endeavoured to reach, but was forced to seek shelter by
fastening the vessel to a large field of ice three hundred feet in
diameter, elevated about six above the water, and between fifty and
sixty in thickness below. Here they lay with little variation from the
14th to the 20th; when they attempted with a fine breeze to get clear
out. In the evening, the sky lowered, and it grew very dark. At
midnight the passengers were roused by a noise on deck, and hastening
to learn the cause, found they were driving fast towards a huge
ice-mountain, on which they expected every moment to suffer shipwreck.
The night was excessively cold with rain, and the sailors suffered
much before they could again bring the vessel to her moorings. But
this was only the prelude to greater terrors: shortly after mid-day on
the 21st, the wind having risen to a tempest, the missionaries were
alarmed by a tremendous outcry; they instantly ran upon deck, and saw
the ship with the field to which she was fastened, rapidly driving
towards another immense mountain, nor did there appear the smallest
hope of escaping being crushed to pieces between it and the field.
They all cried fervently to the Lord for speedy help in this most
perilous situation--for if they had but touched the mountain they must
have been instantly destroyed. And he heard them: the ship got to such
a distance that the mountain passed between them and the field, but
one of their cables was broken and they lost an anchor; and were left
to the mercy of the storm and the current, in the midst of large
masses of ice from ten to twenty feet thick. The following night was
dreadfully dark and tempestuous, and the howling of the wind, and the
roaring of the ice, as the fields were dashed against each other by
its fury, rendered it truly terrific; while the fragments, as they
were dispersing by the storm, struck violently against the vessel, and
each blow sounded like the harbinger of instant fate. Such shocks were
repeated every five or ten minutes and sometimes oftener; nor was
there any possibility of avoiding them. In this awful situation they
offered up earnest prayers to Him who alone is able to save, and about
six in the morning they were carried into open water not far from the
coast, after having spent ten long hours in a state more easily to be
conceived than described. During the remainder of their voyage they
encountered several heavy gales, and were threatened occasionally with
the g