BE A TEN B Y ICE- WA VES. 347 



During the night of the 24th September the condition of affairs was 

 entirely changed. Chaotic commotion arose around the explorers, and the 

 whole body of ice in which the " Terror " was imbedded separated into single 

 pieces, and, finally, on the morning of the 26th, commenced to rush violently 

 westward towards Frozen Strait, tossing into amorphous heaps or grinding 

 into sludge and brash ice whatever floes opposed its advance. In this com- 

 motion the " Terror " was helpless, and for the first time the appalling con- 

 viction took possession of the mind of the commander that there was now 

 nothing to do but drift with the ice at the risk of wreck on the rocks, or of 

 being crushed under ice-mountains, until Nature in her own good time should 

 release him. 



And now commenced one of the most singular and surprising experiences 

 on record of an Arctic winter among the ice. Each succeeding day brought 

 successive perils and vicissitudes, and from this point onward, for twelve 

 months Back and his companions continued to live in the immediate and 

 constant presence of death, and under its very shadow. The very continuity 

 and perpetual recurrence of horrors renders the story of the fortunes of the 

 " Terror " monotonous. Under the influence of wind and tide, and of the irre- 

 sistible pressure of the ice-fields sweeping down Fox Channel from Fury and 

 Hecla Strait upon the north shore of Southampton Island, the ice in the 

 neighbourhood of the vessel was almost daily curled up into moving ram- 

 parts and swept onward, crushing everything before it, with as free a motion 

 as if it had been an ocean billow instead of a wave of solid ice. Over and 

 over again the " Terror " must have been engulfed under these waves of ice 

 had its strength not been much greater than that of ordinary whalers, or than 

 the vessels of the Hudson's Bay Company. As it was, the " Terror " rose 

 to the advancing ice-rampart as it would have done to an ordinary wave in 

 free water, though of course the rising motion was in this case more limited 

 in its sweep. During the whole winter the good ship was liable daily to be 

 dashed to pieces by those ice- waves, and in every encounter with the billows 

 of .adamant she was more or less severely " nipped," until eventually her 

 timbers crashed, her bolts started, and her hull had literally to be held 

 together by chains carried round the keel and hove tight over the deck with 

 the capstan. During the first weeks of the winter the vessel was drifted 

 backwards and forward, carried helplessly hither and thither by wind and tide 

 along the coast of Southampton Island, ofi" Cape Comfort. As the season 

 advanced, however, she gradually drifted with the pack south-eastward 

 towards Hudson Strait. 



On the night of the 21st December the barometer began to fall quickly, 

 and the minds of all were oppressed with the expectation of some uncom- 

 monly perilous occurrence. On the following morning the wind blew hard 

 from S.S.E. The sky was overcast, and a snowy haze prevented the explorers 



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