ippery surface; then it caught a lump, but the first strain broke it
off. Just after that it fell into a crack and held on. The brig was
checked, and swung round into the smooth water; but they had to ease off
the line lest it should snap. At last she was brought up, and lay
safely under the shelter of that berg until the storm was over.

Some weeks flew by after this without anything occurring worthy of
particular notice. During this time the _Hope_ made good progress into
the Polar regions, without again suffering severely either from ice or
storm, although much retarded by the thick fogs that prevail in the
Arctic regions. She was indeed almost always surrounded by ice, but it
was sufficiently open to allow of a free passage through it. Many
whales and seals had been seen, also one or two bears, but not in
circumstances in which they could be attacked without occasioning much
delay.

The brief summer had now passed away, and the days began to shorten as
winter approached. Still Captain Harvey hoped to get farther north
before being obliged to search for winter quarters. One morning early
in September, however, he found to his sorrow that pancake-ice was
forming on the sea. When the sea begins to freeze it does so in small
needle-like spikes, which cross and recross each other until they form
thin ice, which the motion of the waves breaks up into flat cakes about
a foot or so across. These, by constantly rubbing against each other,
get worn into a rounded shape. Sailors call this "pancake-ice." It is
the first sign of coming winter. The cakes soon become joined together
as the frost increases.

The place where this occurred was near to those wild cliffs that rise
out of the sea in the channels or straits that lie at the head of
Baffin's Bay. The vessel was now beyond the farthest point of land that
had been discovered at the time of which I am writing, and already one
or two of the headlands had been named by Captain Harvey and marked on
his chart.

"I don't like to see pancake-ice so early in the season," remarked the
captain to Mr Mansell.

"No more do I, sir," answered the mate. "This would be a bad place to
winter in, I fear."

"Land ahead!" was shouted at that moment by the look-out at the
masthead.

"Keep her away two points," said the captain to the man at the helm.
"How does it lie?"

"Right ahead, sir."

"Any ice near it?"

"No; all clear."

The brig was kept a little more out t