pond on the surface about ten yards from 

 the edge, and water was pumped in till all our fresh water tanks 

 were full. 



The next meal was a triumph for the staff. Somebody remarked 

 that the coffee was bad, and it was found that much of the food 

 was more or less spoiled through being too salty. When the cook 

 informed us that it must be because of the water, a sampling 

 brought out the fact that it was indubitably brackish. There were 

 several remarks passed then about the probability of the laws of 

 nature working on polar expeditions as they did elsewhere, and 

 Scripture was quoted to the effect that salt is not likely to lose its 

 savor. 



This miscarriage hurt Bartlett more than it did me, for a man 

 who commands sailors for years finds it useful and almost neces- 

 sary to appear infallible. But we were both soon justified. The 

 trouble was that the mate, being a new man, had taken water 

 from a pond near enough to the edge of the floe to have been filled 

 with salt spray during the recent gale. The ship's tank had to be 

 emptied and the hose carried a few yards to another pond remote 

 enough from the edge so that the water in it was produced either 

 by the falling of rain upon the floe or directly by the sunshine. 

 The tanks were then filled with perfectly fresh water, and that 

 trouble was over. 



When we tied up to the floe we had a sea of scattered ice behind, 

 \>VLt ahead between us and Point Barrow everything was packed 



