Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/153

 Again, on the 11th, Back says: "At this time she showed symptoms of suffering in the hull, which was evidently undergoing a severe ordeal. Inexplicable noises, in which the sharp sounds of splitting and the harsher ones of grinding were most distinct, came in quick succession, and then again stopped suddenly, leaving all so still that not even a breath was heard.

"In an instant the ship was felt to rise under our feet, and the roaring and rushing commenced with a deafening din alongside, abeam and astern, at one and the same instant. Alongside, the grinding masses held the ship tight as in a vice; while the overwhelming pressure of the entire body, advancing from the west, so wedged the stern and starboard quarter, that the greatest apprehensions were entertained for the stern-post and framework abaft.

"Some idea of the power exerted on this occasion may be gathered from this:—At the moment which I am now describing, the fore-part of the ship was literally buried as high as the flukes of the anchors in a dock of perpendicular walls of ice; so that, in that part, she might well have been thought immovable. Still, such was the force applied to her abaft, that after much cracking and perceptible yielding of the beams, which seemed to curve upwards, she actually rose by sheer pressure above the dock forward; and then, with sudden jerks, did the same abaft. During these convulsions, many of the