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ADRIFT ON AN ICE-PAN
as ever beat in the bodies of human beings.
So, slowly but steadily, we forged through to the shore, now jumping out on to larger pans and forcing them apart with the oars, now hauling the boat out and dragging her over, when the jam of ice packed tightly in by the rising wind was impossible to get through otherwise.
My first question, when at last we found our tongues, was, “How ever did you happen to be out in the boat in this ice?” To my astonishment they told me that the previous night four men had been away on a long headland cutting out some dead harp seals that they had killed in the fall and left to freeze up in a rough wooden store they had built there, and that as they were leaving for home, my pan
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