In the evening we started across Baffin Bay to go to Jones Sound on the Canadian side. We had intended to go further north to Etah, which was only about sixty miles away. But it was getting pretty late in the season and the Morrissey was giving Cap’n Bob a good deal of worry. While she was [[128]]well patched up, she still leaked a bit and lots of places were sprung. For instance, the forward deck leaked so badly that when the walrus meat was piled on deck the blood dripped right down into our cabin and got on the table and especially into Bob Peary’s bunk. It just wasn’t possible to fix the deck, which had to be recaulked all over, until the vessel got to a shipyard.
Anyway, it seemed better not to go much further north. Also, we had to go back to Holsteinsborg on the Greenland side to get the Hobbs party. If it wasn’t for that Captain Bob would have gone to Etah.
After a day of fine going with some hours of a pretty stiff wind and rather rough sea, we arrived at the mouth of Jones Sound where we were greeted with a thick fog that put ice on all the rigging. After going quite a way up Jones Sound, hoping to get to the lower land where there might be musk-oxen, we were stopped by thick pan ice. Also new ice [[129]]was forming in the night. Evidently winter was just around the corner.
We turned around and went out again toward the mouth and then waited for the fog to clear up. There was lots of pan ice all around us and of course it wasn’t safe to risk getting caught by the ice too far in. A sudden change in the wind, for instance, might jam it all around us and keep us from getting out at all.
In the early afternoon the fog disappeared and we went in to Craig Harbor, on the north shore of the sound on Ellesmere Land. Dad, Rasmussen, Doc and Joe the sailor went ashore and reported that the station was closed. This is the most northerly police post in the world, occupied most of the time by the famous Northwest Mounted Police.
Much to our disappointment there was nobody at the station. We learned later they had moved to a new station further north on Ellesmere Land. We left a note [[130]]saying that we had been there. There were two main buildings, a barracks and a store house, with oil barrels and sacks of coal piled up around. It all looked very neat. The buildings themselves were locked.
Dressing a Walrus. Left to Right: Dan, Joe, Art, David and Carl.
When we left Craig Harbor we saw two big bearded seal on the ice quite a distance away. When the Morrissey got quite close to one Art Young shot him dead with a rifle with a beautiful shot right through the neck, and then he turned around and shot at the other. He hit him all right but he wriggled off the ice pan and most likely sank.
When they were getting the first seal Jim, the sailor, who is used to killing seal on the spring Newfoundland seal hunts, jumped on the pan and cracked the seal over the head with a heavy seal hook. This broke the skull and injured the specimen for scientific use. So I was told to keep a watch out for more as we very much wanted to get a perfect specimen. [[131]]