CHAPTER V 



THE KARLUK IN FETTERS OF ICE 



IT was several hours after we left Cross Island that the ship came 

 quietly to rest against a big floe. As Bartlett came down 

 from the masthead he said to me that now the ship was where 

 she ought to be and that we would wait here until the ice slackened 

 out. That was what it was supposed to do on the theory selected, 

 and Bartlett always took the most cheerful view possible of any 

 situation. He had already given orders to have the ship tied to 

 the cake by an ice anchor, and was in the best of spirits. It was 

 Hadley's forebodings that worried me. 



I had not been just then at the masthead with Bartlett where, 

 from a hundred-foot vantage, a truer idea of the water between 

 the floes can be gained. From the bridge the ice all around looked 

 pretty tight and I imagined we must have come to a halt only 

 because no open water had been visible ahead. I learned from 

 Bartlett later that open water had been visible. He had, how- 

 ever, decided that since we were twenty miles from shore this was 

 the strategic position in which to wait, again according to the 

 adopted theory. 



What we saw from the masthead next morning was not reassur- 

 ing. The evening before there had been around us perhaps half 

 a mile of open water, but now the ice cakes had gradually edged 

 in until our hole was not much more than two hundred yards wide. 

 After a survey of the horizon Bartlett ordered the ship freed from 

 her moorings and we steamed across the two hundred yards, bunt- 

 ing ineffectively against the ice on the other side. After one or two 

 bunts, which could not have been very heavy inasmuch as we 

 had no room to back away for a good charge, the Karluk was 

 tied up again. She never moved of her own volition after. 



During the next day or two the ice kept gradually pressing 

 tighter, huddling together more closely. At first the cakes lay flat, 

 but gradually the increasing pressure made some of them rise on 

 edge. Those next the ship were pressed against her sides till she 

 groaned and quivered with the strain. In a day or two nearly 



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