the reader. Had the accident occurred
at a time when the ship was between two big floes, the fortress of the
North Pole might still remain uncaptured. It was after midnight before
we got under way, and half an hour later we were stopped again by the
impassable ice.

On the fourth day we lay quiet all day long, with a slight breeze from
Princess Marie Bay setting us slowly eastward; but, as the sun was
shining, we utilized the time in drying our clothing, wet and soggy from
the almost continuous rain and snow of the previous two days. As it was
still summertime in the Arctic, we did not suffer from cold. The pools
between the ice floes were slowly enlarging, and at nine in the evening
we were on our way again, but at eleven we ran into a thick fog. All
night we bored and twisted through the ice, which, though thick, was not
heavy for the _Roosevelt_, and only once or twice we had to back her. An
ordinary ship could have made no headway whatever.

Wardwell, the chief engineer, stood his eight-hour or twelve-hour watch
the same as his assistants, and during the passage of these dangerous
channels he was nearly always in the engine-room, watching the machinery
to see that no part of it got out of order at a crucial moment--which
would have meant the loss of the ship. When we were between two big
floes, forcing our way through, I would call down the tube leading from
the bridge to the engine-room:

"Chief, you've got to keep her moving until I give you word, no matter
what happens."

Sometimes the ship would get stuck between the corners of two floes
which were slowly coming together. At such a time a minute is an
eternity. I would call down the tube to Wardwell, "You've got to jump
her now, the length of fifty yards," or whatever it might be. And I
could feel the ship shaking under me as she seemed to take the flying
leap, under the impulse of live steam poured directly from the boilers
into the fifty-two-inch low-pressure cylinder.

The engines of the _Roosevelt_ have what is called a by-pass, by which
the live steam can be turned into the big cylinder, more than doubling
the power of the engines for a few minutes. This simple bit of mechanism
has saved us from being crushed flat by the ice on more than one
occasion.

The destruction of a ship between two ice floes is not sudden, like her
destruction by a submarine mine, for instance. It is a slow and
gradually increasing pressure from both sides, sometimes till th