232 BACK'S VOYAGE IN THE TERROR. 



up to the height of thirty feet. " The land, blue from 

 distance, and beautifully soft as contrasted with the 

 white cold glare of the interminable ice around, reflect- 

 ing by the setting sun the tints of the intervening 

 masses thrown into the most picturesque groups and 

 forms, spires, turrets, and pyramids, many in deep 

 shade, presented altogether a scene sufficient for a time 

 to cheat the imagination, and withdraw the mind from 

 the cheerless reality of their situation." 



On the 5th of September, when they were firmly fixed 

 about sixteen miles from Southampton Island, and saw 

 some tempting lanes of water at no great distance, they 

 fell to the spirited task of cutting a way through the 

 ice by mechanical force. All the ship's company, offi- 

 cers and men, seized axes, ice-chisels, hand-pikes, and 

 long poles, and vied with one another in driving the 

 blocks asunder, and in driving them away to the nearest 

 pool. They at length succeeded in setting the ship 

 free, and got her into a run of several miles toward the 

 land ; but so early as next morning, they were once 

 more "in a fix." High winds and foul weather at the 

 same time came on, and seriously bewildered them, yet, 

 on the whole, did them good service, by driving them 

 slowly toward the shore. 



On the 14th of September, within about four miles of 

 the Cape Comfort of Baffin, the ship became severely 

 "nipped." A violent, agitative, landward motion 

 pressed all the surrounding ice into the utmost possible 

 compactness, raised much of it into ponderous pointed 

 heaps of twenty feet and upwards in height, and jammed 

 the ship with perilous tightness between the nearest 

 masses. 



The hapless ship was for many days drifted backward 

 and forward along the coast, and away from it, over a 

 range of about thirty miles, just as the wind or the cur- 



