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My impression, with respect to the vast field of paleocrystic ice, is that at certain seasons as when, for instance, two or three very mild winters have occurred in succession in the Arctic circle, followed possibly by exceptionally hot summers it undergoes partial disruption, splitting up, in fact, into several lesser fields which drift for longer or shorter distances out into the open Polar Sea.
"It is as I feared," said von Schalckenberg, after they had toiled painfully over the surface for some time; "we have reached the region of paleocrystic or ancient ice; and my cherished theory of an open sea about the North Pole vanishes into thin air.
The foregoing was written while out on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, just after crossing the raftered hummocks of the ice of the Big Lead. While we were waiting for the rest of the expedition to gather in, I slumped down behind a peak of land or paleocrystic ice, and made the entry in my diary.
The Commander gave the word, "We will plant the stars and stripes at the North Pole!" and it was done; on the peak of a huge paleocrystic floeberg the glorious banner was unfurled to the breeze, and as it snapped and crackled with the wind, I felt a savage joy and exultation.
"How can I handle all the English of both forts unless I win some of them for friends?" he would ask, never laying unction to his soul for the kindness that he practised. By Christmas, too, the snow had ceased falling and the frost turned the land to a silent, white, paleocrystic world. Sap-frozen timbers cracked with the loud, sharp snapping of pistol-shots then the white silence!
"Now praise be Heaven, that little ward will open the way for us in England, Chouart," said M. de Radisson, as he moodily listened to news of the trouble abrewing in Quebec. And all the way up the St. Lawrence, as the rolling tide lapped our keel, I was dreaming of a far, cold paleocrystic sea, mystic in the frost-clouds that lay over it like smoke. Then a figure emerged from the white darkness.
We are sheltered north of a huge paleocrystic floeberg; and the dogs are at rest, with their noses in their tails. Dr. Goodsell has set his boys to work building an igloo, which will not be needed, for I see Ooqueah and Egingwah piling up the loads on their sledges, and Professor MacMillan is very busy with his own personal sledge.
And, whilst they were still wondering what this singular phenomenon might portend, a hoarse low muffled roar, accompanied by an occasional grinding crash, smote upon their ears through the heavy swish of the rain; the dull white monotonous expanse of the ice-field was abruptly broken into by a jagged irregular-shaped black blot ahead; and, almost before they had time to realise the extraordinary change, the Flying Fish had swept beyond the northern boundary of the immense expanse of paleocrystic ice, and was careering northward, at an elevation of about a thousand feet, above the surface of a liquid sea which raged and chafed and tossed its foamy arms to heaven under the influence of the fast-diminishing gale.
"They were Vikings; and their leader it must unquestionably have been who drew the chart found by us in the Viking ship buried in the ice of the paleocrystic sea.
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