The valley crossed and its ridge surmounted, a still more heart-breaking experience was in store. We descended the frozen bed of a creek from which the wind had swept every trace of snow so that the ice was polished as smooth as glass. The dogs could get no footing and were continually down on their bellies, moving their legs instinctively but helplessly, like the flippers of a turtle, while the wind carried dogs and sled where it pleased. The grade was considerable and in bends the creek spread out wide. Nothing but the creepers enabled a man to stand at all, and creepers and brake together could not hold the sled from careering sideways across the ice, dragging the dogs with it, until the runners struck some pebble or twig frozen in the ice and the sled would be violently overturned. Twice with freezing fingers I unlashed that sled lying on its side, and took out nearly all the load before I could succeed in getting it upright again, losing some of the lighter articles each time. The third time was the worst of all. The brake had been little more than a pivot on which sled and dogs were swung to leeward, but now the teeth had become so blunt that, though I stood upon it with all my weight, it would not hold at all nor check the sideways motion under the impulse of the wind. Right across the creek we went, dragging the dogs behind, jerking them hither and thither over the glassy surface. I saw the rocks towards which we were driving, but was powerless to avert the disaster, and hung on in some hope, I suppose, of being able to minimise it, till, with a crash that broke two of the uprights and threw me so hard that I skinned my elbow and hurt my head, we were once more overturned. Never since I reached manhood, I think, did I feel so much like sitting down and crying. It seemed hopeless to think about getting down that creek until the wind stopped, and one doubts if the wind ever does stop in that country. But there was no good sitting there like a shipwrecked mariner, nursing sores and misfortunes; presently one would begin to feel sorry for oneself--that last resort of incompetence. And the bitter wind is a great stimulus. It will not permit inaction. So I was up again, fumbling at the sled lashings as best I could with torpid fingers, when one of my companions, uneasy at my delay, very kindly made his way back, and with his assistance I was able to get the sled upright again without unloading and hold it somewhat better on its course until another bend or two brought us to the partial shelter of bluffs and, a little farther, to the cabin where we were to spend the night. I understood now why my companions had a sort of hinged knife-edge fastened to one runner of their sled. By the pressure of a foot the knife-edge engaged the ice and held the sled on its course. This is another Seward Peninsula device. [Sidenote: THE KINDLY SWEDE]