40 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
up. Towards afternoon it began to snow and 
soon a blizzard was in full blast. 
On the twenty-fourth the storm moderated and 
the sun came out for a short time. The tempera¬ 
ture was mild and there was a good deal of water to 
be seen to the northeast. The Eskimo resumed 
their hunting and killed three seal. The rate of 
drift was about two miles an hour; this increased 
somewhat in the afternoon, when the wind fresh¬ 
ened. Sometimes the ship would appear to be in 
a vast floating island of ice, with water on every 
hand but too far away for us to reach even if we 
could have made our way through the solid mass 
in which we were frozen. 
The next day, September 25, the gale, which had 
sprung up again, continued with unabated violence 
and the air was filled with snow. The season was 
wearing on towards the time of unbroken darkness 
and there were several hours now in the twenty- 
four when it was intensely dark. The nights were 
moonless and starless, for the air was filled with 
blinding snow. 
All about us we could hear the ice tearing and 
grinding. The water through which we were 
drifting was comparatively shallow and there was 
danger not only from the great fragments of the 
floe, which turned up and toppled over and over, 
but also, and chiefly, from the heavier floes which 
