This pause in good weather gave an opportunity to exercise the dogs,
which were taken on to the floe by the men in charge of them. The
excitement of the animals was intense. Several managed to get into the
water, and the muzzles they were wearing did not prevent some hot
fights. Two dogs which had contrived to slip their muzzles fought
themselves into an icy pool and were hauled out still locked in a
grapple. However, men and dogs enjoyed the exercise. A sounding gave
a depth of 2400 fathoms, with a blue mud bottom. The wind freshened
from the west early the next morning, and we started to skirt the
northern edge of the solid pack in an easterly direction under sail.
We had cleared the close pack by noon, but the outlook to the south
gave small promise of useful progress, and I was anxious now to make
easting. We went north-east under sail, and after making thirty-nine
miles passed a peculiar berg that we had been abreast of sixty hours
earlier. Killer-whales were becoming active around us, and I had to
exercise caution in allowing any one to leave the ship. These beasts
have a habit of locating a resting seal by looking over the edge of a
floe and then striking through the ice from below in search of a meal;
they would not distinguish between seal and man.
The noon position on January 8 was lat.
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