A Mans Woman | Page 4

ropes like draught-horses, and that Muck Tu
flogged the dogs till the goad broke in his hands. The men lost their
footing upon the slippery ice and fell to their knees; the dogs laid down
in the traces groaning and whining. The sledge would not move.
"Unload!" commanded Bennett.
The lashings were taken off, and the loads, including the great,
cumbersome whaleboat itself, carried over the hummock by hand. Then
the sledge itself was hauled over and reloaded upon the other side. Thus
the whole five sledges.
The work was bitter hard; the knots of the lashings were frozen tight
and coated with ice; the cases of provisions, the medicine chests, the
canvas bundle of sails, boat-covers, and tents unwieldy and of
enormous weight; the footing on the slippery, uneven ice precarious,
and more than once a man, staggering under his load, broke through the
crust into water so cold that the sensation was like that of burning.
But at last everything was over, the sledges reloaded, and the forward
movement resumed. Only one low hummock now intervened between
them and the longed-for level floe.
However, as they were about to start forward again a lamentable

gigantic sound began vibrating in their ears, a rumbling, groaning note
rising by quick degrees to a strident shriek. Other sounds, hollow and
shrill--treble mingling with diapason--joined in the first. The noise
came from just beyond the pressure-mound at the foot of which the
party had halted.
"Forward!" shouted Bennett; "hurry there, men!"
Desperately eager, the men bent panting to their work. The sledge
bearing the whaleboat topped the hummock.
"Now, then, over with her!" cried Ferriss.
But it was too late. As they stood looking down upon it for an instant,
the level floe, their one sustaining hope during all the day, suddenly
cracked from side to side with the noise of ordnance. Then the groaning
and shrieking recommenced. The crack immediately closed up, the
pressure on the sides of the floe began again, and on the smooth surface
of the ice, domes and mounds abruptly reared themselves. As the
pressure increased these domes and mounds cracked and burst into
countless blocks and slabs. Ridge after ridge was formed in the
twinkling of an eye. Thundering like a cannonade of siege guns, the
whole floe burst up, jagged, splintered, hummocky. In less than three
minutes, and while the Freja's men stood watching, the level stretch
toward which since morning they had struggled with incalculable toil
was ground up into a vast mass of confused and pathless rubble.
"Oh, this will never do," muttered Ferriss, disheartened.
"Come on, men!" exclaimed Bennett. "Mr. Ferriss, go forward, and
choose a road for us."
The labour of the morning was recommenced. With infinite patience,
infinite hardship, the sledges one by one were advanced. So heavy were
the three larger McClintocks that only one could be handled at a time,
and that one taxed the combined efforts of men and dogs to the
uttermost. The same ground had to be covered seven times. For every
yard gained seven had to be travelled. It was not a march, it was a battle;
a battle without rest and without end and without mercy; a battle with
an Enemy whose power was beyond all estimate and whose movements
were not reducible to any known law. A certain course would be
mapped, certain plans formed, a certain objective determined, and
before the course could be finished, the plans executed, or the objective
point attained the perverse, inexplicable movement of the ice baffled

their determination and set at naught their best ingenuity.
At four o'clock it began to snow. Since the middle of the forenoon the
horizon had been obscured by clouds and mist so that no observation
for position could be taken. Steadily the clouds had advanced, and by
four o'clock the expedition found itself enveloped by wind and driving
snow. The flags could no longer be distinguished; thin and treacherous
ice was concealed under drifts; the dogs floundered helplessly; the men
could scarcely open their eyes against the wind and fine, powder-like
snow, and at times when they came to drag forward the last sledge they
found it so nearly buried in the snow that it must be dug out before it
could be moved.
Toward half past five the odometer on one of the dog-sleds registered a
distance of three-quarters of a mile made since morning. Bennett called
a halt, and camp was pitched in the lee of one of the larger hummocks.
The alcohol cooker was set going, and supper was had under the tent,
the men eating as they lay in their sleeping-bags. But even while eating
they fell asleep, drooping lower and lower, finally collapsing upon the
canvas floor of the tent, the food still in their mouths.
Yet,