WORKING ON. 
327 
south, each ice-tongue that we doubled brought us 
nearer to the Greenland shore. A slackening of the 
ice to the east enabled us after a while to lay our 
course for Hakluyt Island. We spread our canvas 
again, and reached the in-shore fields by one in the 
afternoon. We made our camp, dried our buffalo- 
skins, and sunned and slept away our fatigue. 
We renewed our labors in the morning. Keeping 
inside the pack, we coasted along for the Cary Islands, 
encountering now and then a projecting floe, and 
either boring or passing around it, but making a satis¬ 
factory progress on the whole toward Lancaster Sound. 
But at the south point of Northumberland Island the 
pack arrested us once more. The seam by which we 
had come east lay between Whale Sound and Murchison 
Inlet, and the ice-drift from the southern of these had 
now piled itself in our way. 
I was confident that I should find the “Eastern 
Water” if I could only reach Cape Parry, and that this 
would give me a free track to Cary Islands. I there¬ 
fore looked anxiously for a fissure in the pack, and 
pressed our little craft into the first one that seemed at 
all practicable. 
For the next three days we worked painfully through 
the half-open leads, making in all some fifteen miles to 
the south. We had very seldom room enough to row; 
but, as we tracked along, it was not difficult to escape 
nippings, by hauling up the boat on the ice. Still she 
received some hard knocks, and a twist or two that did 
not help her sea-worthiness; for she began to leak; and 
