OUT OF THE ICE 153 



at all: we had to go wherever the ice was not jammed so 

 close as to make passage an impossibility. Nor did these 

 conditions improve dm"ing the morning. No clearer 

 water could be seen from aloft; only we were headed 

 toward the northeast, where a slim, bluish streak of 

 clouds above the ice seemed to indicate the presence of 

 the open sea. It looked a long way off; ten miles or 

 fifty. 



Wind and current were setting the ice at the rate of 

 about three miles an hour, and, with our slow speed and 

 frequent turnings we lost rather than gained anything 

 over the ground. The moimtains receded as we made 

 out from the shore, but the next promontory ahead grew 

 dimmer and not clearer as we fought our way through 

 the pack. 



Kleinschmidt ran down the rigging at noon and 

 shouted : 



''Open water ahead!" 



The mate yielded his watch to Larsson and as he 

 warmed up by the galley stove, said in his quiet way: 



''By golly, that was the worst time I've ever had in 

 the ice. We had to keep on and I could never see how 

 we were going to do it." 



The good news soon made itself evident. We could 

 see a rim of blue water over the deadly white boundary 

 of the floes; more open spaces in the ice appeared, and 

 at last we felt the low ground-swell, its angry crests 

 rubbed off by the outer barrier of ice. Then we came up 

 to the fringe itseK; not a collection of cakes with wide 

 channels between, but a grinding, heaving breakwater 

 with few openings, and these largely choked with loose 

 ice. Against the seaward side the waves spent their 

 force in pressing the ranks together, as the weight of a 



