On the following day, March 4, the weather changed. The sky was overcast with clouds, the wind had swung completely around to the west during the night, there were occasional squalls of light snow, and the thermometer had risen to only 9° below zero. This temperature, after that of the minus fifties, in which we had been traveling, seemed almost oppressively warm. The leads were even more numerous than the day before, and their presence was clearly outlined by the heavy black clouds. A mile or two east of us there was a lead stretching far to the north and directly parallel with our course, which did not cause us any apprehension. But a broad and ominous band of black extending far to the east and west across our course and apparently ten or fifteen miles to the north of us, gave me serious concern. Evidently the ice was all abroad in every direction, and the high temperature and snow accompanying the west wind proved that there was a large amount of open water in that direction.
The outlook was not pleasant, but as some compensation the going was not quite so rough. As we advanced, I was surprised to find that as yet none of the leads cut Bartlett's trail. Consequently we made good progress, and though the march was distinctly longer than the previous one, we reached Bartlett's igloo in good time.
STOPPED BY OPEN WATER
Here I found a note from Bartlett which had evidently been despatched by an Eskimo, informing me that he was in camp about a mile farther north—held up by open water. This explained the black, ominous band which I had been watching for hours on the northern horizon, and which had gradually risen as we approached until it was now almost overhead.
Pushing on, we soon reached the captain's camp. There I found the familiar unwelcome sight which I had so often before me on the expedition of 1905-06—the white expanse of ice cut by a river of inky black water, throwing off dense clouds of vapor which gathered in a sullen canopy overhead, at times swinging lower with the wind and obscuring the opposite shore of this malevolent Styx.
The lead had opened directly through the heavy floes, and, considering that these floes are sometimes one hundred feet in thickness, and of almost unimaginable weight, the force that could open such a river through them is comparable with the forces that threw up the mountains on the continents and opened the channels between the lands.
Bartlett told me that during the previous night in the camp a mile farther south where I had found his note, the noise caused by the opening of this great lead had awakened him from sleep. The open water was now about a quarter of a mile in width, and extended east and west as far as we could see when we climbed to the highest pinnacle of ice in the neighborhood of our camp.
Two or three miles to the east of us, as we could see by the vapor hanging over it, the north and south lead which had paralleled our last two marches intersected the course of the lead beside which we were encamped.