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