do, of slow, ticklish climbing. Doctor Rolfe rounded
bergs, scaled perilous inclines, leaped crevices.

It was cold as death now. Was it ten below? The gale bit like twenty
below.

When the big northeast wind drove the ice back into Anxious Bight and
heaped it inshore, the pressure had decreased as the mass of the floe
diminished in the direction of the sea. The outermost areas had not
felt the impact. They had not folded--had not "raftered." When the
wind failed they had subsided toward the open. As they say on the
coast, the ice had "gone abroad." It was distributed. And after that
the sea had fallen flat; and a vicious frost had caught the
floe--widespread now--and frozen it fast. It was six miles from the
edge of the raftered ice to the first island of the Spotted Horses.
The flat pans were solid enough, safe and easy going; but this new,
connecting ice--the lanes and reaches of it----

Doctor Rolfe's succinct characterization of the condition of Anxious
Bight was also keen: "Soft as cheese!"

All that day the sun had fallen hot on the young ice in which the
scattered pans of the floe were frozen. Some of the wider patches of
green ice had been weakened to the breaking point. Here and there they
must have been eaten clear through. Doctor Rolfe contemplated an
advance with distaste. And by and by the first brief barrier of new ice
confronted him. He must cross it. A black film--the color of water in
that light--bridged the way from one pan to another. He would not touch
it. He leaped it easily. A few fathoms forward a second space halted
him. Must he put foot on it? With a running start he could----Well, he
chose not to touch the second space, but to leap it.

Soon a third interval stopped him. No man could leap it. He cast about
for another way. There was none. He must run across. He scowled.
Disinclination increased. He snarled: "Green ice!" He crossed then
like a cat--on tiptoe and swiftly; and he came to the other side with
his heart in a flutter. "Whew!"

The ice had yielded without breaking. It had creaked, perhaps; nothing
worse. It was what is called "rubber ice." There was more of it; there
were miles of it. The nearer the open sea the more widespread was the
floe. Beyond--hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the
open--the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater. At a trot for
the time over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing
little spurts across the bending ice, Doctor