the steam of the boilers,
we can make no headway whatever, we wait for the ice to loosen up, and
economize our coal. We do not mind using the ship as a battering
ram--that is what she was made for; but beyond Etah coal is precious,
and every ounce of it must yield its full return of northward steaming.
The coal at present in our bunkers was all that we should have until our
return the following year, when the Peary Arctic Club would send a ship
to meet us at Etah.

[Illustration: THE MIDNIGHT SUN AS SEEN IN THE WHALE SOUND REGION]

It must be remembered that during all this time we were in the region of
constant daylight, in the season of the midnight sun. Sometimes the
weather was foggy, sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny; but there was no
darkness. The periods of day and night were measured only by our
watches--not, during the passage of these channels, by sleeping and
waking, for we slept only in those brief intervals when there was
nothing else to do. Unresting vigilance was the price we paid for our
passage.

Bartlett's judgment was reliable, but the cabin had no attraction for me
when the ship and the fortunes of the expedition were swaying in the
balance. Then, too, when the ship was butting the ice, the shock of the
impact would have made Morpheus himself sit up and rub his eyes every
few minutes.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN BARTLETT IN THE CROW'S NEST]

Owing to the stupendous and resistless character of the heavier ice, a
ship would be utterly helpless if she were ever caught fairly and
squarely between two giant floes. In such a case there would be no
escape for any structure which man could design or build. More than once
a brief nip between two big blue floes has set the whole one hundred and
eighty-four-foot length of the _Roosevelt_ vibrating like a violin
string. At other times, under the pressure on the cylinders of the
by-pass before described, the vessel would rear herself upon the ice
like a steeplechaser taking a fence. It was a glorious battle--this
charging of the ship against man's coldest enemy and possibly his
oldest, for there is no calculating the age of this glacial ice.
Sometimes, as the steel-shod stem of the _Roosevelt_ split a floe
squarely in two, the riven ice would emit a savage snarl that seemed to
have behind it all the rage of the invaded immemorial Arctic struggling
with the self-willed intruder, man. Sometimes, when the ship was in
special peril, the Eskimos on board would set u