ALONG THE ICE-EDGE 



It was anything but a pleasant morning, if morn- 

 ing it could be called. It was pitchy black, with 

 never a star and no glimmer of moonshine ; and only 

 the fact that the dogs could smell their way along the 

 beaten track made it possible for us to start at all. 

 Although the thermometer registered only twenty 

 degrees of frost the cold was bitter in the extreme, 

 for a raw air came moaning from the east, chilling us 

 through our heavy sealskins and making our cheeks 

 and noses ache. We were even deprived of the bene- 

 fit of an occasional trot alongside the sledge, for we 

 could only see the faintest glimmer of the snow on 

 which we were running, and when I tried to warm 

 my stiffening toes I kept tripping and stumbling over 

 jagged points of ice until one of the men shouted 

 " Sit still, or we shall be losing you." 



After that I sat still, and hoped for the morning. 



One gets to know what hope means at a time like 

 that. For two solid hours the agony went on, and 

 then a faint glimmer of grey began to show to the 

 eastward : it changed to a dull red, sullen and lurid 

 in the morning haze, and we began to see the wide 

 stretch of white ice beside us, and the dogs with their 

 spidery shadows, and a black and awful sea ahead 

 of us. 



Then we stopped our sledge, and clustered 

 together to consult. I seem to see it now, that little 

 knot of anxious men, with faces all frosted and features 

 but dimly discernible in the half darkness, standing 

 together on the frozen sea with the ice heaving and 

 groaning under their feet, questioning and planning 

 to find a road to Hebron ; and my pulse quickens as 

 I seem to hear again the quick pattering of dogs' feet 

 in the gloom behind us, and to see the short, light 



