Consequently, after we took up our journey the next morning we made another effort to find a way out through the rafters and the deep snow. About noon we had to abandon the attempt and turn back to the land; on the way back we broke one of the runners of the sledge and had to stop for about two hours to repair it. When we finally reached the land again we found better going, after we had followed the shore-line westward for a little while, and as we approached the mouth of Selfridge Bay we found it improving more and more. We got out on the ice along shore and found the way easier than it had been before, so that we were able to get to Blossom Point before we camped. The sky was overcast all day and the light was very bad. While Kataktovick was building the igloo at night I went on ahead for some distance and found that the going was getting still better.
The next morning we started out over the ice. Shortly after we left our camp we broke our sledge again but Kataktovick soon had it repaired. While he was working on it, I went ahead with the pickaxe. We got under way again and worked through the raftered ice all day long, making the road much of the way. Ahead of us, beyond the edge of the raftered ice, we could see that the air was filled with condensation, indicating the presence of open water and showing that the ice outside the raftered ice must be moving under the impetus of the high, westerly wind. Just before dark we almost reached the edge of the still ice, about five miles from land. Here we found a very high rafter which, though not very wide, would nevertheless retard us for two hours while we completed the road. Once we were out on the running ice, as we should be by the next day, we should have much easier going, though we should undoubtedly have a great deal of open water to contend with. We made our igloo on the raftered ice. I was wearing snow-goggles and though I slept in them, so that I could get my eyes well accustomed to them, my left eye was now paining me a good deal. From the time we left Blossom Point I never again in our journey got a sight of Wrangell Island, on account of the overcast sky and the drifting snow.
On March 24 we started at dawn as usual and were not long in working our way through the rough going in the rafter out upon the running ice. The westerly gale kept the ice in constant motion and Kataktovick did not like this, but we had the satisfaction of knowing that the open water meant seal and seal in turn meant bear, either of which would be valuable additions to our food supply. In fact, just before I slid down from the outer rafter on to the running ice, I saw two seal in a lead.
CHAPTER XX
ACROSS THE MOVING ICE
From now on, our journey became a never-ending 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 travelling. 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 condensation 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 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 sometimes, no matter how far we looked in either direction—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 exercise of all the training I had gained in my twenty years of Newfoundland sealing and Arctic exploration with Peary to negotiate these constantly recurring 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.
McKinlay Williamson Templeman Chafe Williams
FIVE OF THE MEN OF THE KARLUK ON WRANGELL ISLAND