OUR WESTWARD DRIFT BEGINS 
S3 
freeze the ice is much tougher and less brittle than 
fresh-water ice. A man breaking through fresh¬ 
water ice fractures a considerable surface; in the 
case of salt-water ice the hole he makes is just large 
enough to let him through. Salt-water ice bends 
and buckles but will still bear you when fresh-water 
ice of equal thickness will break at once. Some¬ 
times we would find the ice too heavy to push 
through and once when this happened and we had 
to go back and get a boat into the water we found 
that during our absence the gulls had eaten the 
duck we had shot. 
All this time, of course, we kept up the regular 
ship’s routine. The darkness was coming earlier 
in the afternoon as the weeks went by and by 
September IT we had to light the lamp for our 
six o’clock supper. Already, on the fourteenth, we 
had put the stove up in the cabin. The days were 
usually cloudy and the engine-room and the galley- 
stove did not supply quite enough heat to warm the 
cabin, though in our skiing trips we found it still 
comfortable in rubber-boots, sweaters and overalls. 
