of good treatment, and went
about fearlessly. On seeing a gun, they laughed, and said, "Pooh!
pooh!" to imitate its sound. One man danced, and was evidently anxious
to repeat some nautical shuffling of the feet to the time of a fiddle,
of which he had agreeable recollections, whilst another described how
we slept in hammocks. After some time, a document was given them, to
show any ship they might visit hereafter; and they were sent away in
high spirits. The course they had taken, both coming and going, proved
them to be from Wolstenholme Sound; and, as well as we could
understand, they had lately been to the northward, looking for pousies
(seals), and no doubt were the natives whose recent traces had been
seen by some of the officers near Booth Inlet, who had likewise
observed the remnants of some old oil-cask staves, which once had been
in an English whaler.

[Headnote: _GALE IN THE PACK._]

_August 26th, 1851._--Beset against a floe, which is in motion, owing
to the pressure of bergs upon its southern face; and as it slowly
_coachwheels_ (as the whalers term it) round upon an iceberg to
seaward of us, we employ ourselves heaving clear of the danger. A
gale--fast rising, and things looking very ugly. The "Intrepid," who
had changed her berth from the "inshore" to the "offshore" side of the
"Pioneer," through some accident of ice-anchors slipping, was caught
between the floe and the iceberg, and in a minute inextricably, as far
as human power was concerned, surrounded with ice; and as the floe,
acted upon by the pressure of bergs and ice driving before the gale,
forced more and more upon the berg, we were glad to see the vessel rise
up the inclined plane formed by the tongue of the iceberg under her
bottom. Had she not done so, she must have sunk. Sending a portion of
our crew to keep launching her boats ahead during the night, we watched
with anxiety the fast-moving floes and icebergs around us. A wilder
scene than that of this night and the next morning it would be
impossible to conceive. Our forced inactivity--for escape or reciprocal
help was impossible--rendered it the more trying.

Lieutenant Cator has himself told the trials to which the "Intrepid's"
qualities were subjected that night and day; how she was pushed up the
iceberg high and dry; and how the bonnie screw came down again right
and tight. We meanwhile drifted away, cradled in floe-pieces, and
perfectly helpless, shaving past icebergs, in close pro