114 ARCTIC VOYAGES. Chap. IV. 



appeared unavoidable if the floes should come in. 

 Parry desired Liddon not to join him, as there was 

 not room for two ships, " and the chances of saving 

 one of them from the catastrophe we had reason to 

 apprehend were greater by their being separate." 



By chance, and it was by chance entirely, they 

 escaped ; but had the apparent catastrophe taken 

 place, which they had reason to apprehend, not a 

 single being could have survived the melancholy 

 fate that must inevitably have awaited them ; all 

 must have perished from famine and the intense 

 cold of the approaching winter. This state of things, 

 and, indeed, every circumstance connected with this 

 abominable island, must serve as a beacon to warn 

 off any future navigator from coming even within 

 sight of it, but to avoid it as the ancients did Scylla 

 or Charybdis. It is to be hoped, and there is reason 

 to believe, that Sir John Franklin's attention has 

 been particularly drawn to this part of Sir Edward 

 Parry's narrative. 



The ships remained, however, at or near the same 

 place, and a mass of about an acre in extent drove 

 in and gave the Hecla a considerable "nip," and 

 then grazed past her to the westward. The fol- 

 lowing day another floe came in, "and gave the 

 ship a heavy rub." Parry, however, still per- 

 severed in creeping along the shore of Melville 

 Island, the ships sustaining such frequent and 

 " severe rubs " that nothing short of the stoutest 



