Fighting Field Ice. 103 



make certain of our discovery ; but on reaching the ship a man was 

 sent aloft. He reported a brigantine about twelve miles to the 

 south, fast in the ice ; a schooner three miles west of the brig, and 

 about the same distance to the south, also fast in the ice ; a barque, 

 in line with the other two, but two or three miles still further to 

 the westward, likewise fast in the ice. He also reported that, so 

 far as he could make out, the whole channel between Nottingham 

 and the south main shore was blocked solid with field ice. 



If ever mortals were guilty of the truthfulness of the saying, 

 " misery loves company," some of us were. We had put in a very 

 bad day in the ice, and would have been helplessly fastened a dozen 

 times with a less powerful ship than the Neptune ; we had come 

 to a safe harbour, but on a most wretched coast ; we had broken 

 our propeller, and had only another to depend upon, and that mio-ht 

 be broken in the next battle with the ice; for these and other 

 reasons we were a gloomy lot. And I fear that the discovery of 

 these sailing craft, revealing as it did the fact that there were 

 others, not far off, in perhaps a much worse predicament than our- 

 selves, brought with it a sort of gratification to which human 

 weakness is nearly always subject under such trying circumstances. 



I had predicted two or three days before that we would find the 

 Strait blocked with ice opposite Fox Channel, and that we would 

 overhaul the Hudson's Bay ship, stuck in the ice, before reaching the 

 open waters of Hudson's Bay. The prediction was laughed at as 

 nonsense, especially by Dr. Bell, who was so enthusiastic in favour 

 of the Hudson's Bay route that he could not be persuaded that it 

 rained when it poured ; or that there was any wind, when it blew a 

 gale of thirty miles an hour ; or that there was any ice, when the 

 Neptune was rearing and plunging in the midst of it like a mad 

 bull ; or that it was cold, when the mercury was down to 32° above, 

 and when he was pacing the deck, compelled to wear a great coat of 

 reindeer ; in fact, he was almost ready to believe that the propeller 

 had hit a whale rather than the ice. But, alas ! he was overcome by 

 the weight of accumulated evidence. With ice on the right of him, 

 and ice on the left of him, and ice in front of him, as far as the eye 

 could wander ; with three vessels stuck in the ice to the south of 



