Two routes were open to him to the _Alert_. Possibly the safer way in the advanced stage of oncoming summer, but certainly a much longer route, lay along the ice-foot of the coast, which from the next headland made a long detour to the westward around Marco Polo Bay. The shorter air-line route was across the sea ice, now fast decaying under the summer sun, with the certainty of many air-holes and possible pitfalls where tides and pressure, sun and currents had broken and wasted the winter floe. Confident in his keenness of vision and in his familiarity with sea ice, he took the shorter air-line route, though its rough rubble-ice and shattered hummock-masses were sure to make greater demands on his physical strength and to require vigilance to avoid accidents. On and on, mile after mile, hour upon hour, he marched slowly but steadily onward, stumbling often and halting only when road conditions demanded. Now and then the loose rubble-ice separated under his feet, leaving him uncertain footing, and again huge pressure-ridges or converging hummocks obliged the weary man to carefully seek a safe way through their tangled, confused masses. The greatest danger was that of breaking through thin ice, and when he came to some attractive piece of new smooth ice, deceptively promising fast and easy travel, it was his rule to carefully test its strength and thickness with his ice-chisel before venturing to cross it. It was not that his life should be lost, but that he carried with him the gift of life or the message of death to others. Now and then he staggered and there came over him a sense of growing weariness, but the thought of his helpless, dying comrades on the Great Frozen Sea behind him, and of the eager, willing hearts in the ship before him, steeled his nerves, inspired anew his heart, and gave fiery energy to his flagging strength and failing body. For an hour or two as he marched there arose faint doubts as to the wisdom of his cross-sea route, for it was a period of strong tides which in their onward sweep from the northern Arctic Ocean warped and twisted the mighty ice-covering, whose total disruption was certain at the first violent gale, it being stayed now only by the almost immovable floes of enormous thickness crowded against the bordering lands.