CHAPTER XXI 
IN SIGHT OF LAND 
March 80 —the thirteenth day of our journey 
from Icy Spit—was the first fine day we had had. 
We broke camp at dawn. Almost at once we 
encountered open water and from that time until 
dark crossed lead after lead. One of them was 
half a mile wide. It was filled with heavy pieces 
of ice, frozen into precarious young ice, the whole 
mass only solid enough to enable us to get a few 
things at a time over on the sledge. We had to 
unharness our dogs and haul the lightly loaded 
sledge across, picking our way from one heavy 
piece to another as a man zigzags his way across 
a creek on stepping-stones. It took a good many 
trips to get everything over. 
The sunset was clear and all around the horizon 
there was not a cloud in the sky. Looking to the 
southwest I saw what I was inclined to believe was 
land. Perhaps the wish might be father to the 
thought, and the days of travel over the white sur¬ 
face of the ice, with the constant effort to find a 
place to cross the innumerable leads had brought 
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