Adrift on an Ice-Pan | Page 4

never looked behind him; "Watch," the
youngster of the team, long-legged and speedy, with great liquid eyes
and a Gordon-setter coat; "Sue," a large, dark Eskimo, the image of a
great black wolf, with her sharp-pointed and perpendicular ears, for she
"harked back" to her wild ancestry; "Jerry," a large roan-colored slut,
the quickest of all my dogs on her feet, and so affectionate that her
overtures of joy had often sent me sprawling on my back; "Jack," a
jet-black, gentle-natured dog, more like a retriever, that always ran next
the sledge, and never looked back but everlastingly pulled straight
ahead, running always with his nose to the ground.
[Illustration: THE SETTLEMENT AT ST. ANTHONY]
It was late in April, when there is always the risk of getting wet through
the ice, so that I was carefully prepared with spare outfit, which
included a change of garments, snow-shoes, rifle, compass, axe, and
oilskin overclothes. The messengers were anxious that their team
should travel back with mine, for they were slow at best and needed a
lead. My dogs, however, being a powerful team, could not be held back,
and though I managed to wait twice for their sleigh, I had reached a
village about twenty miles on the journey before nightfall, and had fed
the dogs, and was gathering a few people for prayers when they caught

me up.
During the night the wind shifted to the northeast, which brought in fog
and rain, softened the snow, and made travelling very bad, besides
heaving a heavy sea into the bay. Our drive next morning would be
somewhat over forty miles, the first ten miles on an arm of the sea, on
salt-water ice.
[Illustration: ON A JOURNEY]
In order not to be separated too long from my friends, I sent them ahead
two hours before me, appointing a rendezvous in a log tilt that we have
built in the woods as a halfway house. There 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 tangling their traces
around him in the slob. This flashed into my mind, and I managed to