BESET. 85 



success, but in half an hour the navigation became so 

 tortuous that we were compelled again to go about 

 and stand in-shore. And thus we continued for many 

 hours, tacking to and fro, — sometimes gaining a little, 

 then losing ground by being forced to go to leeward 

 of a floe, which we could not weather. 



The space in which we could manoeuvre the schooner 

 became gradually more and more contracted ; the col- 

 lisions with the ice became more frequent. We were 

 losing ground. The ice was closing in with the land, 

 and we were finally brought to bay. There was no 

 longer a lead. And it was now too late to retreat, 

 had we been even so inclined. The ice was as closelv 

 impacked behind us as before us. With marvelous 

 celerity the scene had shifted. An hour later, and 

 there was scarcely a patch of open water in sight from 

 the deck, and the floes were closing upon the schooner 

 like a vice. Utterly powerless within its jaws, we had 

 no alternative but to await the issue with what calm- 

 ness we could. 



The scene around us was as imposing as it was 

 alarming. Except the earthquake and volcano, there 

 is not in nature an exhibition of force comparable 

 with that of the ice-fields of the Arctic Seas. They 

 close together, when driven by the wind or by cur- 

 rents against the land or other resisting object, with 

 the pressure of millions of moving tons, and the crash 

 and noise and confusion are truly terrific. 



We were now in the midst of one of the most thrill- 

 ing of these exhibitions of Polar dynamics, and we be- 

 came uncomfortably conscious that the schooner was to 

 become a sort of dynamometer. Vast ridges were 

 thrown up wherever the floes came together, to be 

 submerged again when the pressure was exerted in 



