night with all hands, and with the watch at night, two boats
constantly under the bows; and, after all, rather losing ground than
otherwise, while the young ice was every hour increasing in thickness.

Towards sunset on the 17th we became more and more hampered, and were
eventually beset during the night. The sea was covered with ice between
us and the shore, all of this year's formation, but now of considerable
thickness and formidable appearance. The wind continuing strong, the
whole body was constantly pressed in upon the land, bearing the ships
along with it, and doubling one sheet over another, sometimes to a
hundred thicknesses. We quickly shoaled the water from seventy to forty
fathoms, the latter depth occurring about a mile from the beach; and
after this we drifted but little, the ice being blocked up between the
point and a high perpendicular berg lying aground off it.

Under such circumstances, it evidently became expedient to endeavour, by
sawing, to get the ships as close in-shore as possible, so as to secure
them either to grounded ice, or by anchoring within the shelter of a bay
at no great distance inside of us; for it now seemed not unlikely that
winter was about to put a premature stop to all farther operations at
sea for this season. At all events, it was necessary to consult the
immediate safety of the ships, and to keep them from being drifted back
to the eastward. I therefore gave orders for endeavouring to get the
ships in towards the bay, by cutting through what level floes still
remained. So strong had been the pressure while the ice was forcing in
upon us, that on the 20th, after liberating the Hecla on one side, she
was as firmly cemented to it on the other, as after a winter's
formation; and we could only clear her by heavy and repeated "sallying."
After cutting in two or three hundred yards, while the people were at
dinner on the 21st, our canal closed by the external pressure coming
upon the parts which we had weakened, and in a few minutes the whole was
once more in motion, or, as the seamen not inaptly expressed it,
"alive," mass doubling under mass, and raising those which were
uppermost to a considerable height. The ice thus pressed together was
now about ten feet in thickness in some places, and on an average not
less than four or five, so that, while thus forced in upon a ship,
although soft in itself, it caused her to tremble exceedingly; a
sensation, indeed, commonly experienced in