CHAPTER XX 
ACROSS THE MOVING ICE 
From now on, our journey became a never-end¬ 
ing series of struggles to get around or across lanes 
of open water—leads, as they are called,-—the most 
exasperating and treacherous of all Arctic travel¬ 
ling. We would come to a lead and, leaving the 
sledge and dogs by it, Kataktovick would go in 
one direction and I in the other; when either of us 
found a place where we could cross he would fire 
a revolver or, if the whirling snow and the conden¬ 
sation were not too thick would climb up on some 
rafter where he could be seen by the other and make 
a signal to come on. Sometimes there would be a 
point where the ice on the opposite sides of the lead 
almost met and by throwing the dogs over, bridging 
the sledge across and jumping ourselves, we could 
manage to reach the opposite edge of the ice; at 
other times the lead would be too wide for this 
method and we would have to look for a floating 
ice-cake or a projecting piece that we could break 
off to use as a ferry-boat. Often we would get 
across one difficult lead—and they all had their 
peculiar difficulties—and then in almost no time 
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