ere is no one living
on all that long coast-line, and to provide against accidents--which
have happened more than once--we built this hut to keep dry clothing,
food, and drugs in.

The first rain of the year was falling when I started, and I was
obliged to keep on what we call the "ballicaters," or ice barricades,
much farther up the bay than I had expected. The sea of the night
before had smashed the ponderous covering of ice right to the
landwash. There were great gaping chasms between the enormous blocks,
which we call pans, and half a mile out it was all clear water.

An island three miles out had preserved a bridge of ice, however, and
by crossing a few cracks I managed to reach it. From the island it was
four miles across to a rocky promontory,--a course that would be
several miles shorter than going round the shore. Here as far as the
eye could reach the ice seemed good, though it was very rough.
Obviously, it had been smashed up by the sea and then packed in again
by the strong wind from the northeast, and I thought it had frozen
together solid.

All went well till I was about a quarter of a mile from the
landing-point. Then the wind suddenly fell, and I noticed that I was
travelling over loose "sish," which was like porridge and probably
many feet deep. By stabbing down, I could drive my whip-handle through
the thin coating of young ice that was floating on it. The sish ice
consists of the tiny fragments where the large pans have been pounding
together on the heaving sea, like the stones of Freya's grinding mill.

So quickly did the wind now come off shore, and so quickly did the
packed "slob," relieved of the wind pressure, "run abroad," that
already I could not see one pan larger than ten feet square; moreover,
the ice was loosening so rapidly that I saw that retreat was
absolutely impossible. Neither was there any way to get off the little
pan I was surveying from.

There was not a moment to lose. I tore off my oilskins, threw myself
on my hands and knees by the side of the komatik to give a larger base
to hold, and shouted to my team to go ahead for the shore. Before we
had gone twenty yards, the dogs got frightened, hesitated for a
moment, and the komatik instantly sank into the slob. It was necessary
then for the dogs to pull much harder, so that they now began to sink
in also.

Earlier in the season the father of the very boy I was going to
operate on had been drowned in this same way, his dogs t