208 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



floes separated, then they came together with a crash which 

 sounded far away over the ice. The floe we stood on, a good 

 solid one, groaned and shivered, then it split, and along the 

 edge of it the ice commenced to pile up. Huge blocks were, 

 one after another, raised out of the water, tilted on edge, 

 toppled over, and thrown with a great noise upon the floes. The 

 water was dripping from the ice, the pieces clashed and broke, 

 while the grinding noise, now and again broken by the crash of 

 some tons of ice sliding down from a ridge of ten to fifteen 

 feet high, or the sound like the report of a gun with which 

 the ice broke, formed the accompaniment to this immense 

 work of destruction. Then the floes would slide a little apart, 

 and the ice went down, splashing water far up on the floe on 

 which we stood. Again and again the floes ground against 

 each other, breaking up our floe and cracking it through 

 and through until our dogs howled in terror as if they 

 wished to drown the noise of the fighting icefloes. At last the 

 movement ceased for a minute, and by coaxing, whipping, and 

 yelling we got the dogs to pull the sledges over. When we 

 were halfway over the ridge the ice commenced to move again, 

 and we barely escaped damage to one of our sledges. Apart 

 from this we met with no accident whatever and started again 

 northward. We were glad to reach a place which looked solid 

 enough for a camp, and at 4.30 we stopped, pitched our tent, 

 and commenced cooking our much-needed supper. We were 

 only having a very small meal at lunch, some crackers and a few 

 ounces of chocolate, and the appetite we were developing for 

 supper was quite out of proportion to the quantity of food at our 

 disposal. All our dogs, save " \Verner," who is the gentleman 

 among them, ate the remains of " Soreback " apparently with- 

 out any scruples at all. It may have been a mistake to give 

 them the dog meat fresh and warm on the previous day, a mis- 

 take which we will try to avoid in the future. 



We have had a fairly good day, made about six miles, and 

 our latitude should be 71 oo' N. We passed two fresh bear 

 tracks and a few fox tracks. It has been blowing a little 

 to-day from the south-west, and that with the temperature we 

 have, 34 to 27 C., is making travelling rather cold. 



Sunday, March 31. Started at 7.20 A.M., and until noon had 

 good going over young ice. Then we got into some very 



