Taking the long traces from all the dogs but the two lightest, I gave them the full length of the lines, tied the near ends around my own wrists, and tried to make the animals go ahead. Nothing would induce them to move, however, and though I threw them off the pan two or three times, they always struggled back on to it. Fortunately, I had with me a small black spaniel, a featherweight, with large furry paws, something like snow-shoes, who will retrieve for me. I threw a piece of ice for him, and he managed to get over the “slob” after it, on to another pan about twenty yards away. The other dogs followed him and after much painful struggling all of them got on but one.
Taking all the run I could get on my little pan, I made a rush, slithering with the impetus along the surface till once more I sank through. After a tough fight I was able to haul myself by the long traces on to this new pan. I had taken care this time to tie the harnesses, to which I was holding, under the dogs’ bellies, so that they could not slip them off. But the pan I was now on was still not enough to bear us, and so this exhausting process had to be repeated immediately to avoid sinking with it.
I now realized, much to my dismay, that though we had been working towards the land we had been losing ground all the time, for the off-shore wind had now driven us a hundred yards farther out. The widening gap was full of pounded ice, which rose to the surface as the pressure lessened. Through this no man could possibly make his way.
I was now resting on a floe about ten feet by twenty, which, when I came to examine it, was not ice at all, but simply snow-covered “slob,” frozen into a mass, and which I feared would very soon break up in the general turmoil and the heavy sea, which was continually increasing as the ice drove offshore before the wind.
At first we drifted in the direction of a rocky point on which a heavy surf was breaking, and I made up my mind, if there was clear water in the surf, to try to swim for the land. But suddenly we struck a rock, a large piece broke off the already small pan, and what was left swung around in the backwash and went right off to sea. I saw then that my pan was about a foot thick.
There was nothing now for it but to hope for rescue. Alas! there was no possibility of being seen by human eyes. As I have already mentioned, no one lives round this big bay. It was just possible, however, that the people on the other komatik, knowing I was alone and had failed to keep my tryst, would, perhaps, come back to look for me. This, however, they did not do.
Meanwhile the westerly wind—our coldest wind at this time of the year—was rising rapidly. It was very tantalizing, as I stood there with next to nothing on, the wind going through me, and every stitch soaked in ice-water, to see my komatik some fifty yards away. It was still above water, packed with food, hot tea in a Thermos bottle, dry clothing, matches, wood, and everything for making a fire to attract attention, if I should drive out far enough for someone to see me—and yet it was quite beyond my reach.
It is easy to see a black object on the ice in the day-time, for its gorgeous whiteness shows off the least thing. But, alas! the tops of bushes and large pieces of kelp have so often deceived those looking out that the watcher hesitates a long time before he takes action. Moreover, within our memory no man has ever been thus adrift on the bay ice. The chances were one in a thousand that I would be seen at all, and, even if I were, I should probably be mistaken for a fragment of driftwood or kelp.
To keep from freezing I took my long moccasins, strung out some line, split the legs, and made a kind of jacket, which preserved my back from the wind down as far as the waist.
I had not drifted more than half a mile before I saw my poor komatik disappear through the ice, which was every minute loosening up into small pans. The loss of the sledge seemed like that of a friend, and one more tie with home and safety lost.