348 CAPTAIN BACK IN THE " TEEEOB "—183Q-27. 



from seeing an object at a greater distance than a few yards. Soon a rust- 

 ling noise like the rushing of water was heard, and presently the storm was 

 upon the vessel, raging with such fury that not a man could face it. Several 

 of those who tried to go out from under the housing were instantly frost- 

 bitten, and the officer of the watch, in merely going from the housing to the 

 taffi-ail to register the thermometer, " had the whole of his face frozen." The 

 storm raged like a hurricane and covered the ship with snowdrift. The top- 

 masts shook like wands, and the lee rigging was bent outward "like a bow." 

 The tempest was not exhausted till the 24th, and then the sky was again 

 serene, and Back found that he had driven with the ice twelve or four- 

 teen miles eastward of Cape Comfort. Toward the end of December the 

 crew began to be affected with scurvy, and on the 13th January a sailor 

 named Graham Walker died of it. On the 14th the officers and crew per- 

 formed the last mournful duties toward their shipmate. " The body was 

 conveyed on a sledge to the extremity of the floe, where a grave had been 

 dug through the ice ; and the solemn and affecting service for the dead 

 having been read, the remains were committed to the deep." Another victim 

 was shortly afterwards to be claimed by the fell disease. January had closed 

 with intense cold, the thermometer registering 64° below zero on the 31st, 

 on which day the sailors amused themselves by firing a pistol-ball of frozen 

 mercury into a frozen piece of timber. Donaldson, the gunner, a valuable 

 man, had for some time been down with scurvy ; and on the 3d February, 

 after remaining for days in a drowsy lethargy, refusing with a wave of his 

 hand the nourishment that was offered to him from time to time, he gradually 

 sank, and at last " slumbered to death." 



Early on the morning of the 20th February, the ice separated along the 

 starboai'd side and under the bow of the "Terror ;" but a few hours later it 

 returned upon the ship with accumulated force, making her crack fore and aft, 

 with a hideous sound of ruin and disruption, that made every man hold his 

 breath. Doors were dislocated and split with the prsseure. The people 

 crowded on the deck in alarm, and even the poor scurvy-stricken invalids 

 came tottering aft in an agony of terror, " Providentially the ship lifted her- 

 self up fully eight inches, under the prsseure of a force that would have 

 crushed a less strengthened vessel to atoms — and thus the opposing ice 

 either passed in part under the bottom, or was wedged against the large 

 masses at either extremity." At eight a.m.. Captain Back called the crew 

 together, and reminded them that as Christians and British seamen they 

 were called upon to conduct themselves with coolness and fortitude ; and 

 that, independently of the obligations imposed by the Articles of "War, every 

 one ought to be influenced by the still higher motive of a conscious desire 

 to perform his duty. "I gave them to understand," continues Back, "that 

 I expected from one and all, in the event of any disaster, an implicit obedi- 



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