At the northern end of Kane Basin where Greenland makes out toward Ellesmere and Grant Land we began to encounter ice. My readers can perhaps imagine the thrill which was mine when I first heard the soft scrape of frozen lips against the Kawa's silky skin! Ice at last! Ice! the vaunted terror of the north! Leaning over the garboard streak I watched anxiously to see how our gallant carrier would take to the element for which she was designed. It was a magical performance and a warm glow of satisfaction suffused my heart as I noted how she slipped through the glazed surface. Far beyond in the northern sky gleamed the "ice blink," that luminous brightness which told of frozen fields and floes in the great beyond. We could feel the chill of their vast bulk as we sat on deck of an evening. We were now at the 82nd parallel and were passing through what is known as mulch ice, which is of about the same consistency and saltiness as ordinary brine. Wigmore made a number of interesting experiments with a small freezer, using corn starch and condensed milk from his own equipment and was able to produce a fair quality of ice cream which had a slightly oily flavor doubtless due to the presence of seals. From then on the ice developed into what is called squidge-ice, thicker and more lumpy than mulch, but still navigable. This, however, soon became a solid sheet, from four to ten inches in thickness, the Kawa's progress became slower and with something like acute anxiety I requested Whinney to switch on the thermal water line. The effect surprised even Whinney whose inventive imagination had proven itself capable of foreseeing almost anything which might happen and many which might not. We were instantly surrounded by a dense fog of our own making! The ice edges of the squidge coming in contact with the candescent copper vaporized immediately and the atmosphere on board became that of a Turkish steam-room. As is often the case it was not so much the heat as the humidity.[6] Our clothing was wringing wet and we were perspiring at every pore. It was easy to see what the fatal result would be when we shut off the electric spark and exposed our wide-open pores to the icy breath of the north. Pneumonia and consumption, if not worse, were almost certain. Ordering all hands below for a rub-down we came to a standstill and for two days did nothing more than maintain our position by quarter-speed revolutions of the Tutbury. At the end of that time Whinney emerged from the main hatch, where he had been incubating his ideas, with a look of suppressed elation which told me that he had found a solution of our difficulty. Without a word he set about stringing wires from the storage batteries to two points on the forward rail on a line with the capstan. In less time than it takes to tell it he had lashed two electric fans to the projecting sides of the guide runners and screwed the wires into the poles after which he walked aft and came to attention.