midday
Wind , east ; force , 2 . '' The next morning was clear for two hours after breakfast , and when Ferriss returned from his task of path-finding he reported to Bennett that he had seen a great many water-blinks off to the southwest . `` The wind of yesterday has broken the ice up , '' observed Bennett ; `` we shall have hard work to-day . '' A little after midday , at a time when they had wrested some thousand yards to the southward from the grip of the ice , the expedition came to the first lane of open water , about three hundred feet in width . Bennett halted the sledges and at once set about constructing a bridge of floating cakes of ice . But the work of keeping these ice-blocks in place long enough for the transfer of even a single sledge seemed at times to be beyond their most strenuous endeavour . The first sledge with the cutter crossed in safety .