I 
188 ICE THICKENING. 
Franklin and Sophia to be ice-caught at or toward 
Cape Walker, I did not hesitate to name them as the 
vessels before us. Ten minutes of obscurity, we sail- 
ing directly toward them, a sudden interval of bright- 
ness — and they had passed away. 
" Some large hummocks of grounded ice were near 
them, and we try to convince ourselves that they may 
have been closed in by changes in our relative posi- 
tions ; but this is hard to believe, for we should have 
seen their upper spars above the ice. I gazed long and 
attentively with our Fraiinhofer telescope, at three 
miles' distance, but saw absolutely no semblance of 
what a few minutes before was so apparent," 
We were obliged several times the next day to bore 
through the young ice,; for the low temperature con- 
tinued, and our wind lulled under Cape Hotham, 
The night gave us now three hours of complete dark- 
ness. It was danger to run on, yet equally danger to 
pause. Grim winter was following close upon our 
heels ; and even the captain, sanguine and fearless in 
emergency as he always proved himself, as he saw 
the tenacious fields of sludge and pancake thickening 
around us, began to feel anxious. Mine was a jum- 
ble of sensations. I had been desirous to the last de- 
gree that we might remain on the field of search, and 
could hardly be dissatisfied at what promised to real- 
ize my wish. Yet I had hoped that our wintering 
would be near our English friends, that in case of 
trouble or disease we might mutually sustain each 
other. But the interval of fifty miles between us, in 
these inhospitable deserts, was as complete a separa- 
tion as an entire continent ; and I confess that I look- 
ed at the dark shadows closing around Barlow's Inlet, 
the prison from which we cut ourselves on the seventh, 
