Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/446

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cliffs gives a very un-June-like aspect to the prospect from the deck. The wind is southerly, and the waves, coming into the bay with no other resistance than that given by a few icebergs, begin to shake the ice about the schooner, and we can see the pulsations of the seas in the old fire-hole. I should not much relish seeing the ice crumbling to pieces about us in the midst of such a storm.

June 27th.

The storm continues,—occasional rain, mixed up with a great deal of hail. The scene from the deck, to seaward, was so wild that I was tempted to the nearest island, (the only one of the three not in open water,) to get a better view of it. I had much trouble facing the wind, and was nearly blown into the sea, and the hail cut the face terribly. The little flowers, which had been seduced by the warm sun of last week into unveiling their modest faces, seemed shrinking and dejected.

I was, however, repaid for some discomfort by the scene which I have brought back in my memory, and which is to go down on a sheet of clean white paper that is now drying on a drawing-board which I owe to McCormick's ingenuity. I have not seen the equal of this storm except once—a memorable occasion—last year, when we were fighting our way into Smith Sound. The wind seemed, as it did then, fairly to shovel the water up and pitch it through the air, until it had to stop from sheer exhaustion, and then I could see away off under a dark cloud a vast multitude of white specks creeping from the gloom, and moving along in solid phalanx, magnifying as they came, and charging the icebergs, hissing over their very summits, or breaking their heads upon the islands, or