THE FLOE IN APRIL, 
CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
My journal for the closing days of March, and the 
early ones of April is full of varying drifts and altern- 
ating temperatures. Still, it seemed as if, by some 
gradual though scarcely explicable process, the work 
of our extrication was going on. Sometimes the wind 
would come to us from the southeast — the breaking- 
up wind, as we called it, because as it subsided the 
reaction of the floes developed itself in fissures ; but 
more frequently from the north, expediting our course 
to a more genial latitude. The floes themselves were, 
however, much more massive and gnarled than any 
we had seen before : every party that left the vessel 
for an ice-tramp came back with exaggerated impres- 
sions of the mighty energies that had hurled them to- 
gether. We felt that it would have been impossible 
for any organized structure of wood and metal to re- 
sist such Maelstroms of solid ice as had left these me- 
morials around us, and looked forward with scarcely 
pleasurable anticipations to the equivalent forces that 
might be required to obliterate them. Some extracts 
from my journal may show how far other causes were 
in the mean time operating our release. 
