150 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



be able to get forty or fifty miles offshore before the first gale 

 strikes, beyond which distance we consider travel to be reasonably 

 safe, no matter how little the daylight. 



In our present case there would have been no wisdom in leav- 

 ing the land-fast ice for the mush beyond. For ten days the frost 

 had amounted to so little that the mush remained congealed. Light 

 snow was also falling now and then, blanketing the weak places, 

 not only preventing freezing but disguising the danger spots. It was 

 naturally tedious to remain encamped on the edge of the shore floe 

 only six miles from the land, especially with spring almost upon 

 us and the chances of success diminishing day by day; but there 

 was no other sensible thing to do. In the water at the floe's edge 

 seals were numerous, and partly to have something to do and partly 

 because we knew that our people ashore were a little short of meat 

 for dog feed, we killed a number with a view of taking them ashore. 



Now came a day when one of our kerosene tanks sprung a leak. 

 We had two, each holding about six gallons, so that the loss of the 

 contents of one was more than we could afford. I had intended at 

 first that Wilkins should retain his motion picture camera forty or 

 fifty miles offshore, thinking he might get some interesting pictures 

 of moving ice and possibly of polar bears, but I now concluded that 

 time would be so precious if we ever got away from the land floe 

 that we could not afford either to stop for pictures or to carry the 

 camera itself. So one day about noon I asked Wilkins and Castel 

 to make a quick trip ashore, taking back the camera and the leaking 

 tank as well as three or four seals, and returning with a sound tank 

 full of oil. We had already been over this trail twice, first in 

 coming out, then in taking the injured captain ashore, and the 

 round trip would under ordinary circumstances have been made in 

 about four hours. 



When Wilkins' party left us, the shore could be seen through 

 a slight haze and there was a gentle breeze from the southwest. 

 Two hours later, when they should have been nearly ashore, there 

 were heavy snowflakes falling and the rising wind had in it the prom- 

 ise of a gale. It seems that the gale began with them a little sooner 

 than it did with us, for I learned later that by the time they got 

 ashore it was blowing so hard that they had great trouble in getting 

 the dogs to face the wind going up the hundred yards or so to the 

 house, and after unhitching them, Wilkins has told me he himself 

 had to crawl the distance on his hands and knees. Six hours from 

 the time Wilkins and Castel left us we were in one of the worst of 

 arctic gales. I have heard that the anemometer at Collinson Point 



