IN THE ARCTIC WINTER. 523 
the storm broke upon us. Here, completely excluded from the know- 
ledge of things without, we passed many miserable hours. We could 
keep no note of time, and, except by the whirring of the drift against 
the roof of our kennel, had no information of the state of the wea- 
ther. * * * We then turned in to sleep again, no longer heedful of 
the storm, for it had buried us deep in with the snow. But in the 
meantime, although the storm continued, the temperatures underwent 
an extraordinary change. I was awakened by the dropping of water 
from the roof above me; and upon turning back my sleeping bag, 
found it saturated by the melting of its previously condensed hoar- 
frost. My eider-down was like a wet swab. I afterwards found that 
the phenomenon of the warm south-east wind had come unexpectedly 
upon us. The thermometers at the brig indicated +269, and, closer 
as we were to the water, the weather was probably above the freezing- 
point. When we left the brig—how long before it was we did not 
know—the temperature was — 44°. It had risen at least seventy 
degrees. * * * In the morning—that is to say, when the combined 
light of the noon-day dawn and the cireumpolar moon permitted our 
escape—I found, by comparing the time as indicated by the Great 
Bear with the increased altitude of the moon, that we had been pent 
up for nearly two days.” 
It appears from these extracts, that although Dr. Kane did not 
see open water, he was made aware of its neighbourhood by the in- 
fallible sign of a “Water Sky.” A rise of temperature to a few 
degrees above frost would be quite insufficient to produce open water 
by melting through the fields of ice in forty-eight hours ; but, on the 
other hand, the breaking up of the fields of ice by a storm is an 
adequate cause for a great rise of temperature; for the water imme- 
diately below the ice is at the temperature of sea-water at its freezing- 
point, which is +28°; so that when a storm comes and breaks up 
the ice, the water comes into contact with air 70° or 80° colder, and 
warms the air. 
There is no doubt of the power of a storm to break up the ice. 
Sir James Ross speaks of “the almost magical power of the sea in 
breaking up land-ice or extensive floes of from twenty to thirty feet 
thick, which have, in a few minutes after the swell reached them, 
been broken up into small fragments by the power of the waves.”’ 
The theory that these sudden rises of temperature are caused by storms 
breaking up the ice and exposing the comparatively warm water below, 
