180 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
would find ourselves confronted by another. We 
consumed a great deal of time crossing the leads 
and even more in finding a place to cross* for some¬ 
times* no matter how far we looked in either direc¬ 
tion—and it was not safe for us to get too widely 
separated—we would find that in the middle of a lead 
there was a narrow platform of thin ice* not strong 
enough to bear the sledge. It called for the ex¬ 
ercise of all the training I had gained in my twenty 
years of Newfoundland sealing and Arctic explor¬ 
ation with Peary to negotiate these constantly re¬ 
curring leads with any degree of safety. 
We did not turn in until ten o’clock that night, 
for tired as we were from our first day’s wrestle 
with the leads, we had to sit up and mend our 
clothes, which had been torn by the jagged rafters. 
The next morning we were up and away at 
dawn, in a howling gale from the west and blind¬ 
ing snowdrift. Open water and young ice across 
our path sent us off at right angles to our true 
course. Several times during the day the sledge 
broke through the young ice and before we could 
whip up the dogs to rush across we got some of our 
sleeping gear wet. The dogs were badly fright¬ 
ened and huddled together in their terror and of 
course immensely increasing the danger of breaking 
through the ice. We saw a number of bear-tracks 
during the day. Somewhere along the trail we lost 
