All that day the roar of the icy cannon was continued, as if a naval battle was in progress for the empire of the north, and berg after berg went down, strewing the sea with their shattered fragments, while misty clouds floated over the field of conflict. CHAPTER XXVIII. COLLIDING FLOES. AFTER this ice encounter the expedition put into a little port called Tessuissak, to complete their outfit of dogs. An impatient tarry of two days enabled them to count, on the deck of the little vessel, thirty first-class, howling dogs, whose amiable tempers found expression in biting each other, and making both day and night hideous with their noise. This port was left on the twenty-third of August, and, much to the joy of all, the dreaded Melville Bay was clear of the ice-pack; the icebergs, however, kept their watch over its storm-tossed waters. Through these waters driven before a fierce wind, and buried often in a fog so dense that the length of the vessel could not be seen, the "United States" sped. Its anxious commander was on deck night and day, not knowing the moment when an icy wall, as fatal to the vessel as one of granite, might arrest its course and send it instantly to the bottom of the sea. Once they passed so near a berg just crossing their track that the fore-yard grazed its side, and the spray from its surf-beaten wall was thrown upon the deck. A berg at one time hove in sight with an arch through it large enough for a passage-way for the schooner. The explorers declined, however, the novel adventure. The passage of Melville Bay was made, with sails only, in fifty-five hours. The pack which had invariably troubled explorers seemed to have been enjoying a summer vacation, and the bergs were off duty. The expedition had reached the North Water and lay off Cape York. The ocean current which sweeps past this cape, and opens the way to the other side of Baffin Bay, is wonderful. It is the great Polar current which comes rushing down through Spitzbergen Sea, along the eastern coast of Greenland, laden with ice, and taking the waters of its rivers with their freight of drift-wood as it passes. Leaving most of the wood along its shore, a welcome gift to the people, it sweeps around Cape Farewell, courses near the western shore in its run north until it has passed Melville Bay. When it has crossed over to the American shore near Jones Strait, it joins the current from the Arctic Sea, turns south, and makes the long journey until it reaches our own coast, dropping its ice freight as it goes, and sending its cooling air through the heat-oppressed atmosphere of our summer.