296 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



we did not travel at much more than three miles per hour wherte 

 we had thoughtlessly supposed we could run at the rate of five 

 or six. In some places the ice had telescoped on the previous day, 

 but wherever it was of single thickness it bent perceptibly thoug'h 

 slowly under our weight, and we never dared to stop except upon 

 telescoped places. 



Hour after hour we traveled and the horizon was everywhere 

 a straight line with the sky. It was exceedingly cold, and clouds 

 of "steam" were seen rising here and there. These worried us a 

 bit, for we thought they might be from opening leads, danger 

 signals that the break-up of our ice had commenced. But there 

 was about an even chance they might be rising merely because six- 

 inch ice is so warm from the water underneath that it throws 

 off clouds of vapor if the air is at a low temperature. The vapor 

 clouds continually receding before us showed that they did not 

 come from open water, but were forming from the ice. After 

 twenty miles of travel under this fairly tense nervous strain we 

 sighted some heavy old ice upon which to make a safe camp for 

 the night. Less than an hour after we landed the thinner ice we 

 had left began breaking up. This gave excellent sealing water 

 right by our camp, but it gave also an uncomfortable feeling that 

 had the thin ice been five miles wider or had we started an hour 

 later, this day would have been the last day of our travels. 



For some two weeks traveling northwest from Cape Alfred 

 our soundings showed an uneven sea bottom, for the water varied 

 in depth from a hundred to two hundred fathoms. Comparison 

 of the dead reckoning with our astronomical observations also 

 showed that the ice v/e were on was moving steadily to the south- 

 west — an inconvenient fact when our hopes all lay to the north- 

 west. There was a great deal of open water, but a quarter or 

 half a mile of it took us only an hour or two to cross, for we 

 were expert by this time in converting our sleds into boats by the 

 use of the tarpaulin. Much more often the leads were filled with 

 moving ice, or with stationary ice not strong enough to, walk on 

 but so strong that, had we attempted to break a way through it 

 with our sled boat we should in half a dozen crossings have chafed 

 holes in the already worn canvas. 



A delay beside a lead when the ice is not moving is one thing, 

 and a delay when it is drifting opposite to your course is quite 

 another. We took frequent chances in crossing leads on thin ice, 

 and one of these crossings, on April 25th, came near ending in 



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