418 
A RAMBLE ON A BERG. 
our lee, and opening in broken masses to windward. 
Tlie Rescue managed to make fast to a crag between 
us and the shore, but our ice-anchors missed. At four 
in the afternoon we were within rifle-shot of the land, 
and still drifting ; the wind a gale, and the sea-swell 
coming in heavily. 
We stopped, of course, or there would have been an 
end of my journal. But for some hours things looked 
squally enough. Our soundings had become small by 
degrees and beautifully less, till they were down to 
thirteen feet ; and the black wall looked so near that 
you, could have hit it with a filbert. It could not 
have been fifty yards off, when we brought up on some 
grounded floe-pieces. By eleven, our warps had head- 
ed us to windward, and our bow was oflT shore. For 
once, at least, we owed our safety to the ice. 
The Rescue followed a few hours after ; and we took 
the direction of the pack together to the N.N.W. By 
the next day at noon we were within twenty-three 
miles of Uppernavik, but a belt of ice lay between. 
We anchored to a berg, and for two days waited pa- 
tiently for an opening. 
My messmates in the mean time went ofi" on a hunt 
to a flat, rocky ledge, that showed itself inshore, and I 
amused myself with a tramp on the ice-island to which 
we were fast. I had for company a noble Esquimaux 
shrt, that Governor Moldrup had enabled me to get at 
Disco, and a dog of the same breed belonging to Mr. 
Lovell. I do not know what has become of Hosky, 
as Mr. Lovell named his favorite ; but my poor Disco 
fell a martyr to our Philadelphia climate and his Arc- 
tic costume together, some three days after we got 
home. 
I had a quiet day's walk. My companions rambled 
