CHAPTER XX 



MAROONED ON AN ISLAND OF ICE 



IT was without any premonition of what was about to happen that 

 on May 24th, after we had gone two miles and a half, we stopped 

 at a lead only about a quarter of a mile wide. To cross 

 was impossible because of a strong easterly wind that covered even 

 this narrow water with whitecaps, but such leads usually close and 

 open as the floes crowd and jostle in their drift before the wind. 

 No such thing was destined now to happen. Within the next few 

 hours the lead had widened to five miles and by next day we had 

 no idea how wide it was, for the ice to the east was no longer vis- 

 ible and the waves were rolling in and beating against our floe as 

 if there were nothing between us and Banks Island but an open 

 ocean. Later the lead did narrow to about five miles again, but 

 day after day the young ice refused to get hard enough to bear 

 up the sleds, and nevertheless was so thick that it would have chafed 

 a hole in the canvas of our sledboat long before we could have 

 made the other side. 



We were now a sort of Robinson Crusoe party on a moving 

 island of ice. I explored it the second day and found it to be four 

 or five miles square, but on all sides separated from adjacent floes 

 by uncrossable leads of ice and mush. Our island was substantial — 

 from the height of the hummocks above sea level I judged that many 

 parts of it were over fifty feet thick — so we had as safe a camp site 

 as is possible on sea ice, but there were two things to concern us. 

 One was that if the easterly wind continued we should fail to meet 

 the Star at our rendezvous at the northwest corner of Banks Is- 

 land; the other was the problem of food and fuel. If we were 

 forced to spend the summer on the ice, we should have to spend 

 the winter, too. Could we during the good hunting light store up 

 enough meat and blubber to last during the winter darkness? And 

 if enough was secured, we might not be able to keep the stores safe 

 through the winter if in some night of darkness and blizzard our 

 ice island should split in the middle of our camp, and each part start 

 in a different direction if it did not tip on edge, spilling our depots 



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