of which might have been saved if we had
looked after them in time. But the men have grown so indifferent to
the pressure now that they do not even go up to look, let it thunder
ever so hard. They feel that the ship can stand it, and so long as
that is the case there is nothing to hurt except the ice itself.

"In the morning the pressure slackened again, and we were soon lying
in a large piece of open water, as we did yesterday. To-day, again,
this stretched far away towards the northern horizon, where the same
dark atmosphere indicated some extent of open water. I now gave the
order to put the engine together again; they told me it could be
done in a day and a half or at most two days. We must go north and
see what there is up there. I think it possible that it may be the
boundary between the ice-drift the Jeannette was in and the pack we
are now drifting south with--or can it be land?

"We had kept company quite long enough with the old, now broken-up
floe, so worked ourselves a little way astern after dinner, as the
ice was beginning to draw together. Towards evening the pressure began
again in earnest, and was especially bad round the remains of our old
floe, so that I believe we may congratulate ourselves on having left
it. It is evident that the pressure here stands in connection with,
is perhaps caused by, the tidal wave. It occurs with the greatest
regularity. The ice slackens twice and packs twice in 24 hours. The
pressure has happened about 4, 5, and 6 o'clock in the morning, and
almost at exactly the same hour in the afternoon, and in between we
have always lain for some part of the time in open water. The very
great pressure just now is probably due to the spring-tide; we had
new moon on the 9th, which was the first day of the pressure. Then
it was just after mid-day when we noticed it, but it has been later
every day, and now it is at 8 P.M."

The theory of the ice-pressure being caused to a considerable extent by
the tidal wave has been advanced repeatedly by Arctic explorers. During
the Fram's drifting we had better opportunity than most of them to
study this phenomenon, and our experience seems to leave no doubt
that over a wide region the tide produces movement and pressure of the
ice. It occurs especially at the time of the spring-tides, and more at
new moon than at full moon. During the intervening periods there was,
as a rule, little or no trace of pressure. But these tidal pressures
did not occu