420 NEW LAND. 



This was a cheerful prospect. If we were to fall through here, 

 we should do the thing thoroughly, for it was idle to suppose that 

 we should come up alive from this tearing current the current 

 which had eaten up the ice. 



I turned the dogs instantly towards land, and tried to keep 

 them to the places where the ice was whitest we knew it was 

 thicker there but all the same it was so weak in many places 

 that it bulged in under the runners, and sometimes the dogs trod 

 through it. They, too, quite understood the danger, and I can 

 never remember them obeying the whip as they did that day. In 

 towards land they went as fast as they could go, and Fosheim 

 followed at our heels. I do not think that any of us, at any time, 

 was ever so near losing his life as we were then, and I need not 

 say we were glad when, near the crack, we again felt firm ice 

 under us. 



We were now careful to follow the crack until we reached a 

 little spit of land a short distance to the south ; there we made a 

 halt, walked a little way up from it, and sat down in the sun to 

 eat some biscuits and pemmican. We could see from here that 

 there was open water the whole way south through this terrible 

 sound, and that we had turned off only the shortest possible 

 distance from the edge of it. Out on the large polynia were 

 numbers of sea-birds splashing and screaming, and filling the air 

 with their clamour. 



Towards the west the sound is bounded by the island of North 

 Kent; the coast of which, facing the sound, is as steep and in- 

 accessible as the south side of the island ; w T hile the side towards 

 ISTorskebugten is low and flat. In one respect, however, both parts 

 of the island are alike : more barren country I have seldom seen. 

 It looked as if even snow would not thrive there ; for, with the 

 exception of the tops of the hills, which were covered with snow- 

 fields, and the valleys, which were filled with snow and ice, the land 

 was absolutely bare. 



While we were sitting there munching our biscuits and survey- 

 ing the scene, we suddenly caught sight of two animals on the ice, 

 coming from the south. As the wind was from that quarter, we 

 were afraid the dogs would get scent of them, so, without more ado, 



