482 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



Sept ^ ec * a - ^ e now a * so observed a dark water-sky to the eastward, which 

 v-#-y-w assured us that a clear sea could be at no great distance in that direction. 



Mon. 15. On the following* clay, when the ships had closed each other within a mile, 

 we could see the clear water from the mast-head, and the Hecla could now 

 have been easily extricated. Such however are the sudden changes that 

 take place in this precarious navigation, that not long afterwards the Fury 

 was quite at liberty to sail out of the ice, while the Hecla was now, in her turn, 

 so immoveably set fast, and even cemented between several very heavy 

 masses, that no power that could be applied was sufficient to move her an inch. 



Tues. 16. In this situation she remained all the 16th, without our being able to afford 

 her any assistance ; and the frost being now rather severe at night, we began 

 to consider it not improbable that we might yet be detained for another 

 winter. We were perhaps indeed indebted for our escape to a strong 



Wed. 17. westerly breeze which blew for several hours on the 17th, when, the ice 

 being sufficiently close to allow our men to walk to the assistance of the 

 Hecla, we succeeded, after seven hours' hard labour, in forcing her into 

 clear water, when all sail was made to the eastward, and our course shaped 

 for the Trinity Islands in a perfectly open sea. 



We thus finally made our escape from the ice after having been almost 

 immoveably beset in it for twenty-four days out of the last twenty-six, in the 

 course of which time the ships had been taken over no less than one hun- 

 dred and forty leagues of ground, generally very close to the shore, and 

 always unable to do any thing towards effecting their escape from danger. 

 When it is considered that, to have taken the ground in this situation, with 

 strong and high tides keeping the ice in constant motion, must have almost 

 involved the certain loss of the ships, and without the possibility of one 

 offering assistance to the other, we cannot but consider this as one of the 

 most providential escapes it has ever been our lot to experience. 



I cannot help here remarking how closely the band of packed ice, from 

 which we had now just escaped, appears to keep to the shores both of the 

 continent and of Southampton Island, unless driven off the land by strong 

 north-westerly breezes. After now leaving this body of it we saw no more 

 on our return to the eastward, which circumstance agrees with the accounts 

 of Baffin in 1615, and of Fox in 1631 ; the former having stretched over 

 from Southampton Island to the Trinity Islands without obstruction, and the 

 latter appearing not to have seen any ice the whole way up to his farthest 

 north. I have no doubt that the same clear sea would be found to extend 



