It was the time of the skeleton pack. The time of tapered pools of meltwater and cul-de-sac canals, of aquatic riddles nearly impossible to solve. The floes were too soft and hole-ridden to allow the men to make any reliable progress by sledging, but neither was there enough open water to advance by sail. So they probed and threaded among these icy labyrinths, sometimes rowing their three boats, sometimes towing them, from cake to melting cake. “So winding and intricate” were these endless channels, De Long thought, “that I am reminded of the maze at Hampton Court.”
