XARTIATIVE OF A VOYACE TO SPITZBERGEN. 46S 



the ship would sink in consequence of the most 

 trifling accident or increase of the leak, — the cer- 

 tainty that, under the most favourahle circumstan- 

 ces, considering the dilapidated state of the ship, 

 her cargo, sails and stores heing principally on the 

 ice, it would require a considerahle length of time 

 before the ship could possibly be removed, as the 

 greater part of the crew must be constantly em- 

 ployed at the pumps, — the great probability there 

 was, considering the advanced state of the season, 

 that all the fleet of whale-ships would immediate- 

 ly endeavour to remove into safer ice, near the sea, 

 and consequently, that should the ice in which we 

 occupied a dangerous position *, eventually crush 

 the ship, there would be no refuge for us, but what 

 was at such a distance that it might, by the clear- 

 ing of the ice, be rendered inaccessible, — the con- 

 sciousness, that were the ship safely out of the ice, 

 she might yet founder at sea, from the fothering 

 sails washing away, or from the water accumu- 

 lating in the lee-bilge during a gale of wind, and 



• It was somewhat remarkable, that during the first five 

 or six days after the accident, the two floes between which 

 the ship received the damage, were in frequent contact at a 

 small distance from us. Sometimes they approached each 

 other, where the ship lay, within a few yards, at others, inter- 

 mediate pieces of ice would almost touch her. Under any 

 otlier circumstances we should have been in constant alarm ; — 

 as it was, we were too much involved in distress to be sensible 

 of any augmentation of danger from the ice. 



