Leaping to my feet and looking through the peep-hole of our igloo, I was startled to see a broad lead of black water between our two igloos and Bartlett's, the nearer edge of water being close to our entrance; and on the opposite side of the lead stood one of Bartlett's men yelling and gesticulating with all the abandon of an excited and thoroughly frightened Eskimo.
Awakening my men, I kicked our snow door into fragments and was outside in a moment. The break in the ice had occurred within a foot of the fastening of one of my dog teams, the team escaping by just those few inches from being dragged into the water. Another team had just escaped being buried under a pressure ridge, the movement of the ice having providentially stopped after burying the bight which held their traces to the ice. Bartlett's igloo was moving east on the ice raft which had broken off, and beyond it, as far as the belching fog from the lead would let us see, there was nothing but black water. It looked as if the ice raft which carried Bartlett's division would impinge against our side a little farther on, and I shouted to his men to break camp and hitch up their dogs in a hurry, in readiness to rush across to us should the opportunity present itself.
Then I turned to consider our own position. Our two igloos, Henson's and mine, were on a small piece of old floe, separated by a crack and a low pressure ridge, a few yards away, from a large floe lying to the west of us. It was clear that it would take very little strain or pressure to detach us and set us afloat also like Bartlett's division.
I routed Henson and his men out of their igloo, gave orders to everybody to pack and hitch up immediately, and, while this was being done, leveled a path across the crack to the big floe at the west of us. This was done with a pickax, leveling the ice down into the crack, so as to make a continuous surface over which the sledges could pass. As soon as the loads were across and we were safe on the floe, we all went to the edge of the lead and stood ready to assist Bartlett's men in rushing their sledges across the moment their ice raft should touch our side.
Slowly the raft drifted nearer and nearer, until the side of it crunched against the floe. The two edges being fairly even, the raft lay alongside us as a boat lies against a wharf, and we had no trouble in getting Bartlett's men and sledges across and onto the floe with us.
Though there is always a possibility that a lead may open directly across a floe as large as this one, we could not waste our sleeping hours in sitting up to watch for it. Our former igloos being lost to us, there was nothing to do but to build another set and turn in immediately. It goes without saying that this extra work was not particularly agreeable. That night we slept with our mittens on, ready at a moment's notice for anything that might happen. Had a new lead formed directly across the sleeping platform of our igloo, precipitating us into the icy water, we should not have been surprised after the first shock of the cold bath, but should have clambered out, scraping the water off our fur garments, and made ready for the next move on the part of our treacherous antagonist—the ice.
Notwithstanding the extra fatigue and the precarious position of our camp, this last march had put us well beyond my record of three years before, probably 87° 12´, so that I went to sleep with the satisfaction of having at last beaten my own record, no matter what the morrow might bring forth.
The following day, March 29, was not a happy one for us. Though we were all tired enough to rest, we did not enjoy picnicking beside this arctic Phlegethon, which, hour after hour, to the north, northeast, and northwest, seemed to belch black smoke like a prairie fire. So dense was this cloud caused by the condensation of the vapor and the reflection in it of the black water below that we could not see the other shore of the lead—if, indeed, it had a northern shore. As far as the evidence of our senses went, we might be encamped on the edge of that open polar sea which myth-makers have imagined as forever barring the way of man to the northern end of the earth's axis. It was heart-breaking, but there was nothing to do but wait. After breakfast we overhauled the sledges and made a few repairs, dried out some of our garments over the little oil lamps which we carried for that purpose, and Bartlett made a sounding of 1,260 fathoms, but found no bottom. He did not let all the line go out, fearing there might be a defect in the wire which would lose us more of it, as we were desirous of keeping all that we had for a sounding at our "farthest north," which we hoped would be at the Pole itself. I had only one sounding lead now left, and I would not let Bartlett risk it at this point, but had him use a pair of sledge shoes (brought along for this very purpose from the last broken up sledge) to carry the line down.
When our watches told us that it was bedtime—for we were now in the period of perpetual sunlight—we again turned into the igloos which had been hurriedly built after our exciting experience the night before. A low murmur as of distant surf was issuing from the blackness ahead of us, and steadily growing in volume. To the inexperienced it might have seemed an ominous sound, but to us it was a cheering thing because we knew it meant the narrowing, and perhaps the closing, of the stretch of open water that barred our way. So we slept happily in our frosty huts that "night."