For several days we kept in the open
water, but close to the ice, until one morning the captain ordered the
ship to stand due north across the open sea.
"He called me into his cabin, and with a large map of the polar regions
on his table, to which he often referred, he said: 'Son, I've been
hunting for a current; there's plenty of 'em in the Arctic ocean, but
the one I want ain't loafing around here. You see, son, it's currents
that carries these icebergs and floes south; I didn't tell you, but some
days when we were in those floes, we lost as much as we gained. We
worked our way north through the floe, but not on the surface of the
globe; the floe was taking us south with it. Maybe you won't believe
it, but there are currents going north in this sea; once or twice in a
lifetime, a whaler or passage hunter returns with a story of being
drifted _north_--now that's what I want, I am hunting for a northern
current. We will go to the northern shore of this open water, be it one
mile or one thousand, and there--well, hunt again.'
"Well, it was in September when we at last got to what seemed the
northern shore of this open sea.
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