refuge.

Taking all the run that the length of my little pan would afford, I
made a dive, slithering along the surface as far as possible before I
once again fell through. This time I had taken the precaution to tie
the harnesses under the dogs' bellies so that they could not slip them
off, and after a long fight I was able to drag myself onto the new
pan.

Though we had been working all the while toward the shore, the
offshore wind had driven us a hundred yards farther seaward. On closer
examination I found that the pan on which we were resting was not ice
at all, but snow-covered slob, frozen into a mass which would
certainly eventually break up in the heavy sea, which was momentarily
increasing as the ice drove offshore before the wind. The westerly
wind kept on rising--a bitter blast with us in winter, coming as it
does over the Gulf ice.

Some yards away I could still see my komatik with my thermos bottle
and warm clothing on it, as well as matches and wood. In the memory of
the oldest inhabitant no one had ever been adrift on the ice in this
bay, and unless the team which had gone ahead should happen to come
back to look for me, there was not one chance in a thousand of my
being seen.

To protect myself from freezing I now cut down my long boots as far as
the feet, and made a kind of jacket, which shielded my back from the
rising wind.

By midday I had passed the island to which I had crossed on the ice
bridge. The bridge was gone, so that if I did succeed in reaching
that island I should only be marooned there and die of starvation.
Five miles away to the north side of the bay the immense pans of
Arctic ice were surging to and fro in the ground seas and thundering
against the cliffs. No boat could have lived through such surf, even
if I had been seen from that quarter. Though it was hardly, safe to
move about on my little pan, I saw that I must have the skins of some
of my dogs, if I were to live the night out without freezing. With
some difficulty I now succeeded in killing three of my dogs--and I
envied those dead beasts whose troubles were over so quickly. I
questioned if, once I passed into the open sea, it would not be better
to use my trusty knife on myself than to die by inches.

But the necessity for work saved me from undue philosophizing; and
night found me ten miles on my seaward voyage, with the three dogs
skinned and their fur wrapped around me as a coat. I also frayed a
small piece of rope