When the tide is at the ebb, the ship follows the narrow crack of water between the shore and the moving pack of the center, driving ahead with all her force; then, when the flood tide begins to rush violently southward, the ship must hurry to shelter in some niche of the shore ice, or behind some point of rock, to save herself from destruction or being driven south again.
This method of navigation, however, is one of constant hazard, as it keeps the vessel between the immovable rocks and the heavy and rapidly drifting ice, with the ever-present possibility of being crushed between the two.

My knowledge of the ice conditions of these channels and their navigation was absolutely my own, gained in former years of traveling along the shores and studying them for this very purpose.

On my various expeditions I had walked every foot of the coast line, from Payer Harbor on the south to Cape Joseph Henry on the north, from three to eight times.

I knew every indentation of that coast, every possible shelter for a ship, every place where icebergs usually grounded, and the places where the tide ran strongest, as accurately as a tugboat captain in New York harbor knows the piers of the North River water front.

When Bartlett was in doubt as to making a risky run, with the chance of not finding shelter for the ship, I could usually say to him: "At such and such a place, so far from here, is a little niche behind the delta of a stream, where we can drive the _Roosevelt_ in, if necessary"; or: "Here icebergs are almost invariably grounded, and we can find shelter behind them"; or: "Here is a place absolutely to be shunned, for the floes pile up here at the slightest provocation, in a way that would destroy any ship afloat." It was this detailed knowledge of every foot of the Ellesmere Land and Grant Land coasts, combined with Bartlett's energy and ice experience, that enabled us to pass four times between this arctic Scylla and Charybdis.
The fog lifted about nine o'clock the first night out, the sun peeped through the clouds, and as we passed Payer Harbor, on the Ellesmere Land side, we saw, sharply outlined against the snow, the house where I wintered in 1901-2.