THE SINKING OF THE KARLUK 
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still prevailed. Our observations on the seventh, 
the last we were to take on shipboard, gave us our 
position as Lat. 72.11 N., Long. 174.86 W. The 
temperature dropped on the ninth; the sky, which 
was clear in the morning, became overcast by after¬ 
noon and the wind shifted from southeast to south¬ 
west. We were getting nearer the land and the ice 
was raftering in places with the pressure, so that 
I felt sure that something was going to happen 
before long. We continued our preparations for 
putting emergency supplies in condition to be 
handled quickly, putting tea tablets in tins made 
by the engineers, and twenty-two calibre cartridges 
in similar tins. Mannlicher cartridges we put up 
in packages of thin canvas, fifty to a package. 
At five o’clock on the morning of the tenth I 
was awakened by a loud report like a rifle-shot. 
Then there came a tremor all through the ship. 
I was soon on deck. The watchman, who for that 
night was Brady, had already been overboard on 
the ice and I met him coming up the ice gangway 
to tell me what he had found. There was a small 
crack right at the stem of the ship, he said. I went 
there with him at once and found that the crack 
ran irregularly but in general northwesterly for 
about two hundred yards. At first it was very 
slight, although it was a clean and unmistakable 
break; in the course of half an hour, however, it 
