Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/105



HUS the first barriers to the advance into the North were passed in July. A score of vessels, ice-crushed and split, lie at the bottom of these Arctic channels; but the Viborg at last turned, in fog that was dense, dark and all-obscuring, westward to work between the islands opposite Greenland to the goal on the shores of the west polar sea.

Day after day the Arctic fog shut out the sun and the sea and blanketed icebergs ahead and alongside. The weather was not cold as thermometers show temperatures, but its penetrating dampness chilled men through and through. McNeal, tough Arctic sailor though he was, shivered at the wheel. The men on watch—and now lookouts were needed on watch everywhere, besides a man constantly to cast the lead—were near perishing with the cold, and stamped their feet and beat their 91