BACK'S VOYAGE IN THE TERROR. 241 



Bcemed for some moments to be entirely capsizing. 

 Those of her company who were on board felt suddenly 

 as if on the verge of eternity. Yet they evinced no 

 confusion, and cleared off and provisioned the boats 

 with astonishing coolness and promptitude. She went 

 so completely on her beam ends, that no man in her 

 could move without holding on ; but she went no 

 farther. A submerged ice-mass, whose end was con- 

 g Dated to her bottom, and whose other end projected 

 right out from her, was the cause of her overturn, and 

 it now held her firm in her perilous position. Officers 

 and men beheld it with awe, and set promptly and ener- 

 getically to the arduous task of sawing it off. They 

 worked from eleven o'clock in the forenoon till two in 

 the following morning, afraid that a squall might arise 

 and ruin them ; and when at last they had only ten feet 

 more to saw, but were compelled by fatigue and drowsi- 

 ness to go in quest of a short repose on the deck, 

 suddenly there was a grating sound of breaking ice, and, 

 before a word could be spoken, the ship sprang free, 

 and entirely righted. The cheering of the crew was 

 vociferous, and their joy unbounded. Four months, all 

 but a day, had the ship been in the grip of the ice ; and 

 now, after a romance of perils, and a cycle of providen- 

 tial deliverances, she was again subject to the control 

 of man. 



The last scenes we have described took place in the 

 vicinity of Charles Island, about midway between Cape 

 Comfort and the mouth of Hudson's Strait. The query 

 was naturally raised, whether anything could now be 

 done to prosecute the object of the expedition ; but the 

 ship was found to be far too shattered to go again in 

 her present state into collision with the ice, and a 

 serious doubt soon arose whether she should be able 

 to cross the sea to a British harbor. There was noth- 

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