Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/307

288 state of the ice over which we expected to travel that day, and found it rent here and there with wide and diversified fissures. The prospect before us was certainly not very flattering, still we determined on doing the best we could in making a trial. This trial we made, but with what success will now appear. In passing almost direct for Rogers's Island we found the ice of a very dangerous character. It was groaning and cracking to an alarming extent. The open water was only some three miles off, and the heaving sea beneath us threw up the frozen mass upon which we travelled in a way that made it doubtful if we could proceed. Wide fissures and numerous tide-holes were met, and frequently my companion Ebierbing and myself had to move along the edge of these fissures for some distance before we could find any passage across. On one occasion the dogs were trotting along by the side of an ice-fissure, while I was intent upon examining the land we were passing, and Ebierbing was looking after a seal; they suddenly drew the sledge almost into the yawning chasm; but, on my raising a cry of warning, Ebierbing, by a word, turned the team off from the dangerous spot, and thus saved us. We arrived at Rogers's Island at 7 and made our second encampment, having made the distance of just twenty miles from Cape Haven on a course N. by W. true. We were detained on Rogers's Island one full day and two nights by a terrific gale and snow-storm which occurred on the 24th. It was an anxious time with us, for there was every probability that the gale would make disastrous work with the ice over which I intended to make my return to the ship. In case it did so, we should not be able to reach the vessel in less than two or three weeks, as we should have been obliged to make our way as best we could to the land on the opposite side of the bay, and thence, abandoning everything, to have gone on foot over mountains of rock and snow to Field Bay. Fortunately, we were preserved from this peril, and on the 25th of June we reached Allen's Island in safety; but, although I had originally intended to go to the extreme of