106 THE GERMAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



aware of tlie proximity of narwalils in the frozen channel 

 by their blowing. 



On the 17th, in clear weather, three men, the carpenter 

 Bowe, and the sailors Bi'ittner and Heyne, undertook to 

 I'each the land, which was about ten nautical miles 

 distant. They started at seven in the morning in a calm 

 and 0° Falir. After crossing many dangerous places in the 

 young ice, some fields lay before them, over which they 

 pressed forward to within four nautical miles from land. 

 After three hours' wandering, however, they had to halt, 

 as a strip of water two nautical miles broad, and about 

 the same breadth of land-ice running along the coast, 

 blocked their way. At one o'clock, ^vitli a north wind 

 and drifting snow, they started back to the ship, where 

 we were already uneasy about them. On the 18th of 

 October early, again clear and still frosty weather ; but 

 already at half-past eight a.m. the ice began to- thrust 

 and press round the ship. This unpleasant noise lasted 

 until the afternoon. At regular intervals underneath, the 

 ice, like a succession of waves, groaned and cracked, 

 squashed and pufi'ed; now sounding like the banging of 

 doors, now like many human voices raised one against 

 the other, and lastly, like a drag on the wheel of a 

 railway engine. The evident immediate cause of this 

 crushing was that our field had turned in drifting, and 

 was now pressed closer to the coast-ice. The two floes 

 of ice lying before the vessel received the hardest pres- 

 sure, so that for a time the Hansa was spared, though 

 trembling violentl}''. The masts often swayed so much 

 tliat it seemed as though some one was climbing them. 

 At the same time our field sustained long and deep 

 fissures, by which the whale-boat seemed so endangered, 



