ACROSS THE MOVING ICE 
187 
Not long after I shot the bear I saw a white 
Arctic fox near by. At first I thought he was one 
of the dogs. I fired at him, but it was too dark to 
see to hit him and he got away. He, too, had evi¬ 
dently been attracted by the pieces of raw seal meat, 
which we had scattered around when we had eaten it 
earlier in the day, and had followed us. The dogs 
took no more notice of the fox than they had of 
the bear. 
The next day the strong east wind continued. 
The sky was overcast and as there was much snow¬ 
drift the light was bad; we were shaping our course 
altogether by the compass. The temperature, I 
should guess, was about fifteen degrees below zero. 
We broke camp at seven o’clock and had not gone 
more than fifty yards when we found that during 
the night an open lead had made in the ice. We 
followed our usual method of procedure in such a 
case, Kataktovick going in one direction and I in 
the other, to find a better place to cross. We had 
no luck and returned to meet again at the sledge. 
We now made up our minds to try to cross here. 
There was a good deal of young ice in the lead, 
that had been smashed up against the edges of the 
heavier ice, and the snow that had been blown off 
the ice into the water had filled up the lead to some 
extent and ice and snow had all frozen together in a 
rough and irregular mass. I took two tent-poles. 
