m Cape Sabine north there was so much open water that we thought of
setting the lug sail before the southerly wind; but a little later the
appearance of ice to the north caused us to change our minds. About
sixty miles north of Etah, we came to a dead stop in the ice pack off
Victoria Head. There we lay for hours; but the time was not altogether
wasted, for we filled our tanks with ice from a floe.

In the afternoon of the second day out, the wind came on strong from the
south, and we slowly drifted northward with the ice. After some hours,
the wind began to form pools of open water through the pack, and we
steamed westward toward the land, with the spray flying clear across the
decks. An Eskimo declared that this was the devil spitting at us. After
a few miles, we ran into denser ice and stopped again.

Dr. Goodsell, MacMillan and Borup were busy storing food and medical
supplies in the boats, to be ready for an emergency. Had the _Roosevelt_
been crushed by the ice or sunk, we could have lowered the boats at a
moment's notice, fitted and equipped for a voyage, and retreated to the
Eskimo country--thence back to civilization on some whaler, or in a ship
which would have been sent up with coal the following year by the Peary
Arctic Club, though that, of course, would have meant the failure of the
expedition.

In each of the six whale-boats were placed a case containing twelve
six-pound tins of pemmican, the compressed meat food used on arctic
expeditions; two twenty-five pound tins of biscuit; two five-pound tins
of sugar, a few pounds of coffee and several cans of condensed milk; an
oil stove and five one-gallon tins of oil; a rifle with one hundred
rounds of ammunition and a shotgun with fifty rounds; matches, a
hatchet, knives, a can opener, salt, needles and thread; and the
following medical supplies: catgut and needles, bandages and cotton,
quinine, astringent (tannic acid), gauze, plaster-surgical liniment,
boracic acid, and dusting powder.

The boats were swung at the davits, with a full complement of oars,
mast, sails, etc., and the emergency outfit above described would have
fitted them for a voyage of a week or ten days. On leaving Etah the
essential items of supplies, such as tea, coffee, sugar, oil, pemmican,
and biscuit, had been stowed on deck, close to the rail on both sides,
ready instantly to be thrown over the rail onto the ice, in case the
ship should be crushed.

Every person on board, both the