e shore, so as to
enable us to proceed with our work, or to attempt hauling the ship off
the ground. About seven P.M. Captain Hoppner returned to the Hecla,
accompanied by all hands, except an officer with a party at the pumps,
reporting to me, that the Fury had been forced aground by the ice
pressing on the masses lying near her, and bringing home, if not
breaking, the seaward anchor, so that the ship was soon found to have
sewed from two to three feet fore and aft.

Finding, soon after Captain Hoppner's return, that the current swept the
Hecla a long way to the southward while hoisting up the boats, and that
more ice was drifting in towards the shore, I was under the painful
necessity of recalling the party at the pumps, rather than incur the
risk, now an inevitable one, of parting company with them altogether.
Accordingly, Mr. Bird, with the last of the people, came on board at
eight o'clock in the evening, having left eighteen inches water in the
well, and four pumps being requisite to keep her free. In three hours
after Mr. Bird's return, more than half a mile of closely packed ice
intervened between the Fury and the open water in which we were
beating, and before the morning this barrier had increased to four or
five miles in breadth.

We carried a press of canvass all night, with a fresh breeze from the
north, to enable us to keep abreast of the Fury, which, on account of
the strong southerly current, we could only do by beating at some
distance from the land. The breadth of the ice in-shore continued
increasing during the day, but we could see no end to the water in which
we were beating, either to the southward or eastward. It fell quite calm
in the evening, when the breadth of the ice in-shore had increased to
six or seven miles. We did not, during the day, perceive any current
setting to the southward, but in the course of the night we were drifted
four or five leagues to the southwestward.

A southerly breeze enabling us to regain our northing, we ran along the
margin of the ice, but were led so much to the eastward by it, that we
could approach the ship no nearer than before during the whole day. She
appeared to us at this distance to have a much greater heel than when
the people left her, which made us still more anxious to get near her.
The latitude at noon was 72 deg. 34' 57", making our distance from the Fury
twelve miles, which, by the morning of the 25th, had increased to at
least five leagues, the