52 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
in the floating fragments, it might crush the ship 
in an instant. So I set everybody at work on the 
jump. For some time we had been placing sup¬ 
plies overboard on a heavy floe not far from the 
ship and there we already had supplies for several 
months in case of emergency. When the crack 
closed up, the ice about 150 yards astern split at 
right angles into a lane of open water a couple of 
feet wide. 
The thermometer was about zero and there was 
much condensation in the air, indicating the prox¬ 
imity of a good deal of open water. We had steam 
up and I decided that if conditions remained the 
same when daylight came the next morning, so that 
we could see what we were doing, I would try 
to get the ship out into the open water and back to 
the land. I stayed up all night but the next morn¬ 
ing I found that all the leads had closed up and 
through the clear, frosty air no open water was 
visible in any direction. This proved to be the 
nearest the open water came to us in all our drift. 
The temperature now went down to fifteen be¬ 
low zero and our soundings by the Kelvin sound¬ 
ing-machine gave us no bottom at 270 fathoms. 
We bent on a reel of 350 fathoms more and got 
no bottom at 500 fathoms. Then we got the Lucas 
sounding-machine together and installed it on the 
