22 MY ARCTIC JOURNAL 



floes splitting into several pieces as soon as they were struck 

 by the " Kite." We made about three knots, when we 

 were again obliged to halt on account of a lowering fog. 

 Our little move was made just in time to keep up the cour- 

 age of some of the West Greenland party, who were begin- 

 ning to believe that wc should be nipped and kept here for 

 the winter. 



Although we realized that we were still ice-bound in the 

 great and much-dreaded Melville Bay pack, we could not but 

 enjoy at times the peculiar features of our forced imprison- 

 ment. Efforts to escape, with full promise of success, followed 

 by a condition of impotency and absolute relaxation, would 

 alternately elevate and depress our spirits to the extent of 

 casting joy and gloom into the little household. The novelty 

 of the situation, however, helped greatly to keep up a good 

 feeling, and all despondency was immediately dispelled by the 

 sound of the order to " fire up," and the dull rumbling of the 

 bell-metal propeller. We never tired of watching our little 

 craft cut her way through the unbroken pans of ice. The 

 great masses of ice were thrust aside very readily ; sometimes 

 a piece was split from a large floe and wedged under a still 

 larger one, pushing this out of the way, the commotion caus- 

 ing the ice in the immediate vicinity fairly to boil. Then we 

 would run against an unusually hard, solid floe that would not 

 move when the " Kite " struck it, but let her ride right up on 

 it and then allow her gradually to slide off and along the edge 

 until she struck a weak place, when the floe would be shivered 



