There was one lead a mile wide which had formed since the upward trip, and the young ice over it was now breaking up.
[Illustration: PASSING OVER THE BRIDGE] Perhaps we took chances here, perhaps not.

One thing was in our favor: our sledges were much lighter than on the upward journey, and we could now "rush" them across thin ice that would not have held them a moment then.

In any event we got no thrill or irregularity of the pulse from the incident.

It came as a matter of course, a part of the day's work.
As we left the camp where we had stopped for lunch, a dense, black, threatening bank of clouds came up from the south and we looked for a gale, but the wind fell and we arrived at the next camp, where Marvin had made a 700-fathom sounding and lost wire and pickaxes, in calm and brilliant sunlight after a march of eighteen hours.

We were now approximately one hundred and forty-six miles from land.
We were coming down the North Pole hill in fine shape now and another double march, April 16-17, brought us to our eleventh upward camp at 85 deg.
8', one hundred and twenty-one miles from Cape Columbia.