No passage across the Pole this way! That is certain! But there is a current across the Pole! That, too, is certain! And Greenland is as long as a continent. So driving before the storm, Hudson steers east for Spitzbergen. In July, it is warmer, but heat brings more ice, and the man at the masthead on the lookout for land up at Seventy-nine could not know that a submerged iceberg was going to turn a somerset directly under the keel. There was a splintering crash. Something struck the keel like a cannon shot. Up reared the little boat on end like a frightened horse. When the waters plunged down two great bergs had risen one on each side of the quivering ship and a jagged gash gaped through the timbers at water line. Water slushed over decks in a cataract. The yardarms are still dipping and dripping to the churning seas when the crew leaps out to a man, some on the ice, some in small boats, some astraddle of driftwood to stop the leak in the bottom. As they toil—and they toil in desperation, for the safety of the ship is their only possibility of reaching home—they notice it again—wood drifting _against_ the wind, the undertow of some great unknown Polar Current. Hudson cannot wait for this current to carry him toward the Pole, as Nansen did. Up he tacks to Eighty-two, within eight degrees of the baffling Pole, within four degrees of Farthest North reached by modern navigators. When he finds Spitzbergen locked by the ice to the north, he tries it by the south. But the ice seems to become almost a living enemy in its resistance. Hudson had anchored to a drifting floe. Another icepan shut off his retreat. Then a terrific sea began running—the effect of the ice jam against the Polar Current. The fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Not a breath of wind stirred. Sails hung limp, and the sea was driving the ship to instant destruction against a jam of ice. Heaving out small boats, the crew rowed for dear life towing the ship out of the maelstrom by main force, but their puny human strength was as child’s play against the great powers of the elements. Backwash had carried rowers and ship and small boats within a stone’s throw of the ramming icebergs when a faint air breathed through the fog. Moistening their fingers, the sailors held up hands to catch the motion of any breeze. No mistake—it was a fair wind—right about sails there—the little ship turned tail to the ice and was off like a bird, for says the old ship’s log: “_it pleased God to give us a gale, and away we steered_.”