231 THE SEA. 



Storm succeeded storm; the little brig was constantly beset and nearly crushed in the 

 ice, and sometimes heeled over to such an extent that it seemed a miracle when she righted. 

 Dr. Kane's description of some of the dangers through which they passed is very graphic. 



"At seven in the morning we were close on to the piling masses. We dropped our 

 heaviest" anchor with the desperate hope of winding the brig; but there was no with- 

 standing the ice-torrent that followed us. We had only time to fasten a spar as a buov 

 to the chain, and let her slip. So went our best bower. 



"Down we went upon the gale again, helplessly scraping along a lee of ice seldom 

 less than thirty feet thick ; one floe, measured by a line as we tried to fasten to it, more 

 than forty. I had seen such ice only once before, and never in such rapid motion. One 

 upturned mass rose above our gunwale, smashing in our bulwarks, and depositing half a 

 ton of ice in a lump upon our decks. Our staunch little brig bore herself through all this 

 wild adventure as if she had a charmed life. 



" But a new enemy came in sight ahead. Directly in our way, just beyond the line 

 of floe-ice against which we were alternately sliding and thumping, was a group of bergs. 

 W> had no power to avoid them; the only question was, whether we were to be dashed 

 in pieces against them, or whether they might not offer us some providential nook of 

 refuge against the storm. But as we neared them we perceived that they were at some 

 distance from the floe-edge, and separated from it by an interval of open water. Our hopes 

 rose as the gale drove us towards this passage and into it; and we were ready to exult 

 when, from some unexplained cause probably an eddy of the wind against the lofty ice-walls 

 we lost our headway. Almost at the same moment we saw that the bergs were not at 

 rest, that with a momentum of their own they were bearing down upon the other ice, and 

 that it must be our fate to be crushed between the two. 



" Just then a broad sconce-piece, or low water- washed berg, came driving up from the. 

 southward. The thought flashed upon me of one of our escapes in Melville Bay; and as 

 the sconce moved rapidly alongside us, M' Garry managed to plant an anchor on its slope 

 and hold on to it by a whale line. It was an anxious moment. Our noble tow-horse, 

 whiter than the pale horse that seemed to be pursuing us, hauled us bravely on, the spray 

 dashing over his windward flanks, and his forehead ploughing up the lesser ice as if in 

 scorn. The bergs encroached upon us as AVC advanced; our channel narrowed to a width 

 of perhaps fort}" feet; we braced the yards to clear the impending ice- walls. . . . We 

 passed clear, but it was a close shave so close that our port quarter-boat would have 

 been crushed if we had not taken it in from the davits and found ourselves under the 

 lee of a berg, in a comparative open lead. Never did heart-tried men acknowledge with 

 more gratitude their merciful deliverance from a wretched death/' And so the narrative 

 continues a long series of hairbreadth escapes from the nippings and crushing of the ice. 

 Kane says at this juncture : 



1 ' During the whole of the scenes I have been trying to describe I could not help 

 being struck by the composed and manly demeanour of my comrades. The turmoil of ice 

 under a heavy sea often conveys the impression of danger when the reality is absent; but 

 in this fearful passage the parting of our hawsers, the loss of our anchors, the abrupt crushing 

 of our stoven bulwarks, and the actual deposit of ice upon our decks, would have tried the 



