gloomy sky,
league after league, endless, sombre, infinitely vast, infinitely
formidable. But now it was no longer the smooth ice over which the
expedition had for so long been travelling. In every direction,
intersecting one another at ten thousand points, crossing and
recrossing, weaving a gigantic, bewildering network of gashed, jagged,
splintered ice-blocks, ran the pressure-ridges and hummocks. In places a
score or more of these ridges had been wedged together to form one huge
field of broken slabs of ice miles in width, miles in length. From
horizon to horizon there was no level place, no open water, no pathway.
The view to the southward resembled a tempest-tossed ocean suddenly
frozen.

One of these ridges Bennett had just climbed, and upon it he now stood.
Even for him, unencumbered, carrying no weight, the climb had been
difficult; more than once he had slipped and fallen. At times he had
been obliged to go forward almost on his hands and knees. And yet it was
across that jungle of ice, that unspeakable tangle of blue-green slabs
and cakes and blocks, that the expedition must now advance, dragging its
boats, its sledges, its provisions, instruments, and baggage.

Bennett stood looking. Before him lay his task. There under his eyes was
the Enemy. Face to face with him was the titanic primal strength of a
chaotic world, the stupendous still force of a merciless nature, waiting
calmly, waiting silently to close upon and crush him. For a long time he
stood watching. Then the great brutal jaw grew more salient than ever,
the teeth set and clenched behind the close-gripped lips, the cast in
the small twinkling eyes grew suddenly more pronounced. One huge fist
raised, and the arm slowly extended forward like the resistless moving
of a piston. Then when his arm was at its full reach Bennett spoke as
though in answer to the voiceless, terrible challenge of the Ice.
Through his clenched teeth his words came slow and measured.

"But I'll break you, by God! believe me, I will."

After a while he returned to the tent, awoke the cook, and while
breakfast was being prepared completed his calculations for latitude,
wrote up his ice-journal, and noted down the temperature and the
direction and velocity of the wind. As he was finishing, Richard
Ferriss, who was the chief engineer and second in command, awoke and
immediately asked the latitude.

"Seventy-four-fifteen," answered Bennett without looking up.

"Seventy-four-fi