CUTTING OUT. 363 
ment: he wallowed in the sludge, stretched out in 
the sunshine, played with his flippers, lying on his 
back, much as a heavy horse does in a skin-loosening 
roll. I rose to fire — and down he went. An unseen 
hole had received him: a lesson for future occasions. 
This hole was critically circular, beveled from the 
under surface, and symmetrically embanked round 
with the pulpacious material which he had excava- 
ted from the ice. 
" Crawling back less actively than I had approach- 
ed, my carbine arm broke through, carrying my gun 
and it up to the shoulder. It was very well, all 
things considered, that my body did not follow ; for I 
was on a very rotten shell, and nearly two miles from 
the brigs, alone. 
"Wednesday 12. For the last fortnight, our ice-saw, 
under Murdaugh's supervision, has been hard at work. 
To-day we have a trench opened to our gangway. 
"The ice shows the advancing season. It is no 
longer splintery and quartz-like, spawling off under 
the axe in dangerous little chips; but sodden, infil- 
trated ice, such as we see in our ice-houses. The 
water has got into its centre, and the crow-bars, after 
the sawing out, breUk it readily up for hauling upon 
the field. The process is this : First, we cut two par- 
allel tracks, four feet asunder, through six and five feet 
ice, with a ten-foot saw ; then lozenged diagonals ; then 
straps (ropes) are passed around the fragments, and a 
block and" line, nautice jigger, or watch tackle, made 
fast to the bowsprit, hauls the lumps upon the floe, 
where they are broken up by the ice bars. A formi- 
dable barricade of dirty ice, about the size and shape 
of gneiss building stones, is already inclosing our ves- 
sel. Many a poor fellow has had an involuntary slide- 
