LOST ON THE ICE. 
377 
for a daylight crossing. To follow the indentations of 
the land was to make the travel long and dangerous. 
We trusted to the tracks of our former journeys, and 
pushed out on the ice. But the darkness came on us 
rapidly, and the snow began to drift before a heavy 
north wind. 
“At about 10 p.m. we had lost the land, and, while 
driving the dogs rapidly, all of us running alongside of 
them, we took a wrong direction, and travelled out 
toward the floating ice of the Sound. There was no 
guide to the points of the compass; our Esquimaux 
were completely at fault; and the alarm of the dogs, 
which became every moment more manifest, extended 
itself to our party. The instinct of a sledge-dog makes 
him perfectly aware of unsafe ice, and I know nothing 
more subduing to a man than the warnings of an 
unseen peril conveyed by the instinctive fears of the 
lower animals. 
“We had to keep moving, for we could not camp in 
the gale, that blew around us so fiercely that we could 
scarcely hold down the sledge. But we moved with 
caution, feeling our way with the tent-poles, which I 
distributed among the party for the purpose. A mur¬ 
mur had reached my ear for some time in the cadences 
of the storm, steadier and deeper, I thought, than the 
tone of the wind: on a sudden it struck me that I 
heard the noise of waves, and that we must be coming 
close on the open water. I had hardly time for the 
hurried order, ‘ Turn the dogs,’ before a wreath of wet 
frost-smoke swept over us, and the sea showed itself, 
