260 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



July' ^ a s 'g na l from the Fury, appointed to inform me of the approach of any ice. 

 On my return, I found the external body once more in rapid motion to the 

 southward with the flood-tide, and assuming its usual threatening appearance. 

 For an hour or two the Fury was continually grazed, and sometimes heeled 

 over by a degree of pressure which, under any other circumstances, would not 

 have been considered a moderate one, but which the last two or three days' 

 navigation had taught us to disregard, when compared with what we had 

 reason almost every moment to expect. A little before noon a heavy floe 

 some miles in length, being probably a part of that lately detached from the 

 shore, came driving down fast towards us, giving us serious reason to appre- 

 hend some more fatal catastrophe than any we had yet encountered. In a 

 few minutes it came in contact, at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, with 

 a point of the land-ice left the preceding night by its own separation, break- 

 ing it up with a tremendous crash, and forcing numberless immense masses, 

 perhaps many tons in weight, to the height of fifty or sixty feet, from whence 

 they again rolled down on the inner or land side, and were quickly succeeded 

 by a fresh supply. While we were obliged to be quiet spectators of this 

 grand but terrific sight, being within five or six hundred yards of the point, 

 the danger to ourselves was two-fold ; first, lest the floe should now swing in, 

 and serve us much in the same manner; and secondly, lest its pressure should 

 detach the land ice to which we were secured, and thus set us adrift and at 

 the mercy of the tides. Happily however neither of these occurred, the floe 

 remaining stationary for the rest of the tide and setting off with the ebb 

 which made soon after. In the meanwhile the Hecla had been enabled to 

 get under sail, and was making considerable progress towards us, which de- 

 termined me to move the Fury as soon as possible from her present situation 

 into the bight I had sounded in the morning ; where Ave made fast in five and 

 a half fathoms alongside some very heavy grounded ice, one third of a mile 

 from a point of land lying next to the northward of Cape Wilson, and which is 

 low for a short distance next the sea. At nine o'clock a large mass of ice fell 

 off the land-floe and struck our stern ; and a " calf" lying under it, having 

 lost its superincumbent weight, rose to the surface with considerable force 

 lifting our rudder violently in its passage but doing no material injury. 

 Wed. 10. Early on the morning of the 10th, the breeze having freshened up from 

 the S.S.W., the prospect to the northward was truly gratifying; and at fifteen 

 minutes after one A.M., when the Hecla had nearly joined us, we made 

 all sail alongshore, soon deepening the water to twenty fathoms, and after- 



