178 
ICE FORMING-. 
♦ 
" We were seated cosily around our little table in 
the cabin, imagining our harbor of land ice perfectly 
secure, when we were startled by a crash. We rush- 
ed on deck just in time to see the solid floe to wind- 
ward part in the middle, liberate itself from its attach- 
ment to the shore, and bear down upon us with the 
full energy of the storm. Our lee bristled ominously 
half a ship's length from us, and to the east was the 
main drift. The Rescue was first caught, nipped 
astern, and lifted bodily out of water ; fortunately, she 
withstood the pressure, and rising till she snapped her 
cable, launched into open water, crushing the young 
ice before her. The Advance, by hard warping, drew 
a little closer to the cove ; and, a moment after, the ice 
drove by, just clearing our stern. Commodore Austin's 
vessels were imprisoned in the moving fragments, and 
carried helplessly past us. In a very little while they 
were some four miles off." 
The summer was now leaving us rapidly. The 
thermometer had been at 21° and 23° for several nights, 
and scarcely rose above 32° in the daytime. Our lit- 
tle harbor at Barlow's Inlet was completely blocked 
in by heavy masses ; the new ice gave plenty of sport 
to the skaters ; but on shipboard it was uncomfortably 
cold. As yet we had no fires below; and, after draw- 
ing around me the India-rubber curtains of my berth, 
with my lamp burning inside, I frequently wrote my 
journal in a freezing temperature. "This is not very 
cold, no doubt" — I quote from an entry of the 8th — 
" not very cold to your forty-five minus men of Arctic 
winters ; but to us poor devils from the zone of the 
liriodendrons and peaches, it is rather cool for the 
September month of water-melons. My bear with his 
arsenic swabs is a solid lump, and some birds that 
