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Updated: May 8, 2025
The sound swelled and sank, and at intervals they heard rain patter on the roof. "In a week or two the canoes will be out," Scott remarked. "There's a big head of water coming down and I guess the jamb that's backing up the stream won't stand till morning." "Some of it's going now; that's an extra large floe," said Thirlwell as a detonating crash rang across the woods.
After four months the floe began to melt so rapidly that it was but twenty yards wide. "We dared not sleep," says Sergeant Meyer, "fearing the ice would break under us and we should find our grave in the Arctic Sea." Several times the ice did break beneath them, and they were washed into the flood, but scrambled up again on the fast-melting floe.
Billy jumped just as the boat collapsed under him, and gained the floe. But where was the professor? For an instant the terrible thought that he had perished flashed across the boys' minds, but just then a cry made them look round, and they saw the unfortunate scientist, blue with cold and dripping with icy water, come clambering over the other side of the little floe on which they stood.
The flood rose behind it like a tidal wave, tossing on its crest a gigantic floe, standing waist-deep in which I saw, for the second during which it flashed in the sun, a frozen man, whom I recognised, who gazed upright towards me with his arms upstretched only for a second, then the bridge went down and the water leapt over it, driving timbers, and floe, and man below the surface, carrying them northwards passed the city, out of sight.
I was unfortunate as regarded footgear, since I had given away my heavy Burberry boots on the floe, and had now a comparatively light pair in poor condition. The carpenter assisted me by putting several screws in the sole of each boot with the object of providing a grip on the ice. The screws came out of the 'James Caird'. We turned in early that night, but sleep did not come to me.
At the same moment that the boat was carried away, the sea broke the whale from the lashings which secured her to the ice, and, without our having any power to preserve our prize, it was driven down along the edge of the floe, from which it gradually floated away. "What's to be done now?" I asked, with several others, in a voice of despair. "Trust in God," answered Andrew in a solemn voice.
But the next morning broke bright and shining, as if rain and wind were inhabitants of another planet. It is quite obvious that this land is a lineal descendant of Albion's Isle. Now I am aboard the coastal steamer and we are nosing our way gingerly through the packed floe ice, as we steam slowly north for Cape St. John.
The hummocky ice did not offer a suitable anchorage for the ship, and we were compelled to dodge up and down for ten hours before we were able to make fast to a small floe under the lee of a berg 120 ft. high. The berg broke the wind and saved us drifting fast to leeward.
In ten minutes the two schooners were a mile asunder. We shall first follow that, of Roswell Gardiner's, in his attempt to escape. The first floe, which was ripping and tearing one of its angles into fragments, as it came grinding down on the cape, soon compelled the vessel to tack.
We got the men at 5.30 P.M. and all the sledges and effects on to the Barrier by 4 A.M. As we were getting up the last loads the ice showed signs of drifting off, and we saw it was hopeless to try and move the ponies. The three poor beasts had to be left on their floe for the moment, well fed. None of our party had had sleep the previous night and all were dog tired.
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