280 
ICE COMMOTION. 
disappeared, and along the line of its recent course the 
ice is heaped up in blocks, tables, lumps, powder, and 
rubbish, often fifteen feet high. Snow covered the 
decks of the little vessel, and the disorder about it 
spoke sadly of desertion. Foot-prints of foxes were 
seen in every imaginable corner ; and near the little 
hatchway, where we had often sat in comfortable 
good-fellowship, the tracks of a large bear had broken 
the snow crust in his efforts to get below. 
" The Rescue has met the pressure upon her port- 
bow and fore-foot. Her bowsprit, already maimed by 
her adventure off Griffith's Island, is now completely 
forced up, broken short off at the gammoning. The 
ice, after nipping her severely, has piled up round her 
three feet above the bulwarks. We had looked to her 
as our first asylum of retreat ; but that is out of the 
question now ; she can not rise as we have done, and 
any action that would peril us again must bear her 
down or crush her laterally. 
" The ice immediately about the Advance is broken 
into small angular pieces, as if it had been dashed 
against a crag of granite. Our camp out on the floe, 
with its reserve of provisions and a hundred things be- 
sides, memorials of scenes we have gone through, or ap- 
pliances and means for hazards ahead of us, has been 
carried away bodily. My noble specimen of the Arc- 
tic bear is floating, with an escort of bread barrels, 
nearly half a mile off. 
" The thermometer records only — 17° ; but it blows 
at times so very fiercely that I have never felt it so 
cold : five men were frost-bitten in the attempt to save 
our stores. 
" 9 P.M. We have had no renewal of the pressure 
since half past six this morning. We are turning in ; 
