Those on the floe drifted at the mercy of the wind and tide 195 days, making over 1300 miles to the southward.

As the more temperate latitudes were reached, and the warmer days of spring came on, the floe began going to pieces, and they were continually confronted with the probability of being forced to their boat for safety--one boat, built to hold eight, and now the sole reliance of nineteen people.

It is hard to picture through the imagination the awful strain that day and night rested upon the minds of these hapless castaways.

Never could they drop off to sleep except in dread that during the night the ice on which they slept, might split, even under their very pallets, and they be awakened by the deathly plunge into the icy water.

Day and night they were startled and affrighted by the thunderous rumblings and cracking of the breaking floe--a sound that an experienced Arctic explorer says is the most terrifying ever heard by man, having in it something of the hoarse rumble of heavy artillery, the sharp and murderous crackle of machine guns, and a kind of titanic grinding, for which there is no counterpart in the world of tumult.