218 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



any one takes an unreasonable degree of risk who travels in the 

 Arctic with only game for food, whether it be on land or ice, during 

 the periods of ample light. But when the daylight begins to fail 

 towards fall, the traveler is under a severe handicap. Realizing this, 

 we had begun to talk about how we would spend the winter on this 

 solid floe that in two weeks had begun to have for us something 

 of the friendliness and security of home, and to speculate about 

 which way we might drift and how far from land we should be by 

 the time daylight came back in the spring and we could resume 

 travel. 



But on June 5th a chance to leave came at last. The lead be- 

 fore had been narrow enough for crossing had there been open 

 water, but the young ice had always been of that unfortunate sort 

 which obstructed the boat without being strong enough to support 

 the sled. But this morning adhering to our ice island were only 

 about fifty yards of young ice and beyond that a quarter of a mile 

 of open water, and then some strong-looking young ice adhering 

 to the other shore. I had the night watch, as usual, and awoke the 

 men at about one in the morning, telling them that I had decided 

 to try a crossing. It took about half an hour to break a road 

 through the fifty yards of young ice to the water and half an hour 

 after that our first load had been ferried across. A head wind 

 meantime had been increasing and the lead was rapidly widening. 

 By throwing away most or all of our meat and blubber we could 

 have ferried across in two loads with smooth water, but as white 

 caps soon began to run we did not dare to load the sledboat heavily. 

 It seemed to me possible also that the ice on which we were landing 

 was itself only a little island and that we might not be able to 

 travel on it far. This induced us to ferry a fourth load, consisting 

 entirely of meat and blubber. Although we took with us a thousand 

 pounds, we abandoned more than a ton of food on our island. 



The last crossing was made with some difficulty, for the lead 

 was now nearly a mile wide, as I thought, and a mile and a half as 

 Storkerson and Ole estimated it. The wind had risen to almost a 

 gale and the waves struck the front end of our blunt boat with such 

 force that for ten or fifteen minutes I was doubtful if we were mak- 

 ing any headway. The dogs, always bad sailors in a rough sea and 

 always getting out on the leeward edge of the boat, had been taken 

 across in the earlier trips. Had the wind been even a little stronger, 

 our separation would have been pleasant neither for them, tied on 

 the leeward side, nor for us, marooned on the windward side of ice 

 floes drifting rapidly apart. We got over after a hard paddle, and 



