BACK'S VOYAGE IN THE TERROR. 235 



rei?t or the tide directed. The black frowning cliffs of 

 Cape Comfort might have seemed to the most sluggish 

 imagination to grin upon her in irony. She lay in the 

 grip of the ice-masses as helplessly as a kid does in the 

 folds of a boa-constrictor ; and once, when she slipped 

 from that grip, or was hurtled into a change of position, 

 ehe left her form as perfectly impressed behind her as if 

 it had been struck in a die. The many old Greenland 

 seamen on board all declared that they had never before 

 seen a ship which could have resisted such a pressure. 

 The perils, too, were increasing; and at length, on 

 the 24th of September, the officers unanimously ex- 

 pressed a conviction, founded on the experience of the 

 preceding thirty-four days, that all hope of making 

 further progress that season toward Repulse Bay was 

 gone. 



Captain Back now resolved to cut a dock in the only 

 adjacent floe which seemed sufficiently large and high 

 to afford the ship fair protection. But, on the very next 

 day, by one of those extraordinary convulsions which 

 are the last hope of the ice-bound Arctic voyager, the 

 whole body of ice, for leagues around, got into general 

 commotion, and burst into single masses, and, commenc- 

 ing an impetuous rush to the west, tossed many blocks 

 into heaps, ground others to powder, whirled all into a 

 hurly-burly, and bore away the ship like a feather toward 

 the Frozen Strait. Nothing could be done by the crew 

 but to await the issue ; and when the storm subsided, 

 they found themselves midway between Cape Comfort 

 and the entrance of the Frozen Strait, about three miles 

 from the shore, without any prospect of either forcing 

 their way into a harbor, or finding some little shelter in 

 a floe. They were once more firmly beset, with the ad- 

 ditional calamity of being so much tilted up, that the 

 stern of the ship lay seven and a half feet above the 



