38 SPITSBERGEN 



from the depths into Avhich he had been plunged he 

 had to hold together his tattered clothes, for he had 

 worn away two pairs of trousers and something more. 

 That was all his damage, and we shall meet with him 

 again in the west out with Franklin and Captain Back. 

 In the morning of the 30th of July the ships found 

 themselves caught in a gale with the ice close to lee- 

 ward. The only way of escaping destruction seemed 

 to be by taking refuge in the pack. It was a desperate 

 expedient rarely resorted to by whalers and only in 

 extreme cases. In the Trent a cable was cut up into 

 thirty-foot lengths, and these, with plates of iron four 

 feet square, supplied as fenders, and some walrus hides, 

 were hung around her, mainly about her bows ; the 

 masts were secured with extra ropes, and the hatches 

 were battened and nailed down. When a few fathoms 

 from the ice those on board searched with anxiety for 

 an opening in the pack, but saw nothing but an un- 

 broken line of furious breakers with huge masses heav- 

 ing and plunging with the waves and dashing together 

 with a violence that nothing but a solid body seemed 

 likely to withstand ; and the noise was so great that the 

 orders to the crew could with difficulty be heard. At 

 one moment the sea was bursting upon the ice blocks 

 and burying them deep beneath its wave, and the next, 

 as the buoyancy brought them up again, the water was 

 pouring in foaming cataracts over their edges, the 

 masses rocking and labouring in their bed, grinding 

 and striving with each other until one was either split 

 with the shock or lifted on to the top of its neighbour. 

 Far as the eye could reach the turmoil stretched, and 

 overhead was the clearness of a calm and silvery 



