United States or Guam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Atkinson had started for a point a little more than a mile away; at 10.30 he had been five hours away; what conclusion could be drawn? And yet I felt it most difficult to imagine an accident on open floe with no worse pitfall than a shallow crack or steep-sided snow drift. At least I could feel that every spot which was likely to be the scene of such an accident would be searched.
So irresistible had been the momentum of the great floe, that it lifted her out of the water as two or three hands would run up a bark canoe on a gravelly beach. This lifting process had, very fortunately for the craft, been effected by an application of force from below, in a wedge-like manner, and by bringing the strongest defences of the vessel to meet the power.
Now the new seal-holes are not two days distant. Let the good hunters go to-morrow and bring back the seal I have speared twenty-five seal buried in the ice. When we have eaten those we will all follow the seal on the floe." "What do YOU do?" said the sorcerer in the same sort of voice as he used to Kadlu, richest of the Tununirmiut.
When the ship was crushed, all the monthly records were saved, but the detailed tracings, which had been packed up in the hold, were lost. Though interesting they were not really essential. Continuous observations were made during the long drift on the floe and while on Elephant Island the temperature was taken at midday each day as long as the thermometers lasted.
It was fortunate that Bobby had selected the center of the floe for his night shelter, for when he awoke in the morning and crawled out of his snow cavern he discovered that the unstable shore ice of which the floe was composed had been gradually breaking up during the night into separate pans, and that he was now upon a comparatively small floe, little more indeed than a large pan, which had originally been the center of the great floe upon which he went adrift.
We have had comparatively little aurora of late, but last night was an exception; there was a good display at 3 A.M. P.M. Just before lunch the sunshine could be seen gilding the floe, and Ponting and I walked out to the bergs. The nearest one has been overturned and is easily climbed. From the top we could see the sun clear over the rugged outline of C. Barne.
I became more convinced that she carried Northmour and his friends, and that they would probably come ashore after dark; not only because that was of a piece with the secrecy of the preparations, but because the tide would not have flowed sufficiently before eleven to cover Graden Floe and the other sea quags that fortified the shore against invaders.
One stop was due to water having run over the friction gear and frozen. It was a day or two later that we heard a great yell from the floe and found Clark dancing about and shouting Scottish war-cries. He had secured his first complete specimen of an Antarctic fish, apparently a new species. Mirages were frequent.
But they had tarried too long, for, not a hundred rods from their starting point, they came upon a broad, dark break in the floe, such a break as no draw-bridge of ice would ever span. "And, like the other, it's endless," Phi groaned as his eye swept the line from left to right and from right to left again; then he sat down to think.
With heavy heart he at last set about with his snow knife, digging the komatik from under the drift and getting his load in order, and then he roused the dogs from their drifts and drove them to the land. The great floe was now but a speck upon the far horizon. There was nothing more he could do.
Word Of The Day