LANCASTEE SOUND. 
253 
posite. Every thing like locomotion on^hoard is up 
and down hill. 
December 9, Monday. Like its three predecessors, 
clear ; that is to say, for three scanty hours of scanty 
twilight, you see the skeleton shore cliffs, and the 
bright stars, a little paled, but bright. The moon, a 
second-quarter crescent, was for a while on the north- 
ern and western horizon, distorted and flaming like a 
crimson lamp. 
" Last night, mounted as we are, the nipping caused 
our timbers to complain sadly. We had to send out 
parties to crow-bar away the ice from our bowsprit. 
The bob-stays were forced up and broken. Our floe 
movement continued to the southeast, driving the 
heavy ice in upon the Rescue. She rose up under the 
pressure, and is now surrounded by hummock ruins 
like ourselves. She is not more than fifty yards dis- 
tant from us, astern." 
From this time to the 21st our drift was without in- 
termission. As one headland after another defined it- 
self against the horizon, it was apparent that we were 
skirting the northern coast of the sound. At first this 
gave us some anxiety, when our floe, pressing hard 
against the shore-ice as we doubled some projecting 
point, threatened to wreck us among its fragments. 
But as we drew nearer to the outlet, and began to com- 
pute the new hazards of entering Baffin's Bay, this 
very circumstance became for us an important ground 
of hope. Theory, as well as the accounts of the whal- 
ers, made the southeastern cape of Lancaster Sound 
the seat of intense hummock action. The greater the 
distance from that point, the broader must be the curv- 
ature of the meeting currents, and the less perilous the 
conflict of the ice-masses in their rotation. There was, 
