Word: floe
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...Provincetown, Mass, last week many a sea gull crouched fast in a huge white trap set by God. Through field glasses a Coast Guard lookout watched one try to take off from an ice floe. Vainly it beat the air with its long wings; one webbed foot was frozen fast. Soon the gull gave up, bent its sharp, hooked beak, sawed off the trapped leg and flew away. Other Coast Guardsmen last week found many a thin pinkish gull leg stuck upright...
...their tents, the Russians radioed the bad news out. From North Cape, Siberia, 155 mi. away, 60 dog teams mushed off to Professor Schmidt's aid through a screaming blizzard. Rescue planes waited in their hangars for the blizzard's end. Next day, snug on his ice floe, Professor Schmidt told the world: "The sky cleared last night and we took bearings from the stars. We are 130 kilometers [81 mi.] from land. All are healthy and full of energy...
They yelled to their dogs scattered on drifting floes. The dogs understood no Norwegian, the men knew no Eskimo except ilik (right) and iuh (left). Reversing Eliza, the men jumped from floe to floe, dragged the dogs by main force, assembled 53 animals. But as soon as unchained, the dogs leaped for the drifting floe on which rode the supply of whale meat. One dog, too stiff-legged to leap, was left...
...supplies in. "It was actual blood-taste-in-the-mouth," Captain Riiser-Larsen later radioed the Hearstpapers, whose publisher was one of his sponsors. They "could have taken sufficient emergency ration and rushed for safety on the barrier side. But with the wind off the land, the dog floe might drift out any time, and we decided to stay where we were, eventually drift out with the dogs, and thus get a chance to save them...
There was a chance that the wind would veer and drive them all back to shore. But when the floe with most of the dogs disappeared, together with three floes with stores, no matter what thereafter might happen, the expedition was ruined. Captain Riiser-Larsen rigged up his portable wireless, called for help...