Through all its vicissitudes and against continued stress of wind and ice, the _Roosevelt_ clung to her moorings against the ice-foot, presenting a marked contrast to the usual pictures of Arctic ships in winter quarters. Having no topmasts to house, the ship’s slender masts and light but effective rigging rose aloft just as they did in the summer time. With decks uncovered and only the houses banked in with snow, at a little distance in the dim light the ship’s general appearance was much as when afloat. One very distinctive, very salient feature, was the galley lamp, the “eye of the _Roosevelt_” as it was called, which night and day from early October, when the sun left us, until early March when it returned, shone through the galley window, lighting the main deck and piercing the darkness, the falling snow, the fog, for a considerable distance on either bow. This beam of yellow light showed clearly from the top of the lookout hill which some of us climbed every practicable day, and was visible to every returning party from Hecla or the hunting fields of the interior as soon as it rounded Cape Sheridan. To anyone given to a belief in such things there were several encouraging omens about the ship’s position. The _Roosevelt’s_ nose pointed persistently almost true north, the bright yellow eye looked incessantly to the northward and the beaten sledge road from the ship to all points of communication led north along the ice-foot. The southerly gales continued to occur with frequency, and increased in violence as we neared the depth of winter. The movement of the ice was nearly continuous, becoming very pronounced on each spring tide, and the roaring of the pack at these times grew louder and more vicious as the newly forming ice grew in thickness and hardness. This movement of the ice culminated on Christmas night in the breaking away of the ice from the ice-foot and the starboard side of the _Roosevelt_ and, so far as could be determined in the darkness, the complete disruption of the pack adjacent to the shore and in the mouth of Robeson Channel. This disruption probably covered the entire segment of Lincoln Sea from Cape Joseph Henry to Cape Bryant and probably beyond. Open water in the shape sometimes of leads, sometimes of lakes, was also of almost continuous occurrence. [Illustration: CAPE SHERIDAN AND THE POLAR OCEAN ] [Illustration: THE “ROOSEVELT” AT CAPE SHERIDAN AFTER A SOUTHERLY GALE ]