195 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEANNETTE. 



shock at 8.40. At ten a. m. there it was however, and 

 by eleven it had opened out to a width of six feet, 

 affording us an opportunity of measuring the growth 

 of the ice since November 25th, the time at which we 

 were squeezed out into what was then open water. 

 By actual measurement to-day we find the thickness 

 of the ice to be twenty inches, and that is direct freez- 

 ing. For some reason the ice immediately surround- 

 ing the ship was not broken adrift, nor even badly 

 cracked on the starboard side of us (ship heading S. 

 S. W. true). At eleven movement commenced. The 

 floe in which the ship lay moved to the northward- 

 where it was broken on its edges by coming in contact 

 •with heavier floes, and remained comparatively motion- 

 less, after shortening our two hundred and forty yard 

 walk by some forty yards. The ice on our port hand 

 then got under way and moved along slowly, like a pan- 

 orama, until it had proceeded about two hundred yards 

 to N. E., and then it stopped ; the opening six feet 

 wide began to close, and in a few hours everything was 

 quiet again, except an occasional suppressed shriek in- 

 dicating pressure. The ship was not affected in the 

 slightest degree. While looking around for a cause for 

 this movement we observed the clouds moving rapidly 

 from the S. W., preceded by a scud, indicating clearly 

 a S. W. gale. The barometer had fallen to 29.50, 

 and up to eleven a. m. we had been having six and 

 eight mile winds from the S. S. E. and S. At eleven 

 the wind jumped suddenly to S. W., and commenced 

 to pipe up. Beginning with eight miles, it reached by 

 eight p. M. a velocity of 25.5 miles, blowing at times in 

 heavy squalls at the rate of, at least, forty miles per 

 hour. At midnight it went to W., and was blowing 

 twenty-one miles an hour. The barometer rose with 



