I stood on the edge of the new fracture, and, looking across the widening channel of water, could see the spot where for many months my head and shoulders had rested when I was in my sleeping-bag.

The depression formed by my body and legs was on our side of the crack.
The ice had sunk under my weight during the months of waiting in the tent, and I had many times put snow under the bag to fill the hollow.
The lines of stratification showed clearly the different layers of snow.

How fragile and precarious had been our resting-place! Yet usage had dulled our sense of danger.

The floe had become our home, and during the early months of the drift we had almost ceased to realize that it was but a sheet of ice floating on unfathomed seas.

Now our home was being shattered under our feet, and we had a sense of loss and incompleteness hard to describe.
The fragments of our floe came together again a little later, and we had our lunch of seal meat, all hands eating their fill.