154 Bibliography. 
The ship now drove astern into the midst of the huge masses of ice, 
striking the rudder a second time, which gave the finishing stroke. 
The wind freshening and the floe-ice setting in, the sails were furled, 
and sparsrigged down the ship’s sides as fenders. In attempting to 
plant the ice anchors, the pieces of floating ice ground against each 
other so violently that the boats proved almost unmanageable ;—but the 
ice anchors were at last planted, and the hawser hauled taught, and for 
a short time they held fast; but the ice continued to close in rapidly 
upon them, grinding, crushing and carrying away the fenders—when 
the anchors broke loose and the ship drove towards an ice island, 
vast, perpendicular, and as high as the mast-head. The anchors again 
held for a moment, but the whole body of ice to which they were at- 
tached came in contact with them, and the ship struck quartering upon 
a field of ice which lay between her and the great ice island; but it 
proved only a temporary defence, for, grinding along the ice, she went 
nearly stern foremost and struck with her larboard quarter upon the 
ice island, with a tremendous crash and much damage—but a great 
and happy rebound, with the aid of the jib and other sails, carried her 
clear of the ice island and forced her into a small opening—* when, 
before she had moved half her length, an impending mass of ice and 
snow fell in her wake. Had this fallen only a few minutes earlier, it 
must have crushed the vessel to atoms!” As she struck near the 
southern termination of the ice island, she was soon clear of it—the ice 
drifted by and she could be worked by her sails. But the stormy 
aspect of the sky presented the fear of shipwreck and of perishing by 
the water or the cold. But dinner was piped as usual, and although 
the vessel was fast in the ice, they managed by swinging the yards 
to keep her head in the right direction: but she was laboring in 
the swell with the ice grinding and thumping against her on all sides, 
and every moment something fore or aft was carried away—chain- 
bolts, bobstays, bowsprit shrouds—even the anchors were lifted, com- 
ing down with a surge that carried away the eyebolts and lashings, and 
left them to hang by the stoppers ;—the cut-water also was injured, 
and every timber seemed to groan. The dangers that attended the boats 
were likewise imminent; while executing the hazardous service of fix- 
ing the ice anchors, they were almost crushed, and Mr. Eld and his 
assistants escaped with the utmost difficulty. 
At 4 P. M., the ship being fast in the ice and the wind directly in 
from the seaward, the ice anchors were again run out, and soon after, 
the ice clearing away from the stern, they were able to unship the rud- 
der, and took it on board in two pieces, when all the carpenters were 
immediately employed upon it. 
