hauled our wind to the northward, just in time to avoid being
embayed in the ice, on the outer edge of which a considerable surf,
the effect of the late gale, was then rolling.

While the calm and thick weather lasted, a number of the officers
and men amused themselves in the boats, in endeavouring to kill
some of the white whales which were swimming about the ships in
great numbers; but the animals were so wary, that they would
scarcely suffer the boats to approach them within thirty or forty
yards without diving. Mr. Fisher described them to be generally
from eighteen to twenty feet in length; and he stated that he had
several times heard them emit a shrill, ringing sound, not unlike
that of musical glasses when badly played; This sound, he farther
observed, was most distinctly heard when they happened to swim
directly beneath the boat, even when they were several feet under
water, and ceased altogether on their coming to the surface. We
saw also, for the first time, one or two shoals of narwhals,
called by the sailors sea-unicorns.

A steady breeze springing up from the W.N.W. in the afternoon, the
ships stood to the northward till we had distinctly made out that
no passage to the westward could at present be found between the
ice and the land. The weather having become clear about this time,
we perceived that there was a large open space to the southward,
where no land was visible; and for this opening, over which there
was a dark water-sky, our course was now directed.

Since the time when we first entered Sir James Lancaster's Sound,
the sluggishness of the compasses, as well as the amount of their
irregularity produced by the attraction of the ship's iron, had
been found very rapidly, though uniformly, to increase as we
proceeded to the westward; so much, indeed, that, for the last two
days, we had been under the necessity of giving up altogether the
usual observations for determining the variation of the needle on
board the ships. This irregularity became more and more obvious as
we now advanced to the southward, which rendered it not improbable
that we were making a very near approach to the magnetic pole. For
the purposes of navigation, therefore, the compasses were from
this time no longer consulted; and in a few days afterward, the
binnacles were removed as useless lumber from the deck to the
carpenter's storeroom, where they remained during the rest of the
season.

A dark sky to the southwest had gi