“Open water as far as the eye can reach” really means nothing more than that there are no ice-fields within three or four miles, and yet on that limited fact alone voyagers have more than once reported that they might have sailed to the Pole or near it. The open sea off Cape Constitution was a mere pool. Before morning both ships were arrested in dense pack, and forced to retreat for shelter to a narrow inlet with steep shelving sides. We were just moored to some pieces of grounded ice, and were congratulating ourselves on the security of our refuge, when a fragment of drifting floe caught against the “Alert” and pushed her on shore under a steep ice-foot at the very top of high tide. As the water fell, her bows were left high and dry on the beach, so that a man might have crept under the front of her keel, and she fell over so much on her side that a total capsize down the sloping beach seemed not impossible; but when the tide rose again she righted, and the whole crew, straining vigorously on the capstan, dragged her off from her perilous position. From this point southward to the entrance of Smith’s Sound the return of the Expedition was one monotonous struggle with the ice. Day after day the ships pushed onward between the floes and the shore in whatever openings the changing tide made for them, sheltering behind every projection of the coast. In the far north there are very few, if any, true icebergs, but opposite the Humboldt Glacier we again encountered them, and often found a refuge from the pack amongst groups grounded near shore. Our progress southward was a race against rapidly approaching winter. Snow fell in large quantities, and lay in thick paste on the water in cracks and pools. One by one the headlands passed on our northward voyage were rounded, and day by day new ice grew thicker and our stock of fuel dwindled. There several attempts were made to force a way past Cape Hawkes, and when we did succeed, the bay beyond was found full of new ice, so thick that the whole power of our engines could not push through. It cracked here and there before the ships, but soon brought both to a standstill, and the order was given to put out the fires.