About sixty miles north of Etah, we came to a dead stop in the ice pack off Victoria Head.

There we lay for hours; but the time was not altogether wasted, for we filled our tanks with ice from a floe.
In the afternoon of the second day out, the wind came on strong from the south, and we slowly drifted northward with the ice.

After some hours, the wind began to form pools of open water through the pack, and we steamed westward toward the land, with the spray flying clear across the decks.

An Eskimo declared that this was the devil spitting at us.

After a few miles, we ran into denser ice and stopped again.
Dr.Goodsell, MacMillan and Borup were busy storing food and medical supplies in the boats, to be ready for an emergency.