the ice bending under the weight of the sledges and the men. As one of
the sledges neared the north side, a runner cut clear through the ice,
and I expected every moment that the whole thing, dogs and all, would go
through the ice and down to the bottom. But it did not.

This dash reminded me of that day, nearly three years before, when in
order to save our lives we had taken desperate chances in recrossing the
"Big Lead" on ice similar to this--ice that buckled under us and through
which my toe cut several times as I slid my long snowshoes over it. A
man who should wait for the ice to be really safe would stand small
chance of getting far in these latitudes. Traveling on the polar ice,
one takes all kinds of chances. Often a man has the choice between the
possibility of drowning by going on or starving to death by standing
still, and challenges fate with the briefer and less painful chance.

That night we were all pretty tired, but satisfied with our progress so
far. We were almost inside of the 89th parallel, and I wrote in my
diary: "Give me three more days of this weather!" The temperature at the
beginning of the march had been minus 40 deg.. That night I put all the
poorest dogs in one team and began to eliminate and feed them to the
others, as it became necessary.

We stopped for only a short sleep, and early in the evening of the same
day, the 4th, we struck on again. The temperature was then minus 35 deg.,
the going was the same, but the sledges always haul more easily when the
temperature rises, and the dogs were on the trot much of the time.
Toward the end of the march we came upon a lead running north and south,
and as the young ice was thick enough to support the teams, we traveled
on it for two hours, the dogs galloping along and reeling off the miles
in a way that delighted my heart. The light air which had blown from the
south during the first few hours of the march veered to the east and
grew keener as the hours wore on.

I had not dared to hope for such progress as we were making. Still the
biting cold would have been impossible to face by anyone not fortified
by an inflexible purpose. The bitter wind burned our faces so that they
cracked, and long after we got into camp each day they pained us so that
we could hardly go to sleep. The Eskimos complained much, and at every
camp fixed their fur clothing about their faces, waists, knees, and
wrists. They also complained of their noses, which I had never