Page:The Cornhill magazine (Volume 1).djvu/120

 25th of March, a wide fissure, which had been opening and closing during the previous fortnight, closed with such force as to pile up tons and tons of ice within forty yards of the ship, and shattered our old floe in a line with our deck. The nipping continued, and on the following night a huge block was hurled within thirty yards from us. Another such a night and the little Fox would have been knocked into lucifer matches, and we should have been turned out upon the floe.

April was ushered in with a continuance of heavy northerly gales; we were constantly struggling with the ice. We were three times adrift, and expecting to see our ship destroyed; and on the night of the 5th, the floes opened, and as their edges again came together, they threatened to tear everything up. We were on deck throughout the night; our boats and dogs were cut off from us, but with great exertion we managed to save the dogs, although we nearly lost some of our men who went in search of them. We that night secured the ship by the bower chains, and we afterwards had a few days' quiet. On the 10th we saw the mountain peaks about Cape Dyer, on the west side of Davis' Straits, the first land seen since the previous October. We had drifted into lat. 66° 5' N., and long. 58° 41' W.; and we hoped that after passing Cape Walsingham, the pack would open out.

On April 17, in a heavy storm, a general breaking-up of the ice took place, and we were turned completely out of our winter dock, and into an apparently open sea. A scene of wild confusion ensued; the floes were driving against each other in all directions, and the whole ocean of ice appeared in commotion, while a blinding snow-drift distorted and magnified every surrounding object. Our first care was to save our dogs; but as an Esquimaux dog always expects either a thrashing or to be put in harness when approached by a man, and the poor creatures were terror-stricken with the storm, they ran wildly about over the ice, and many of them were obliged to be abandoned to their fate, after sharing the perils of the winter with us. On board the ship, preparations were made to get her under command; for we were driving down upon the lee, and into loose ice, where our men could not have rejoined us with the boats. We shipped the rudder, and soon got some canvas upon the vessel, and having got the men and boats safely on board, we steered to the eastward, and really thought that we were released. A dark water-sky hung over the eastern horizon, and we thought that we were not far from the open ocean. But we had not proceeded more than some seventeen miles, when at midnight we came to a stoppage. It was fearfully dark and cold, and with the greatest difficulty we cleared the masses of ice. The water space in which we worked the ship became gradually less and less; we flew from side to side of this fast decreasing lake, until at last we had not room to stay the vessel. By 4 we were again beset.

We now commenced a second drift with the pack, which took us down to latitude 64° north, and longitude 57° west, on the 25th April, when, towards midnight, a swell entered into the pack, and gradually increased,