CHAPTER XXI

A Daring Leap The party from the _Red Monarch_ had met one of the greatest perils in the Arctic, a thing that Peary dreaded above everything else, a menace that is ever present and that has caused scores of explorers to leave their bones in the frozen North. They stood on the edge of a lead—a split in the great ice pack—caused by a combination of wind and tide that had riven the masses apart, leaving an intervening space of open water, over which they had no means of passing. They had no boat nor raft nor any mater…