CHAP. V.] ICE FLUCTUATES. #97 



The ship creaked more than usual from the force 

 of the breeze, indeed so much that it was thought 

 possible we might have set against the land ice ; 

 and in truth, when daylight came, we were closer 

 to the shore itself than at any other period. But 

 the most extraordinary fact was, the great dis- 

 tance that the ice had drifted, with the wind 

 abeam, to the westward ; for we now found our- 

 selves, much against our wish, in the precise 

 spot where we had been so roughly treated on 

 the night of the L5th. For a considerable in- 

 terval the ice remained motionless, so far as the 

 tide was concerned ; though on going to sound, 

 which was done in sixty fathoms, the loose youno- 

 ice was observed to rise and fall between the 

 edges of the larger pieces as it would have done 

 in a sea or swell. Afterwards for two hours and 

 a half, the entire body set very slowly to the 

 eastward, and then stopped. The wind was 

 N. N. E., and blew fresh in squalls : thermo- 

 meter 16° +, and in the sun 22° + . The next 

 twenty-four hours nothing occurred worthy of 

 notice ; and at noon of March 30th, the onlv 

 alteration near the ship was in the lanes ahead 

 and on the larboard quarter, which presented a 

 considerably larger open surface. It was remarked 

 that as one edge receded from the other, calves 

 and smaller pieces of old yellow ice emerged 

 from beneath into the temporary free space. 



