“Up your other sledge!” ordered Bennett.

Once more the expedition returned to the morning’s camping-place, and, harnessing itself to the third McClintock, struggled forward with it for an hour and a half until it was up with the first sledge and Ferriss’s flag.  Fortunately the two dog-sleds, four and five, were light, and Bennett, dividing his forces, brought them up in a single haul.  But Hawes called out that the broken sledge was now repaired.  The men turned to at once, reloaded it, and hauled it onward, so that by noon every sledge had been moved forward quite a quarter of a mile.

But now, for the moment, the men, after going over the same ground seven times, were used up, and Muck Tu could no longer whip the dogs to their work.  Bennett called a halt.  Hot tea was made, and pemmican and hardtack served out.

“We’ll have easier hauling this afternoon, men,” said Bennett; “this next ridge is the worst of the lot; beyond that Mr. Ferriss says we’ve got nearly a quarter of a mile of level floes.”

On again at one o’clock; but the hummock of which Bennett had spoken proved absolutely impassable for the loaded sledges.  It was all one that the men lay to the ropes like draught-horses, and that Muck Tu flogged the dogs till the goad broke in his hands.  The men lost their footing upon the slippery ice and fell to their knees; the dogs laid down in the traces groaning and whining.  The sledge would not move.

“Unload!” commanded Bennett.

The lashings were taken off, and the loads, including the great, cumbersome whaleboat itself, carried over the hummock by hand.  Then the sledge itself was hauled over and reloaded upon the other side.  Thus the whole five sledges.

The work was bitter hard; the knots of the lashings were frozen tight and coated with ice; the cases of provisions, the medicine chests, the canvas bundle of sails, boat-covers, and tents unwieldy and of enormous weight; the footing on the slippery, uneven ice precarious, and more than once a man, staggering under his load, broke through the crust into water so cold that the sensation was like that of burning.

But at last everything was over, the sledges reloaded, and the forward movement resumed.  Only one low hummock now intervened between them and the longed-for level floe.

However, as they were about to start forward again a lamentable gigantic sound began vibrating in their ears, a rumbling, groaning note rising by quick degrees to a strident shriek.  Other sounds, hollow and shrill—­treble mingling with diapason—­joined in the first.  The noise came from just beyond the pressure-mound at the foot of which the party had halted.

“Forward!” shouted Bennett; “hurry there, men!”

Desperately eager, the men bent panting to their work.  The sledge bearing the whaleboat topped the hummock.

“Now, then, over with her!” cried Ferriss.