THE NEW SIBERIAN ISLANDS. 733 



get many a scratch. By placing the mast athwart-ship 

 the rail, and lashing down to a thwart, sufficient lever- 

 age is obtained to keep the boat upright without much 

 difficulty ; but it is the sudden drop from a lump into a 

 hollow, or the slide and sudden bring-up, that starts the 

 seams and does the damage. Holes between grounded 

 floes are common, and occasionally a man breaks through 

 and falls in, and has to be run along to get dry clothes. 

 So little food remains that I did not dare take it out of 

 the boats and carry it by hand, lest a man falling in 

 should lose a can of pemmican, which means a day's 

 food for all hands, and consequently the usual heavy 

 weights of the boats were increased. However, at one 

 p. m. the water was reached, and we got dinner ready 

 with all dispatch, sitting down at two. 



The water is here six feet deep, and the shoal or 

 sand bank lies north of us, and stretching along from 

 east to w r est about two hundred yards distant. About 

 one hundred and fifty yards from the grounded heavy 

 (i. e. six feet thick) ice, there is a long string of smaller 

 grounded pieces, and fifty yards beyond the hard sand 

 bank. This makes two bars, as it were, and offers two 

 channels which seem to run to the west for a couple 

 of miles, and then sweep around somewhere to the 

 right. 



In order to avoid the sroundino; of the first cutter 

 (now carrying fourteen men, Ah Sam being our addi- 

 tion from the second cutter, — Manson went to the 

 whaleboat, now carrying eleven), I ordered Chipp to go 

 ahead, Melville to follow, and I brought up the rear. 

 At three p. m. we started (the ice having considerately 

 broken under me, and sent me overboard up to my 

 shoulders a minute before), and flew down the deep 

 channel W. before a strong; S. E. wind, with snow 



