During the first portion of the next march we passed over fragments of very heavy old floes slowly moving eastward. Frequently we were obliged to wait for the pieces to crush close enough together to let us pass from one to the other. Farther on I was compelled to bear away due east by an impracticable area extending west, northwest, north and northeast as far as could be seen, and just as we had rounded this and were bearing away to the north again, we were brought up by a lead some fifty feet wide. From this on, one day was much like another, sometimes doing a little better sometimes a little worse, but the daily advance, in spite of our best efforts, steadily decreasing. Fog and stormy weather also helped to delay us.
I quote from my Journal:
April 21st.—The game is off. My dream of sixteen years is ended. It cleared during the night and we got under way this morning, deep snow. Two small old floes. Then came another region of old rubble and deep snow. A survey from the top of a pinnacle showed this extending north, east and west, as far as could be seen. The two old floes, over which we had just come, are the only ones in sight. It is impracticable and I gave the order to camp. I have made the best fight, I knew. I believe it has been a good one. But I cannot accomplish the impossible.
A few hours after we halted there came from the ice to the north a sound like that made by a heavy surf, and it continued during our stay at this camp. Evidently the floes in that direction were crushing together under the influence of the wind, or what was, perhaps, more probable, from the long continuation of the noise, the entire pack was in slow motion to the east. A clear day enabled me to get observations which showed my latitude to be 84° 17′ 27″ N., magnetic variation, 99° west. I took some photographs of the camp, climbed and floundered through the broken fragments and waist-deep snow for a few hundred yards north of the camp, gave the dogs a double ration, then turned in to sleep, if possible, for a few hours preparatory to returning.
We started on our return soon after midnight of the 21st. It was very thick, with wind from the west and snowing heavily. I hurried our departure in order to utilise as much of our tracks as possible before they were obliterated. It was very difficult to keep the trail in the uncertain light and driving snow. We lost it repeatedly, when we would be obliged to quarter the surface like bird dogs. On reaching the last lead of the upward march, instead of the open water which had interrupted our progress then, our tracks now disappeared under a huge pressure ridge, which I estimated to be from seventy-five to one hundred feet high. Our trail was faulted here by the movement of the floes, and we lost time in picking it up on the other side.
This was to me a trying march. I had had no sleep the night before, and to the physical strain of handling my sledge was added the mental tax of trying to keep the trail. When we finally camped, it was only for a few hours, for I recognised that the entire pack was moving slowly, and that our trail was everywhere being faulted and interrupted by new pressure ridges and leads, in a way to make our return march nearly, if not quite, as slow and laborious as the outward one. The following marches were much the same. In crossing one lead I narrowly escaped losing two sledges and the dogs attached to them. Arrived at the “Grand Canal,” as I called the big lead at which I had sent two Eskimos back, the changes had been such as to make the place almost unrecognisable.
Two marches south of the Grand Canal the changes in the ice had been such, between the time of our upward trip and the return of my two men from the canal, that they, experienced as they were in all that pertains to ice-craft, had been hopelessly bewildered and wandered apparently, for at least a day, without finding the trail. After their passage other changes had taken place, and, as a result, I set a compass course for the land, and began making a new road. In the next march we picked up our old trail again.
Early in the morning of the 22d, we reached the second igloo out from Cape Hecla, and camped in a driving snowstorm. At this igloo we were storm-bound during the 27th and 28th, getting away on the 29th in the densest fog, and bent on butting our way in a “bee” line compass course, for the land. Floundering through the deep snow and ice, saved from unpleasant falls only by the forewarning of the dogs, we reached Crozier Island after a long and weary march. The band of young ice along the shore had disappeared, crushed up into confused ridges and mounds of irregular blocks.
The floe at the island camp had split in two, the crack passing through our igloo, the halves of which stared at each other across the chasm. This march finished two of my dogs, and three or four more were apparently on their last legs. We did not know how tired we were until we reached the island. The warm foggy weather and the last march together dropped our physical barometer several degrees.
