After saying good-by to MacMillan I followed the other three divisions to the north, bringing up the rear as previously. The going in this march was similar to that of the previous one, fairly good, as it was over the old floes. The soreness in my fractured leg which had troubled me more or less all the way from Cape Columbia was now almost entirely gone.
Late in the afternoon we began to hear loud reports and rumblings among the floes, as well as the more sibilant sound of the raftering young ice in various directions. This meant more open water ahead of us. Soon an active lead cut right across our path, and on the farther or northern side of it we could see that the ice was moving. The lead seemed to narrow toward the west, and we followed it a little way until we came to a place where there were large pieces of floating ice, some of them fifty or a hundred feet across. We got the dogs and sledges from one piece of ice to another—the whole forming a sort of pontoon bridge.
As Borup was getting his team across the open crack between two pieces of floating ice, the dogs slipped and went into the water. Leaping forward, the vigorous young athlete stopped the sledge from following the dogs, and, catching hold of the traces that fastened the dogs to the sledge, he pulled them bodily out of the water. A man less quick and muscular than Borup might have lost the whole team as well as the sledge laden with five hundred pounds of supplies, which, considering our position far out in that icy wilderness, were worth more to us than their weight in diamonds. Of course, had the sledge gone in, the weight of it would have carried the dogs to the bottom of the sea. We drew a long breath, and, reaching the solid ice on the other side of this pontoon bridge, plunged on to the north. But we had gone only a short distance when right in front of us the ice separated with loud reports, forming another open lead, and we were obliged to camp.
The temperature that night was 50° below zero; there was a fresh breeze from the southeast and enough moisture in the open water close by us to give the wind a keen edge, which made the time occupied in building igloos decidedly unpleasant. But we were all so thankful over our escape from losing that imperiled sledge with its precious load that personal discomforts seemed indeed of small account.
CHAPTER XXVI
BORUP'S FARTHEST NORTH
That night was one of the noisiest that I have ever spent in an igloo, and none of us slept very soundly. Hour after hour the rumbling and complaining of the ice continued, and it would not have surprised us much if at any moment the ice had split directly across our camp, or even through the middle of one of our igloos. It was not a pleasant situation, and every member of the party was glad when the time came to get under way again.
In the morning we found a passage across the lead a short distance to the east of our camp over some fragments which had become cemented together during the cold night. We had only gone forward a few hundred yards when we came upon the igloo which Henson had occupied. This did not indicate rapid progress.
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY