In Newman Bay we remained five days mending the rudder, replacing the tiller chains with wire cables, and crossing to the south side of the bay, where I took on board the _Polaris_ boat left here by Chester and Tyson of Hall’s party in 1871, at Boat Camp. Then as the northern ice filled into the bay, we were gradually crowded out of our shelter behind Boat Camp delta, and tide by tide forced out to Cape Sumner, sometimes grazing the shore as we dodged a floe. During this time the Bay filled completely with ice and the entire northern part of the channel was packed solid. Captain Bartlett and Marvin made several trips to the top of Cape Sumner to reconnoitre the channel but without satisfactory results. The turn of the tide the morning of the 28th set us out again, and, impatient of the delay, and encouraged by the behaviour of the _Roosevelt_ in crossing the channel at Cape Calhoun, fires were cleaned, machinery thoroughly inspected, and at 4:30 A. M. the _Roosevelt_ was driven out for another contest with the channel pack in which at the time no pool or lane of water was visible. Just off the point of Sumner a brief nip between two big blue floes which the swift current was swinging past the Cape, set the _Roosevelt_ vibrating like a violin string for a minute or so before she rose to the pressure. From this we pushed out and began the attempt to cross to the west side, through ice almost continuously up to our plank sheer and frequently of such height that the boats swinging from the deck house davits had to be swung inboard to clear the pinnacles. The delay and inaction of the past five days had become unendurable. The _Roosevelt_ fought like a gladiator, turning, twisting, straining with all her force, smashing her full weight against the heavy floes whenever we could get room for a rush, and rearing upon them like a steeplechaser taking a fence. Ah, the thrill and tension of it, the lust of battle, which crowded days of ordinary life into one. The forward rush, the gathering speed and momentum, the crash, the upward heave, the grating snarl of the ice as the steel-shod stem split it as a mason’s hammer splits granite, or trod it under, or sent it right and left in whirling fragments, followed by the violent roll, the backward rebound, and then the gathering for another rush, were glorious. At other times, the blue face of a big floe as high as the plank sheer grinding against either side, and the ship inching her way through, her frames creaking with the pressure, the big engines down aft running like sewing-machines, and the twelve-inch steel shaft whirling the wide-bladed propeller, till its impulse was no more to be denied than the force of gravity. At such times everyone on deck hung with breathless interest on our movement, and as Bartlett and I clung in the rigging I heard him whisper through teeth clinched from the purely physical tension of the throbbing ship under us: “Give it to ’em, Teddy, give it to ’em!”