So quickly did the wind now come off shore, and so quickly did the
packed "slob," relieved of the wind pressure, "run abroad," that
already I could not see one pan larger than ten feet square; moreover,
the ice was loosening so rapidly that I saw that retreat was
absolutely impossible. Neither was there any way to get off the little
pan I was surveying from.
There was not a moment to lose. I tore off my oilskins, threw myself
on my hands and knees by the side of the komatik to give a larger base
to hold, and shouted to my team to go ahead for the shore. Before we
had gone twenty yards, the dogs got frightened, hesitated for a
moment, and the komatik instantly sank into the slob. It was necessary
then for the dogs to pull much harder, so that they now began to sink
in also.
Earlier in the season the father of the very boy I was going to
operate on had been drowned in this same way, his dogs tangling their
traces around him in the slob. This flashed into my mind, and I
managed to loosen my sheath-knife, scramble forward, find the traces
in the water, and cut them, holding on to the leader's trace wound
round my wrist.
[Illustration: TRAVELLING ON BROKEN ICE]
Being in the water I could see no piece of ice that would bear
anything up. But there was as it happened a piece of snow, frozen
together like a large snowball, about twenty-five yards away, near
where my leading dog, "Brin," was wallowing in the slob.
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