ere making ready to attach the cables, when an ice-floe, about an
acre in extent with a sharp, projecting point like the ram of a
battleship, came surging along toward the _Roosevelt_, and we were
obliged to shift our position. Before the ship was secured, she was
again threatened by the same floe, which seemed to be endowed with
malign intelligence and to follow us like a bloodhound. We retired to
still another position, and secured the vessel and finally the
threatening floe passed onwards to the south.

There was no sleep for any one that sunlit night. About ten o'clock the
berg fragment to which we were attached drifted loose under the pressure
of the furious wind and the rising tide. In contracted space, with the
ice whirling and eddying about us, we hastily got our lines in and
shifted to another place, only to be driven out of it. We sought still
another place of shelter, and in turn were also driven out of that. A
third attempt to find safety was successful, but before it was
accomplished the _Roosevelt_ had twice been aground forward, her heel
had been caught by a berg's spur, and her after rail smashed by the
onslaught of another berg.

Saturday, the 29th, was another day of delay but I found some comfort in
thinking of my little son in the far-away home. It was his fifth
birthday, and Percy, Matt, and I, his three chums, drank a bottle of
champagne in his honor. Robert E. Peary, Junior! What were they doing at
home? I wondered.

I think that none of the members of the expedition will ever forget the
following day, the 30th of August. The _Roosevelt_ was kicked about by
the floes as if she had been a football. The game began about four
o'clock in the morning. I was in my cabin trying to get a little
sleep--with my clothes on, for I had not dared to remove them for a
week. My rest was cut short by a shock so violent that, before I
realized that anything _had_ happened, I found myself on deck--a deck
that inclined to starboard some twelve or fifteen degrees. I ran, or
rather climbed the deck, to the port side and saw what had happened. A
big floe, rushing past with the current, had picked up the grounded berg
to which we were attached by the hawsers, as if that thousand-ton berg
had been a toy, and dashed it against the _Roosevelt_ and clear along
her port side, smashing a big hole in the bulwarks at Marvin's room. The
berg brought up against another one just aft of us, and the _Roosevelt_
slipped from betwee