BACK'S VOYAGE IN THE TERROR. 237 



ing. About two hours after, a commotion like an earth- 

 quake took place, and made cracks across the snow- 

 houses, galleries, and court-yard, and forced the ship to 

 creak through all her timbers. A semi-circular rampart 

 of ice advanced from the opened sea beyond the floe ; 

 and enormous hillocky masses, some round and massy, 

 and others like small packs, had broken loose, and 

 seemed big with woe and ruin. At this awful moment 

 the tumult suddenly ceased. But the ship was in a 

 most perilous position ; the ice all around was so splin- 

 tered and jagged, and so fissured and holed, that it 

 could neither bear a boat nor be made a depository of 

 provisions ; and the land was seven or nine miles dis- 

 tant, and probably could not have been reached by even 

 the expertest ice-man, who should have had nothing but 

 his own life to take care of. 



On the following day the perils continued and in- 

 creased, and on the 20th they reached a crisis. All 

 the ice was again in motion, and one of its heaves broke 

 up the floe along the starboard side of the ship, and 

 threw down everything in its way. Some of the galle- 

 ries now floated away, looking like tunnels ; and the 

 ship herself was in open water, subject to the rubs and 

 nips of the ice-masses. A little after, she was violently 

 struck far below the water-line, and creaked hideously 

 from stem to stern, as if she were about to go asunder. 

 All the crew were confounded, and even the poor sick 

 went tottering aft, in an agony of terror. But the ship 

 lifted herself fully eight inches from the pressure of a 

 force which would have crushed a less strengthened 

 vessel to atoms ; and the assailing ice-mass either passed 

 in part beneath the bottom, or was wedged against the 

 large masses at the extremities. For upwards of three 

 weeks, similar scenes, and worse, were frequent ; and 

 never on the polar seas was there a more marvellous 



