Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/120

 had to go about again; or rather, we tried to; for the schooner, never reliable without her topsail, which we could not carry owing to the accident to the topmast, missed in stays; and, fearful of being nipped between the fields which were rapidly reducing the open water about us, we wore round; and, there not being sufficient room, we were on the eve of striking with the starboard-bow a solid ice-field a mile in width. There was little hope for the schooner if this collision should happen with our full headway; and being unable to avoid it, I thought it clearly safest to take the shock squarely on the fore-foot; so I ordered the helm up, and went at it in true battering-ram style. To me the prospect was doubly disagreeable. For the greater facility of observation I had taken my station on the foretop-yard; and the mast being already sprung and swinging with my weight, I had little other expectation than that, when the shock came, it would snap off and land me with the wreck on the ice ahead. Luckily for me the spar held firm, but the cut-water flew in splinters with the collision, and the iron sheathing was torn from the bows as if it had been brown paper.

And now came a series of desperate struggles. No topsail-schooner was ever put through such a set of gymnastic feats. I had been so much annoyed by the detentions and embarrassments of the last few days that I was determined to risk every thing rather than go back. As long as the schooner would float I should hope still to get a clutch on Cape Hatherton.

Getting clear of the floe, the schooner came again to the wind, and, gliding into a narrow lead, we soon emerged into a broad space of open water. Had this continued we should soon have been rewarded with