p their strange barbaric
chant--calling on the souls of their ancestors to come from the
invisible realm and help us.

Often on this last expedition of the _Roosevelt_, as on the former one,
have I seen a fireman come up from the bowels of the ship, panting for a
breath of air, take one look at the sheet of ice before us, and mutter
savagely:

"By God, she's _got_ to go through!"

Then he would drop again into the stoke hole, and a moment later an
extra puff of black smoke would rise from the stack, and I knew the
steam pressure was going up.

During the worst parts of the journey, Bartlett spent most of his time
in the crow's nest, the barrel lookout at the top of the main mast. I
would climb up into the rigging just below the crow's nest, where I
could see ahead and talk to Bartlett, backing up his opinion with my
own, when necessary, to relieve him, in the more dangerous places, of
too great a weight of responsibility.

Clinging with Bartlett, high up in the vibrating rigging, peering far
ahead for a streak of open water, studying the movement of the floes
which pressed against us, I would hear him shouting to the ship below us
as if coaxing her, encouraging her, commanding her to hammer a way for
us through the adamantine floes:

"Rip 'em, Teddy! Bite 'em in two! Go it! That's fine, my beauty!
Now--again! Once more!"

At such a time the long generations of ice and ocean fighters behind
this brave, indomitable young Newfoundland captain seemed to be
re-living in him the strenuous days that carried the flag of England
'round the world.

[Illustration: TABULAR ICEBERG AND FLOE ICE]

CHAPTER XII

THE ICE FIGHT GOES ON

To recount all the incidents of this upward journey of the _Roosevelt_
would require a volume. When we were not fighting the ice, we were
dodging it, or--worse still--waiting in some niche of the shore for an
opportunity to do more fighting. On Sunday, the sixth day out from Etah,
the water continued fairly open, and we made good progress until one
o'clock in the afternoon, when we were held up by the ice pack as we
were nearing Lincoln Bay. A cable was run out, and the ship secured to a
great floe, which extended some two miles to the north and several to
the east. The tide, which was running north at the time, had carried the
smaller ice with it, leaving the _Roosevelt_ in a sort of lake. While we
were resting there, some of the men observed a black object far out on
the great ic