514 THE FRANKLIN SEABCff— 18^8-51. 



had seen. Next morning the encampment was roused by a frantic shout of 

 " The water ! the water !" raised by the first man that had turned out. At 

 this shout every man sprang up. The sea was now seen at the distance of less 

 than ten miles, bearing west-north-west from the encampment. The explorers 

 reached it, and the boat, loaded with forty days' provisions, was launched at 

 five P.M. The fatigue party that had helped to bring on the boat and sledges 

 was sent back with the dogs to the ships; and Penny, again upon his 

 element, and exulting in the chance that at last had been given him, close- 

 reefed his sail, and began to beat up against the adverse wind that blew 

 strong from the west-south-west. Late at night, a gale sprang up from the 

 west, and Penny was obliged to bear up for a bay on the south shore of 

 South Channel. On the 18th, it blew a perfect gale, and the people were 

 kept under cover of the housing-cloth. The wind drove the ice into South 

 Channel, and packed it to the distance of twenty miles west. For several days 

 the party were confined by gales to the bay in which they had taken refuge ; 

 but on the 24th they succeeded in crossing over to Hamilton Island, the 

 whole of which they carefully surveyed on the following day, but without 

 finding any traces of Franklin's ships. Again there came a succession of 

 storms from the west, preventing Penny from proceeding a mile in the one 

 direction in which he was most anxious to proceed. Daily disappointment 

 was now varied only by the thrilling excitement of awful dangers. On the 

 30th June, Penny had hauled up his boat at an unpromising spot about four 

 miles from Cape Fitzjames, on the coast of Hamilton Island. On one side 

 of the landing-place was a perpendicular, snowy cliflf, on the other was the 

 shore ice, pressing up and squeezing in two fathoms water with a loud 

 grinding noise, and tumbling over in huge blocks at no great distance from 

 the spot on to which the boat had been hauled. On July 2d, Penny writes : 

 " The first few hours of morning we had a partial breeze from the eastward, 

 which brought the ice out of the channel. It came tearing along the land 

 at a fearful rate, turning up immense hummocks in its progress. I felt very 

 restless, and could not sleep. The boat began to move a little. I took it into 

 my head that there was a bear outside. My hand was upon my pistol, and 

 all ready for action ; I put out my head beneath the lower edge of the cover- 

 ing of the boat, and it was well I did so at the time, for immense hummocks 

 were tumbling over and over with the pressure within a few yards of us. 

 No one waited to put on his clothes, for each flew to the provisions, and 

 conveyed them up to the face of the precipice, and then to the boat, to 

 attend to its safety. The ice on which it rested was broken into several 

 pieces, and thrown very much from its level by the pressure among the 

 hummocks around it. In the middle of the channel it was truly fearful, 

 and could be compared to nothing but an earthquake. Some pieces were 

 rising to a height of twenty feet, and tumbling down with tremendous crash- 



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