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Dark and heavy clouds along the horizon gave indication of open water, and it was easy to see that the rough and heavy shore-ice would make no jokes for us to appreciate. About an hour or so after the midday meal, a loud outcry from the dogs made me go outside to see what was up. This was on the afternoon of February 26. I quickly saw what the dogs were excited about.
When the girls joined Phi on the edge of the ice-floe, they looked about for the guide but saw none. Only Rover barked them a welcome. "Where's the guide?" asked Lucile. "You'll see. C'm'on," said the boy, leading the way. For a mile they traveled over the solid shore-ice. They then came to a stretch of water, dark as midnight. At the edge of this was a two-seated kiak.
"We'll stick 'ere behint th' connin'-tower," the engineer explained to Dave, as the submarine, turning, put off up the dark channel which separated the solid shore-ice from the great drift of ice-floe that lay beyond. "If they submerge," suggested Dave, "we'll have a slim chance." "H'I doubt if they understant that much," mumbled the engineer between chattering teeth.
One look back showed them several boats which had fought through the night and were hopelessly frozen in; then they whirled around a bend in a current running six miles an hour. Day by day they floated down the swift river, and day by day the shore-ice extended farther out.
Here we heard the weather-vanes of the fort bastions creaking for three days to the shift of fickle winds. Shore-ice grew thicker and stretched farther to mid-current. Mock suns, or sun-dogs, as we called them, oft hung on each side of the sun. La Chesnaye said these boded ill weather.
Ships are not in the habit of coming up out of the sea in the Arctic. And now I wonder I just wonder, did they have anything to do with the disappearance of our friend Dave and the engineer?" When all hands were on board lunch was served. By the time this was over the submarine had drifted to the solid shore-ice.
Half a dozen times the startled voyagers seized their boat to drag her down from the berg, as the shore-ice gnawed into the sides of their narrowing ice-field. At last a move appeared inevitable.
I dug a passage in the ground two feet wide, two deep, and ten long, with perpendicular sides, and at its north end a circular space, twelve feet across, also with perpendicular sides, which I lined with stones; the whole excavation I covered with inch-thick walrus-hide, skinned during a whole bitter week from four of a number that lay about the shore-ice; for ridge-pole I used a thin pointed rock which I found near, though, even so, the roof remained nearly flat.
Made bold by this, they skirted the rear of the last row of huts, and, dodging down a snowed-in ravine, hid at last in the ice-heaps not twenty rods from the submarine. Not being aware, however, that their friends had succeeded in reaching the shore-ice, they crouched in their icy shelter, their teeth chattering from cold and excitement. Jarvis had an ugly slash on his right arm.
The "fast," as the whalers call the immovable shore-ice, could be seen in a nearly unbroken sweep, passing by Bushnell's Island, and joining the coast not far from where I stood. The outside floes were large, and had evidently been not long broken; but it cheered my heart to see that there was one well defined lead which followed the main floe until it lost itself to seaward.
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