Soon all
hands were well fed and happy in their tents, and snatches of song came
to me as I wrote up my log.
Some intangible feeling of uneasiness made me leave my tent about 11
p.m. that night and glance around the quiet camp. The stars between
the snow-flurries showed that the floe had swung round and was end on
to the swell, a position exposing it to sudden strains. I started to
walk across the floe in order to warn the watchman to look carefully
for cracks, and as I was passing the men's tent the floe lifted on the
crest of a swell and cracked right under my feet. The men were in one
of the dome-shaped tents, and it began to stretch apart as the ice
opened. A muffled sound, suggestive of suffocation, came from beneath
the stretching tent. I rushed forward, helped some emerging men from
under the canvas, and called out, "Are you all right?"
"There are two in the water," somebody answered. The crack had
widened to about four feet, and as I threw myself down at the edge, I
saw a whitish object floating in the water. It was a sleeping-bag with
a man inside. I was able to grasp it, and with a heave lifted man and
bag on to the floe. A few seconds later the ice-edges came together
again with tremendous force. Fortunately, there had been but one man
in the water, or the incident might have been a tragedy.
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