'82 
HE AVINa. 
jump from the bows, and " plant it" in the ice 
ahead, close to the edge of the crack, along 
which we wish to force our way. To plant 
an ice-anchor, a hole is cut obliquely to the 
surface of the floe, either with an ice-chisel, or 
with the anchor itself used pickaxe fashion, 
and into this hole the larger curve of the an- 
chor is hooked. Once fast, you slip a hawser 
4 around its smaller end, and secure it from 
I slips by a " mousing" of rope-yarn. The slack 
5 of the hawser is passed around the shaft of our 
patent winch — an apparatus of cogs and levers 
standing in our bows — and every thing, m far 
less time than it has taken me to describe it, 
is ready for " heaving." 
Then comes the hard work. The hawser is 
hauled taut ; the strain is increased ; every 
body, captain, cook, steward, and doctor, is tak- 
ing a spell at the " pump handles" or overhaul- 
ing the warping gear ; for dignity does not take 
care of its hands in the middle pack ; until 
at last, if the floes be not too obdurate, they 
separate by the wedge action of our bows, and 
we force our way into a little cleft, which is 
^ kept open on either side by the vessel's beam. 
But the quiescence, the equilibrium of the ice, which 
allows it to be thus severed at its line of junction, 
is rare enough. Oftentimes we heave, and haul, and 
sweat, and, after parting a ten-inch hawser, go to bed 
