HELD AS IN A VICE. 147 



Again, on the llth, Back says: " At this time 

 she showed symptoms of suffering in the hull, which 

 was evidently undergoing a severe ordeal. Inex- 

 plicable noises, in which the sharp sounds of split- 

 ting and the harsher ones of grinding were most dis- 

 tinct, came in quick succession, and then again 

 stopped suddenly, leaving all so still that not even 

 a breath was heard. 



" In an instant the ship was felt to rise under 

 our feet, and the roaring and rushing commenced 

 with a deafening din alongside, abeam and astern, 

 at one and the same instant. Alongside, the grind- 

 ing masses held the ship tight as in a vice ; while 

 the overwhelming pressure of the entire body, ad- 

 vancing from the west, so wedged the stern and 

 starboard quarter, that the greatest apprehensions 

 were entertained for the stern-post and framework 

 abaft. 



" Some idea of the power exerted on this occa- 

 sion may be gathered from this : At the moment 

 which I am now describing, the fore-part of the 

 ship was literally buried as high as the flukes of the 

 anchors in a dock of perpendicular walls of ice ; so 

 that, in that part, she might well have been thought 

 immovable. Still, such was the force applied to 

 her abaft, that after much cracking and perceptible 

 yielding of the beams, which seemed to curve up- 

 wards, she actually rose by sheer pressure above the 

 dock forward; and then, with sudden jerks, did the 

 same abaft. During these convulsions, many of the 



