Note 15 — Chapter VI · The Winter Night (continued 3)

“Thursday, February 22d. The net-line has pointed west all day till now, afternoon, when it is pointing straight up and down, and we are presumably lying still. The wind slackened to-day till it was quite calm in the afternoon. Then there came a faint breeze from the southwest and from the west, and this evening the long-dreaded northwester has come at last. At 9 P.M. it is blowing pretty hard from N.N.W. An observation of Capella taken in the afternoon would seem to show that we are in any case not farther north than 80° 11′ and this after almost four days’ south wind. Whatever can be the meaning of this? Is there dead-water under the ice, keeping it from going either forward or backward? The ice to starboard cracked yesterday, away beyond the bear-trap. The thickness of the solid floe was 11½ feet (3.45 metres), but, besides this, other ice was packed on to it below. Where it was broken across, the floe showed a marked stratified formation, recalling the stratification of a glacier. Even the darker and dirtier strata were there, the color in this case produced by the brownish-red organisms that inhabit the water, specimens of which I found at an earlier date. In several places the strata were bent and broken, exactly in the same manner as the geological strata forming the earth’s crust. This was evidently the result of the horizontal pressure in the ice at the time of packing. It was especially noticeable at one place, near a huge mound formed during the last pressure. Here the strata looked very much as they are represented in the annexed drawing.15