CHAPTER XXIX
BARTLETT REACHES 87° 47´
Our hopes were soon realized, for at one o'clock in the morning, March 30, when I awoke and looked at my watch, the murmur from the closing lead had increased to a hoarse roar, punctuated with groans and with reports like those of rifles, dying away to the east and west like the sounds from a mighty firing line. Looking through the peep-hole, I saw that the black curtain had thinned so that I could see through it to another similar, though blacker, curtain behind, indicating still another lead further on.
CROSSING A LARGE LAKE OF YOUNG ICE, NORTH OF 87°
("As Level as a Floor" for Six or Seven Miles. In Places This Ice Was so Thin That It Buckled Under the Sledges and Drivers)
At eight o'clock in the morning the temperature was down to minus 30°, with a bitter northwest breeze. The grinding and groaning of the ice had ceased, and the smoke and haze had disappeared, as is usual when a lead closes up or freezes over. We rushed across before the ice should open again. All this day we traveled together, Bartlett's division, Henson's, and mine, constantly crossing narrow lanes of young ice, which had only recently been open water. During this march we had to cross a lake of young ice some six or seven miles across—so thin that the ice buckled under us as we rushed on at full speed for the other side. We did our best to make up for the previous day's delay, and when we finally camped on a heavy old floe we had made a good twenty miles.
The entire region through which we had come during the last four marches was full of unpleasant possibilities for the future. Only too well we knew that violent winds for even a few hours would set the ice all abroad in every direction. Crossing such a zone on a journey north, is only half the problem, for there is always the return to be figured on. Though the motto of the Arctic must be, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," we ardently hoped there might not be violent winds until we were south of this zone again on the return.
The next march was to be Bartlett's last, and he let himself out to do his best. The going was fairly good, but the weather was thick. There was a strong northerly wind blowing full in our faces, bitter and insistent, and the temperature was in the minus thirties. But this northerly wind, though hard to struggle against, was better than an easterly or westerly one, either of which would have set us adrift in open water, while, as it was, the wind was closing up every lead behind us and thus making things easier for Bartlett's supporting party on its return. True, the wind pressure was forcing to the south the ice over which we traveled, and thus losing us miles of distance; but the advantage of frozen leads was more than compensation for this loss.