58 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



occurred to me to modify these instructions so as to bring the men 

 ashore sooner. Accordingly, McConnell and one of the Eskimos 

 were chosen to go with a light sled the following morning out to 

 fetch the required gear and carry the supplementary instructions. 



We were all up early. During breakfast I impressed certain 

 elementary principles on McConnell, urging him also, although he 

 was in command, to follow the advice of the Eskimo if any emer- 

 gency were to arise. After breakfast while the sledge was being 

 hitched I took a walk along the beach, climbing upon a small knoll 

 to get a view to seaward. 



What I saw was very disquieting. A strong wind had been 

 blowing during the night and the temperature was warmer. To 

 seaward the darkness and blotchiness of the clouds showed that 

 the ice was broken where yesterday it had been continuous, with 

 water reflected in the sky, and clouds of dark vapor rising from 

 the leads. It was evidently unsafe to send McConnell on his er- 

 rand, and during the next two or three hours conditions got so 

 much worse that it dawned on me we were now going to have a 

 test of what would happen to the Karluk if the ice broke up. 



Now the gale increased until it became the worst storm for 

 that season which I have ever seen- in the North, and this opinion 

 I found was confirmed by the whalers who, unknown to us, were 

 then having their own tussle with the ice some distance to the east. 

 We built out of driftwood a sort of observation tower and occa- 

 sionally got glimpses of the Karluk, but most of the time she was 

 hidden by snow squalls and drifting clouds of mist. In the after- 

 noon I was scarcely willing to believe my own eyes when I saw 

 her moving to the eastward — against the wind, against the current, 

 and against any theorj^ which I could formulate except the one that 

 she had broken loose and was proceeding under steam. The 

 glimpses of her, too, were so fleeting and she was so veiled by 

 fog that I was not even sure that it might not have been a cake 

 of ice that I mistook for her. What I was sure of was that the 

 thing was moving eastward. That was clear because it passed 

 behind nearer ice cakes which I knew to be stationary. 



This was a night of high tension, although free from that deepest 

 of uncomfortable feelings that what was happening could have 

 been prevented. For a month now I had been committed, if not 

 reconciled, to the attitude that so far as anything we could do was 

 concerned the Karluk was at the mercy of the ordinary forces of 

 nature and of the laws of chance, at least until the coming spring. 



On the morrow the question of what to do could scarcely trouble 



