ARRIVAL AT BROOKLYN. 



585 



skate, and the cabin-lamps, that had burned for four months 

 without cessation, were extinguished. The mercury rose to 

 32° ; the housings were removed from the Advance, and the 

 Rescue's men returned to their deserted ship. The saw was put 

 in motion early in May ; but the grand disruption of the ice, 

 which was either to free the ships or crush them, did not occur 

 till the 5th of June. It was five o'clock in the afternoon when 

 the first crack was heard, and the water, spirting up, was seen 

 following the track of the fissure. In half an hour the ice was 

 seamed with cracks in every direction, some of them spreading 

 into rivers twenty feet across. The Rescue was released at 

 once : the coating of the Advance held on for three days more, 

 parting at last under the weight of a single man. The liberated 

 ships soon made the Greenland coast, at Godhavn, where they 

 spent five days in reposing, in celebrating the Fourth of July, 

 and in splicing the main-brace, — this latter being a convivial, 

 and not a mechanical, operation. The vessels arrived safely at 

 the Brooklyn Navy-Yard on the 1st of October, 1851. The 

 vessels were restored to Mr. Grinnell, with the stipulation that 

 the Secretary of -the Navy might claim them, in case of need, 

 for further search in the spring. 



THE SEAL. 



